State grant will help Shreveport stop some sewerage overflows
By Gerry May
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SHREVEPORT, Louisiana (KTBS) — A helping hand from the state of Louisiana — after a handout from Uncle Sam — will help Shreveport repair one of the trouble spots in its sewer system.
Mayor Adrian Perkins on Thursday announced a $5 million state grant to help repair the Hardy Street Lift Station in the Queensborough area. That’s aimed at stopping system overflows from a manhole on Dilg League Drive, which have been affecting a neighborhood near Cross Lake since 2018.
“Since then, the city has worked diligently to develop a project to mitigate that overflow,” Perkins said. “And completion of this project will enable the city to address compliance issues with the city’s consent decree.”
The consent decree is the more than decade old federal order for the city to fix its sewer system overflows. The total cost is now estimated at over a billion dollars.
“Our hope is that this is just the first step in many other infrastructure projects that we can bring to help improve the lives of those who live, work and play in the city of Shreveport,” said Louisiana Rep. Sam Jenkins, D-Shreveport.
Louisiana Sen. Robert Mills, R-Minden, said Louisiana’s Water Sector Program has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars for projects across the state, thanks to an influx of money from the American Rescue Plan.
“This is a great time for us to do some extremely overdue work, and very important for the city of Shreveport, and the massive system they’ve got to maintain here,” Mills said.
The city will pump in another $2 million from its ARP funds for the Hardy Lift Station repair. The total cost of the project is $13.5 million. Construction should begin next year.
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