Doug Bendorf The new director of the Staples Public Works department sees several challenges ahead but Doug Bendorf is happy to be in Staples.

He is moving from his home farming area in southern Minnesota to the northern lakes area and likes it that way, he said.

Bendorf, who started in Staples June 1, has worked the past 25 years with the Owatonna Public Utilities, a municipal agency that provides water, electricity and natural gas services to the citizens of that southern Minnesota city. He grew up at Claremont, just east of Owatonna, and graduated from the Claremont school system.

After attending Mankato Technical Institute, he began working at OPU in 1985 as a substation technician. He had been in the engineering department until 2005, when he was promoted to supervisor of gas, water and facilities maintenance at OPU.

Doug, who is married and has two young adult daughters, sees his first challenge as getting caught up on projects that are already underway, starting with the Highway 10 turnback project.

“Another is the Overpass (North South Corridor) project. They are also well along here on their Wellhead Protection program. Another need is preparing and updating the city’s mapping of our facilities,” he said.

At Owatonna, he’s just been involved in a refurbishing of one of their water towers. He’s in the process now of deciding on a similar project for Staples, with the first decision being deciding whether to re-furbish the existing tower or build new.

He’s pretty sure the best direction is to re-condition the city’s current tower. The cost to do repairs and paint the tower sometime in the near future could well be around $400,000. That is very similar to the cost of the tower when it was first built, back in about 1965. Today, its replacement cost would likely be well over $1 million.

“Our biggest concern here will be maintaining adequate pressure for fire protection during the repair process,” he said, adding it is something that can be accomplished with some advance planning.