A group of residents from the Tri-Lakes area in Lake Elmo and Oakdale are asking state officials to provide bottled water until they can get testing done to show whether their private wells have PFAS chemical levels exceeding the new limits for drinking water announced in April by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“It’s just not acceptable to wait this long,” said Debbie Dean, who lives near Lake Demontreville. “It’s unrealistic to expect us to wait a year or six months. We have grandchildren. I went out and bought water.”

A group of residents plan to attend the Lake Elmo City Council meeting on Tuesday night to express their concerns, Dean said.

“It appears that the Lake Elmo/Oakdale dumpsite plumes are expanding or changing direction,” Tom and Daryl Seifert and Pat and Debbie Dean wrote this week in a letter to residents. “The MPCA has informed us of a lengthy backlog for testing polluted wells. This is causing great anxiety in our neighborhood. We are disappointed with the slow response from the state, and we are asking for immediate relief with bottled water for our use until the state can determine if our wells are safe.”

Lake Elmo and Oakdale are among several in the east metro that are stepping up efforts to handle the “forever chemicals” after the EPA on April 10 finalized standards of no more than 4 parts per trillion for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

The updated guidelines mean that wells in the area may be above the allowable drinking water standards. “Currently, the number of contaminated wells tested and identified by the MPCA stands at six, with many additional homeowners waiting for their wells to be tested,” the letter states.

The plume of PFAS contamination has moved north of Lakes Demontreville and Olson, which is why some wells in the area are now exhibiting levels of PFAS that make the drinking water unsafe, Dean said.

If a well is found to be contaminated, bottled water is supplied free of charge until a charcoal filter system can be installed, but there is an extended wait to get wells tested through the PCA, and “it can take months before the results are available,” she said.

Dean said she is concerned about the wait. “If the wells are fine, we don’t need (bottled water),” she said. “But chances are, they are polluted.”

There are between 7,000 and 8,000 private drinking water wells in 14 communities in the east metro, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. The MPCA collects samples as residents request the agency to gather them, and, to date, agency staff have sampled about half of the private wells in all of the east metro, said Becky Lentz, assistant director of communications for the MPCA.

People can request sampling using an online form: webapp.pca.state.mn.us/gw-sampling-req/.

The state provides bottled water to residents whose well results have exceeded the Minnesota Department of Health’s health-risk index “until those residents get connected to municipal water or install a whole-home treatment filter,” Lentz said.

Lake Elmo Mayor Charles Cadenhead said Monday that he would encourage anyone who lives north of where the plume was originally located to get their wells tested.

“The MPCA is actively trying to figure out where wells are impacted,” he said.

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A judge sentenced a Hastings woman to more than 15 years in prison Monday for her role in a drive-by shooting that critically wounded a 10-year-old boy as he celebrated New Year’s Eve with his family in their St. Paul home.

A jury in April found Kelci Marie Meyers guilty of all three counts of aiding and abetting against her — attempted murder, first-degree assault and drive-by shooting — in connection with the boy’s shooting in the 700 block of Sherburne Avenue in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood.

Meyers, 29, testified at trial that she was driving the sport-utility vehicle and that Morris Robert Chie Ryan was leaning out of the passenger window when she heard the gunshots, according to Ramsey County Attorney’s Office spokesman Dennis Gerhardstein. Meyers would not say that she saw Ryan fire the gun.

Ryan, 27, of New Hope, faces the same three charges. A pretrial hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

Kelci Marie Meyers and Morris Robert Chie Ryan (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Ramsey County District Judge Kellie Charles denied a motion from Meyers’ attorney to depart from state sentencing guidelines and gave her a prison term of 15 years and 3 months, which was the maximum she could have received under state sentencing guidelines. She received credit for 125 days already served in custody.

The boy’s mother told police she suspected that a former neighbor was behind the shooting, the charges say. The mother described the man, identified in the charges as LC, as “a neighborhood nuisance” and, although he’d moved out, “he continued to return causing trouble and threatening the residents” of her home. She had a harassment restraining order against LC, though the order hadn’t been served on him.

Meyers used to date LC’s cousin and she also lived with them on Sherburne Avenue.

At the time of the shooting, Ryan and Meyers were in a relationship, according to police.

Boy taken hospital with life-threatening injury

According to the charges, officers called to the shooting just before midnight found the boy in an upstairs bedroom with a gunshot wound to his abdomen that punctured his bladder, small intestine and bowel before exiting his buttock. He was taken to Regions Hospital “with a life-threatening injury and acute blood loss.”

The boy’s mother told police she was in the kitchen making a video to celebrate the New Year with her son and other children. Her son had been playing with Legos shortly before gunshots came through the kitchen window.

She heard a man in the alley say, “(Expletive) y’all, (expletive)” and tried to get her kids out of the kitchen, the charges say. Another child carried the boy to the upstairs bedroom.

In video surveillance from the area, an SUV could be seen circling the alley twice before the shooting and about 14 gunshots could be heard. It was the only vehicle in the alley at the time.

Investigators found video surveillance from a nearby gas station that showed the SUV entering the lot just after the shooting. Police identified Ryan as the person who exited the front passenger seat and Meyers as the person who got out from the driver’s seat, according to the charges. They purchased beverages from the gas station and used Meyers’ card to pay.

Cellphone data showed Ryan’s phone on Sherburne Avenue at the time of the shooting and then at the Lexington Parkway gas station, the charges say.

Police found seven handguns at Meyers’ home, including a Glock 9mm that testing of a shell casing recovered from Sherburne Avenue later showed fired the bullets, the charges say.

Ryan told police he didn’t “really recall what he did on New Year’s Eve.” He said he’d stayed in and watched YouTube videos at his mom’s house in New Hope. He requested a lawyer.

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