Gov. Andy Beshear recently rolled out the latest round of Cleaner Water Program funding, and it’s a sizeable one.

The program’s second round allocated $217 million to support 408 water and wastewater infrastructure projects in nearly all of Kentucky’s counties.

According to a 2019 American Society of Civil Engineers report, Kentucky’s water and wastewater infrastructure needs in the next two decades amounted to $14.5 billion. While the service level is high in the commonwealth, the report said that aging water line and sewer infrastructure required more dedicated funding to update.

In the second round of the Cleaner Water Program, southcentral Kentucky counties received $18,956,105, going toward 41 projects.

According to Kentucky’s Water Resource Information Center, southcentral Kentucky has $422,500,361 in total water and wastewater infrastructure needs.

As part of the allocation, Logan County received funding for 10 projects. Logan County Judge-Executive Logan Chick said that all involve improvements to existing infrastructure, which has been aging.

“We’ve always got issues to fix,” Chick said.

Since there are several distinct water districts in Logan County, Chick said that the Water Council decided to divide the $1.6 million in grant funds equally between each water district and city.

“All these projects are important,” he said. “We’d like to thank Gov. Beshear for the opportunity to receive these funds.”

Barren County was one of the biggest winners in the grant allocation, receiving $2.7 million for three projects: improving Cave City’s wastewater treatment plant, adding nearly 30,000 feet of water line in the Green River Valley Water District and funding the penultimate construction phase of a transmission line at Glasgow’s water treatment plant.

“Any time that Barren County is mentioned for a potential grant, I’m excited about it,” said Micheal Hale, Barren County judge-executive.

Hale said that aging infrastructure is also an issue in Barren County, so much so that just a few years back, not everyone had access to clean drinking water and the county had to allocate $1 million for that purpose.

“Since the start of my administration, I’ve prioritized upgrading Kentucky’s critical infrastructure and making our state a better place for our people,” Beshear said in a news release. “Once we allocate all the Cleaner Water funds from this round, every county will have funding to help improve their water infrastructure.”