Local providers of public water and sewage disposal services were recently denied their requests for $19 million in grant funding to help improve their service infrastructure.
In November, the …
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Local providers of public water and sewage disposal services were recently denied their requests for $19 million in grant funding to help improve their service infrastructure.
In November, the Missouri governor’s office and the state Department of Natural Resources announced the distribution of $410 million in grants for water, sewer, and storm drainage infrastructure around Missouri. Funding for the grants was supplied by the Federal government as part of the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to help states recover from the economic impact of the COVID pandemic. The state government has chosen to parcel out its ARPA distribution through several different programs, including this one.
According to a press release issued along with the funding announcements, more than 1,000 applications were received by the state government, totaling more than $2.4 billion in funding requests. Applications were scored based on the applicant’s financial need, engineering capability, and necessity of the project.
“We received approximately 1,000 applications requesting more than $2.4 billion in funding,” said Dru Buntin, director of the Department of Natural Resources. “We designed the specific scoring criteria to ensure that the limited funds available are awarded to projects in a way that maximizes the impact of those funds across Missouri — in communities both urban and rural, large and small.”
Despite that declaration, several small rural communities in Warren, Montgomery and St. Charles County were not among the beneficiaries of the state funding. The state denied funding requests from the cities of Warrenton, Marthasville and Jonesburg, the Warren County Commission, and the Public Water Supply District that serves rural areas of St. Charles and Warren counties.
We asked each of those entities for information about the projects they need funded, and how those projects will be paid for without the state grants.
The city of Warrenton had requested funding to install a new water main along Booneslick Road from Highway U to Veterans Memorial Parkway, according to Director of Operations Jon Struckhoff.
“This project will solve a couple different issues,” explained Struckoff. “One, it will increase water capacity from Middletown Road, west to the Warrenton West Boulevard overpass. Two, it will increase the redundancy in the same area by creating another loop in our water system. Three, it will replace an aging and undersized 4-inch water main and an undersized 2-inch water main.”
Without the state ARPA grant, Warrenton will pay for the project using money that was previously set aside for waterline expansion in the area of the west Warrenton interchange.
Public Water Supply District 2 of St. Charles County, which serves the Wright City area, requested $5 million for water infrastructure and $3.3 million for sewer infrastructure.
Executive Director Kevin Dunn said the money would help pay for a new transmission main to handle continued growth in the western part of the district’s service area, and also replace or improve sewer mains to prevent outside stormwater from getting into the sewer system.
“The district will use a portion of revenue and borrow the remaining amount to install this infrastructure and other projects,” Dunn said. “Timing of projects could be shifted to later years to meet the funding required.
Marthasville submitted a funding request to contribute toward a years-long effort to expand and improve the city’s water and sewer systems. Along with installing new water and sewer lines, the city hopes to one day remove old water towers that are being replaced with a new 300,000 water tank.
Mayor David Lange has stated that money for ongoing projects was included in the amount of bond financing that the city was recently approved for, in the event it did not receive the grant funding.
A request for additional comment had not been returned as of press time.
Mayor Bob Sellenriek said the city requested funding to replace a water tower and city well that are several decades old. That project will have to go on hold unless other grant funding becomes available.
Jonesburg also requested money to expand its water and sewer systems to the area northeast of town near Kaminski’s and Davis Meat. Sellenriek said those projects will get done “the old fashioned way,” by borrowing money. The city has plenty of bonding capacity for the project, the mayor said.
Presiding Commissioner Joe Gildehaus said the county had sought funding to help pay for a sewage lift station that would help connect sewer service to the area of the future American Foods Group meat packing plant, where more industrial developments are expected in the future.
