By MIKE JAMES — The Independent
GREENUP — Money for a long-awaited and long-delayed water line project came to Greenup Friday.
Gov. Steve Beshear met with city and county officials to announce the $885,000 Community Development Block Grant that will fund extension of water lines to more than 300 households in western Greenup County.
The grant will pay for the design and construction of 26 miles of lines, a 115,000-gallon storage tank and a booster pump station.
“Nothing is more basic to quality of life,” Beshear said.
Residents in the area have poor water quality and more than half say their wells go dry, forcing them to go without water for weeks at a time, according to the governor’s office.
“Water line extensions are all important, but this is one of the most important,” Judge-Executive Bobby Carpenter said. “A lot of these people were hauling water.”
Nearly 18 percent of the residents said they use bottled water rather than drinking from their wells or cisterns, and 36 percent do their laundry outside their homes, according to statistics provided by the governor’s office.
The project has been seven years in the planning, longer than any of the previous seven extensions to Greenup’s water system, said Mayor Donna Hewlett.
The city’s system supplies water to much of rural Greenup County. Problems in the system had prompted the state to put a freeze on further expansion until the city did a hydraulic study of the system remedied problem areas.
All restrictions have now been lifted. “For the first time in 12 years, we are under no agreed orders,” Hewlett said.
The council plans to award contracts at its Tuesday meeting, she said. The target for getting water flowing is December 2011. “We can finally give these families what they need. It should have happened seven years ago.”
Also on Friday, Beshear toured Price Solutions, the Worthington company that converts shipping containers into security checkpoints.
MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.
