A Legislative Budget Committee has approved the spending of 23-million dollars in federal money that will be used to modernize very old water and sewerage systems in small towns and rural parishes. House Appropriations Chair Jerome Zeringue says this round of money will fund 29 projects, but there’s more work to be done.
“We had over a billion dollars in requests for proposals, so we are in the process of evaluating and scoring those projects,” said Zeringue.
Zeringue says they currently have about 300-million dollars to spend on improving water and sewerage systems that are about 100 years old. He says they plan to approve more projects for funding early next year.
“In January we will get the final scoring of the projects and then the Water Section Commission will recommendation probably for the remainder of the 300-million dollars that’s available,” said Zeringue.
Local governments must apply for the funding and they need to show a need for upgrading their water systems. Zeringue says the dollars to pay for these projects is the result of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.
“It’s an opportunity to both improve, upgrade and enhance water systems and we also want to be prudent in terms of how we approach the long-term sustainability because there’s no sense of building it, in case we can’t maintain it,” said Zeringue.
Comments