City dog pound needs to move; council looks at options for SNAP
By Bob Fenske
This much is known: Sooner or later, New Hampton’s dog pound needs to find a new home.
When and where, though, remain up in the air.
During Monday night’s City Council meeting, Public Works Director Casey Mai said that the Iowa Department of Natural Resources will not allow the pound to remain at its current site once the new wastewater treatment facility is built.
“The DNR requires all public works facilities to be closed off to the public,” Mai said. “It was supposed to be that prior to [this, too]. I don’t know how the dog pound ever got to be put inside a city public works facility. Like I said, it’s supposed to be gated off from the public.”
Although the dog pound is technically in the city of New Hampton’s “name,” it is run by volunteers from the local chapter of Spay and Neuter All Pets (SNAP), an organization that has helped hundreds of dogs find adopted homes since the early 2010s.
SNAP volunteer Melissa Scheidel told council members she was concerned about the future of the pound and the organization and said that SNAP does not have funds to purchase land to relocate the pound.
City leaders, though, made it clear that SNAP won’t get immediately the proverbial boot from its current location, and both Mai and Councilwoman Deb Larsen offered up ideas for a new spot for the pound.
Mai said that one option could be a lift station that is just off the TRIBE Trail near South Linn Avenue. The public works director said the city is looking at moving the lift station and that building could become available.
“You could essentially put in a new floor in, the shell’s already there and this essentially could become the new dog pound,” he said. “It’s an option. There’s electric already there, there’s water, there’s sewer. ... Obviously, you have to put [up] a fence if you want the dogs to run. ... You’ve got the trail. People can stop and say hi to the dogs. Maybe they’ll adopt gone.”
Scheidel said SNAP has recently received an infusion of new board members and volunteers and doesn’t want that momentum to be flittered away.
“I’m glad that there’s this option and that we’re talking about it,” Scheidel said, “but I’d just hate for it to completely go away, especially when we’ve got a whole new group of board members and volunteers. Things are really going smoothly.”
Larsen, meanwhile, suggested a building near the Freedom Run Dog Park, which is located at the New Hampton Municipal Airport. The councilwoman’s family was integral in opening the dog park, but she said one question that needs to be answered is does a group that used to sponsor tractor pulls still want the building.
She pointed out that Freedom Run pays for the insurance on the building, which would need some renovations — insulation, “closing off” the building — before it could serve as a pound.
“I don’t know where we stand with the tractor pullers out there, but we’re going to be checking because they haven’t been out for years,” Larsen said. “All we get to do right now is to store some things because we can’t change it because we have to leave it so they can still use it if they have a tractor pull.”
Larsen added that the dog park hopes to soon have water and “we could extend it into that building. ... You could put quite a few kennels in there and that would help alleviate some of the fostering.”
For now, though, the dog pound will remain on the grounds of the current wastewater treatment plant. Mai said construction on the new facility will hopefully begin in 2027, and if the pound moves to the current lift station building, “we’d have to time that move.”
Either way, one New Hampton resident, Morgan Underwood said she believes a move would benefit both SNAP and the pound.
“I don’t think the current facility is working,” she told the council on Monday. “I think this is maybe a good opportunity actually for SNAP to move into the future, find a better facility, a bigger one. Other than that, the current location is very out of sight, out of mind as well.”
