Putnam Surveying Interest In Expanding Public Water Through ARP

Surveys have been sent out Thursday to Putnam County residents without public water gauging interest in extending lines to their homes.

Mayor Randy Porter said some 730 residents should be receiving mail notification.

“Some people they may have a great well or spring or whatever that they are happy with their water service, but this will give us an idea of the areas that have the most interest, because we want to make our dollars go as far as possible,” Porter said.

Porter said the main focus is on residents in the Martin Creek, Brotherton Mountain and Calfkiller areas. Porter said the sent out letter has a January 22nd deadline to provide feedback.

“We may reach out to some residents if we don’t hear from them to try to get as many people voting as we possibly can on this,” Porter said. “My goal is to by the end of the month to start working with the utility districts.”

The county commission has made the water projects a top priority. Porter said about $10 million of the some $15 million of ARP funding the county has received is earmarked for service extensions.

“This money was given to us up front as long as we spend it on water projects we are okay,” Porter said. “We don’t have to go through all the red tape of the grant process and can go ahead start engineering and doing these projects and bidding them and move forward so it will be a much quicker process.”