Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear announces nearly $6 million in water and sewer projects for Clark County and Winchester at the courthouse Friday afternoon. At right, holding the check for $5 million for WMU, is Hadley Farmer, a sixth-grade student at Henry E. Baker Intermediate School. (Photo by Randy Patrick)
The city of Winchester and rural water and sewer districts in Clark County have been awarded nearly $6 million in state infrastructure funding.
Gov. Andy Beshear presented the checks to officials Friday afternoon at the county courthouse.
The grants from the $250 million Cleaner Water Program include $5 million to Winchester Municipal Utilities, $600,000 to the recently created Clark County Sanitation District, and $310,000 to the East Clark County Water District.
County Judge-Executive Henry Branham and Winchester Mayor Ed Burtner said they appreciated the gifts and that they will greatly help the community.
WMU General Manager Kenneth “Duke” Dryden said the $5 million gift, one of the largest in the program, will allow the city utility to complete a major sewer rehabilitation project that has a Dec. 31, 2023 deadline. The city has been involved in a consent decree agreement with the federal government since 2007 over its sewer system.
“Without these funds, frankly, we probably would not have been able to do the project,” and that might have resulted in other federal penalties, Dryden said.
Burtner, who was mayor when the project began, said the city had to double its utility rates to pay for the first $85 million of the project.
Beshear said the money would “fully and finally satisfy that consent decree.”
The WMU grant will be used to replace inadequate sewer line segments, eliminate sanitary sewer overflows, upgrade the Strodes Creek wastewater treatment plant to incorporate the Fort Estill pump station discharge, which will allow for development near the interchange of Interstate 64 and Ky. 627, and include money for stream restoration along Strodes Creek.
Ron Tierney said the $600,000 for the Clark County Sanitation District will help initiate a $10 million project to replace three aging sewage treatment plants for mobile home parks along Rockwell Road with a new sewer main to the WMU treatment plant.
Branham said the money will likely be used for design.
The other grant, $310,000, is for a “shovel-ready” project to replace some “really bad water lines” in that part of the county served by the East Clark County Water District.
It will also install four meters to allow the utility to monitor water usage and detect leaks, refurbish the Muddy Creek booster pump station and install a new emergency generator.
The money for the Cleaner Water Program is provided by funding from the American Rescue Plan Act and administered by the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority.
“It’s been a good day for Clark County, it’s been a good day for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and it’s going to be a good decade to come,” said Beshear, who was joined by Rocky Adkins, a former candidate for governor himself, who is now Beshear’s senior adviser.
Beshear used the opportunity to mention his administration’s recent economic development achievements, including the announcement of a $6 billion investment for the Ford Motor Company’s planned BlueOvalSK Battery Park near Elizabethtown, which is expected to create 5,000 new jobs, and he suggested that Winchester would be a good location for one of its suppliers.
“It is just the beginning of December, and we have shattered every single economic development record in the history of this state for new investments,” the governor said.
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So far, those investments have totaled $10.4 billion, he said, which is about twice the usual annual average for the state.
Kentucky is no longer “flyover country,” he said.
“We are on the cusp, I believe, of an era of prosperity the likes of which we have never seen and one in which we achieve our collective dream,” he said, which is that “our children and grandchildren” will not have to leave Kentucky to find success.
This has occurred despite the global coronavirus pandemic, Beshear said, and he urged Kentuckians to follow the biblical “golden rule” to act as “our brother’s and sister’s keeper.”
“If we truly live out that teaching, we can protect one another, and we can get over this thing,” he said.
