As soon as the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality opens the application process, the city of Jackson needs to be ready to seek funds from the Mississippi Water Infrastructure Grant Program, according to a Jackson legislator.
“The city needs to be ready out of the gate as soon as the application is ready,” said Shanda Yates, a member of the state House of Representatives who represents District 64 (Hinds-Madison).
The grant program, which is established by Senate Bill 2822 that awaits the signature of the governor, will make available $750 million that municipalities, counties, rural water associations and utility authorities throughout the state can apply for and use to match funds received from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) so they can make investments in water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure.
The legislation establishing the grant program requires only the city of Jackson to account with the Department of Finance and Administration to make sure funds received are used as intended.
“The legislative leadership insisted on a special commission to provide oversight for the city of Jackson,” said David Blount, who represents District 29 (Hinds) in the state Senate.
Other municipalities applying for grants will not have the same oversight requirements as Jackson.
So far, the city of Jackson has spent $12 million of the $21 million it has already received from the American Rescue Plan Act on water/sewer infrastructure improvements, about $5 million on first responder pay and $500,000 to continue the operation of the Jackson Convention Center, leaving $3.5 million.
The city will receive an additional $21 million in ARPA funds in July.
That leaves an estimated $24.5 million in ARPA funds the city of Jackson could use for the grant program’s match and end up with a total of $49 million.
The Department of Environmental Quality is expected to establish rules and regulations, including application procedures and deadlines, necessary to administer the program on or before July 1. The state Department of Health is to advise the Department of Environmental Quality on regulations related to the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.
The Department of Environmental Quality is to develop a system to rank grant applications, giving greater weight to projects that have approved engineering/design, plans, permits and the department has deemed the project is ready to begin construction within six months.
City Council President Virgi Lindsay said city engineer Charles Williams, who is scheduled to retire on May 1, has prepared a plan for repairs to the water system and sewer system that will be useful with the grant process.
Blount said he plans to keep an eye on how the funding is distributed.
“We’ll need to watch to see if the money is being fairly distributed based on need and are other cities in the state that are smaller and newer getting the same amount of money as the city of Jackson,” he said. “I’m concerned about that.”
Yates had hoped to secure $42 million in funding from the Legislature for Jackson to use for the most pressing water/sewer repairs but the Legislature was hesitant about giving Jackson special treatment. The mayor and city council’s inability to negotiate a new garbage contract and the timing of it playing out in the last weeks of the session did not boost confidence in how the city is run, she said.
“I did everything I could do,” Yates said. “Jackson is the largest city in the state, the capital city, the city with the greatest and most well documented problems with water but at the end of the day that was not sufficient.”
Blount said any amount of money the city of Jackson receives will help improve its water system, but it easily could have been more.
“The bottom line is the Legislature had literally billions of dollars and a historic opportunity to fix the Jackson water system and the money that will be made available is simply not enough,” he said.
The Jackson legislative delegation pushed as hard as it could to get as much money as it could for the city to improve its water system, Blount said.
“I wanted every dollar to go to water and sewer,” he said. “It’s a necessity. In the Senate district I represent there were thousands and thousands of people who had no running water for a month last year.”
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba has said replacing the city’s pipes could cost more than a billion dollars.
Williams has estimated that the cost of replacing the underground infrastructure alone could cost a trillion dollars, once the expense of tearing up and then replacing streets is included.
Blount expects the Jackson delegation will seek additional funds for water/sewer repair during the 2023 session.
