ANSTED, WV (WOAY)- The US Army Corps of Engineers has awarded the town of Ansted a million dollars to update its sewer system. Ansted currently has three projects that are ongoing for this process.
Thursday night’s city council meeting focused on phase 3 of the project, which is inflow and infiltration improvements. This will allow them to install around 11,000 new sewer pipes and do other work within the town. Steve Pridemore explains why these updates are needed for the town.
“These pipes that are in the ground right now are terracotta, and over the last 40-50 years, they’ve broken, so water is getting into the system now,” explained Steve Pridemore, Mayor of Ansted. “When we get a lot of rain, water from outside of the system comes into the pipes, and I say it’ll go from 200000 to 300000 gallons a day. On a significant storm, we may go up to a million, and our plant cannot process that. So what that’ll do is allow it [to process easier]. The only thing going into the plant would be going through the piping system.”
The grant they got, specifically, was the Section 340 Development Grant. This funding was through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Act of 2022, and after the funding was repurposed, Ansted was selected to receive the grant.
“We look at other funding, their readiness. Like, are they ready to go,” said Leslie Stone Smith, US Army Corps of Engineers, Huntington District. “They had a good start on their design already with some preliminary engineering work, so that’s considered. Any other funding they may already have in play that’s kind of locked in with the project. We’ll look at public health is a big one, so I&I is overstressing their system so that’s considered number of customers that we’re helping and things like that.
They hope to start construction on this phase in the spring of 2025.
