Many of you will recall that a little over a year ago, the Build a Better Grinnell project surveyed community members in an effort to better understand some of the key issues community members believe to be most critical to the Grinnell community. Seven top responses were identified, and while there will be more information coming soon about each of those, one of the key issues Grinnellians noted was improving drinking water quality. At the time of the information gathering and its subsequent release, the City was already in the process of designing a new water treatment plant to help address the issue.
Much progress has been made since that time, and as you can imagine, projects like these take a significant amount of legwork to structure, design and develop - not to mention time and money. The city just recently completed the 95% design meeting with project developers, indicating components of the project will soon be put to bid and visible progress will soon be made. You can read more about the status of all the water improvement projects in a recent update on the city's website HERE.
The city was also recently notified they are the recipient of a federal grant through the Community Project Funding process, secured by Congresswoman Hinson, to help fund the efforts. This earmark will provide $3M towards the scope of the project. Additionally, the City has applied for state revolving funds (SRF) and are exploring other funding options that could also be used toward the project's completion.
I encourage community members to follow along with the Grinnell Herald Register as they provide regular and in-depth updates on this important community project. And in case you missed it, the Chamber Ambassadors visited the City of Grinnell's Water Treatment Plant over spring break (thus the smaller group photo!) to learn more about the progress being made on these efforts to address the water system(s) in the community. You can read more about that visit and find some of the photos HERE.
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