NORTHERN KENTUCKY — Gov. Andy Beshear announced $30 million in funding to support 29 clean drinking water and water system improvement projects affecting 1,245 households across the commonwealth. Those include two in northern Kentucky.
Workers tearing up the ground right in front of someone’s house for a water main project may not look like something they’d sign up for on the surface. But a deeper look, as in literally underground, reveals hundreds of homes in Northern Kentucky that aren’t connected to water mains, and thus don’t have access to public water.
Not being able to pour a cold glass of water on a hot summer day might change someone’s tune about the work.
“There are about 961 families, homes, that do not have access to public water,” said Campbell County Commissioner Geoff Besecker. “I live in a community where I don’t have access myself to clean public drinking water.”
Besecker said it would cost between $40 million and $45 million to bring water to all those people. While that’s a daunting price tag, he said the county is trying to break it into more manageable chunks.
Announcements like the one Beshear made Thursday help. “We just announced ARPA funds in the amount of $30 million to provide clean drinking water to over 1,200 homes for the first time,” Beshear said during his Team Kentucky briefing.
One of the 29 projects benefiting will be in Campbell County, where one million dollars will go to the Northern Kentucky Water District to extend 3.83 miles of water main in rural areas at a project cost of $2,600,000 to serve 56 households. These projects are anticipated to be completed by December 2024.
The Northern Kentucky Water District is also receiving one million dollars to construct 5.05 miles of water main in predominantly rural areas in Kenton County at a cost of $2,725,00 to serve 81 households. Kenton County currently has about 453 households without access to public water.
Boone County Commissioner Jesse Brewer said plans are already in motion for his county to extend its water to people who don’t have it, using about $12 million in ARPA funds Boone County has already received.
“We are considered a very affluent county. But there’s a lot of our county that’s very rural. The western part of the county is very rural, and doesn’t have access to running water.”
While Besecker said having clean water for the first time will be a “game-changer” for the families who receive it in Campbell county, there still will be a long way to go to get it to the hundreds of others who will remain disconnected.
29 recently approved projects are funded by the American Rescue Plan Act and administered by the Kentucky Infrastructure Authority. An initial $250 million was appropriated through a bipartisan agreement at the close of the 2021 General Assembly for clean drinking water and wastewater grants to fund projects across Kentucky. The governor also announced an additional $250 million from his cleaner water program is now available for local utilities to submit projects for a second round of funding.
The Northern Kentucky Water District collaborated with the Kenton County Fiscal Court, the Campbell County Fiscal Court and the Northern Kentucky Area Development District to identify a project in each county to provide water service to unserved households.
The District requested and will receive $1,000,000 toward each county’s project from the Cleaner Water Grant Funds. The District will also partially fund these projects in partnership with the Kenton and Campbell County Fiscal Courts, as well as a monthly customer surcharge.
“The District is grateful for the local and state collaboration to move these projects forward and is excited to receive this funding. We look forward to working with these agencies to provide a reliable, safe supply of water to households that currently use cisterns to collect rainwater or who must haul water to fill them,” said a water district spokesperson.