Literally putting our money where our mouths are, the Cooper Administration announced $127 million in grants for drinking water and wastewater treatment projects across the state last week.
These grants will help pay for 96 projects from Sylva in the mountains to Elizabeth City on the coast, covering direct improvements to drinking water and wastewater treatment and discharge systems.
Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Secretary Michael Regan said, “With the stresses of aging infrastructure and recent proof that storms can devastate water infrastructure, we must provide utilities with funding to strengthen water and sewer systems.”
Gov. Roy Cooper has requested substantial additional investment as part of his state legislative budget and bond proposals for similar water treatment infrastructure improvements. In particular, Cooper emphasizes the lessons of last year’s historic storms in demonstrating how vulnerable the state’s coastal water infrastructure has become to storms and flooding. Climate scientists point to this growing pattern of increasingly frequent, record-breaking storms as a sign of the dangerous impacts of climate change already underway.
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