Significant funding could be available in the next state budget cycle for line-item grants to help run water lines to now-unserved and underserved Kentuckians.
The Kentucky Infrastructure Authority’s Debby Milton told the Tobacco Settlement Agreement Fund Oversight Committee today that the balance on around $740,000 in closed-out line-item grants could be redistributed while about half, or $17.5 million, of $35 million budgeted by the state for existing projects “could probably be reauthorized to different projects.”
“So when you come to town in January… take a look at your areas and see if possibly you could redistribute some of those funds,” said Milton.
Her comments were made during her presentation to the committee on KIA’s use of tobacco settlement funds for rural water and wastewater projects.
Milton was responding to concerns voiced by committee members like Rep. Mike Denham, D-Maysville, who asked Milton if there are grant funds available to help those at hard-to-reach locations—at the end of a road, or up a hill, for example—who must still haul their water.
Denham said a large dairy and some others in his district must haul their water because they do not qualify for federal or other grant assistance for water line extension.
“I think we’ve got to find a way to accommodate them,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader Whip Jimmy Higdon, R-Lebanon, said he agreed with Denham on that point, adding “we need to make it our goal that 100 percent of Kentucky residents… have safe, dependable water.” Higdon said help could possibly come through a matching fund program “for some of these individuals at the end of the line, so we can help get that water to them.”
To date, KIA has funded over $3 billion in water and sewer projects through loans and grants, with actual line-item grants totaling $858 million, said Milton. The line-item grants are used to pay the debt service on project bonds, she said.
No new tobacco settlement line-item grants have been included in the state budget for KIA water and sewer projects since 2010, said Milton, although existing grants are often reauthorized and coal severance line-item grants have been authorized. Line-item grants administered by KIA over the past 15 years have gone for water and sewer line extension or repair, water or sewer plant rehab, water storage tank construction or rehab, and water or sewer plant construction, she said.
Questions about how tobacco settlement dollars are used to pay debt service on water and sewer projects in Kentucky were posed by committee Co-Chair Rep. Wilson Stone, D-Scottsville, who asked Milton to provide the committee with that data because “it does affect each budget that’s prepared for the (tobacco settlement) funding,” he said. Milton said she would get back to the committee with that information.
The committee also received an update from the Governor’s Office of Agricultural Policy on projects considered for state agricultural development funding at the April meeting of the Agricultural Development Board.
From LRC