City water customers to benefit from grants

Olney residents who need help paying their water utility bills or restoring their water service can now tap into a grant the City of Olney received from the nonprofit Rolling Plains Management Corporation. The grants will cover deposits, late fees, disconnect fees, water, sewer, and other water- related charges, said City Administrator Arpegea Pagsuberon. “The only thing they cannot help with is garbage service, and the City is willing to help set up reasonable payment plans to restore services,” Mrs. Pagsuberon said. Anyone who is interested should contact Rolling Plains directly to apply, at (877) 804 7372.

The city also received a $789,000 ARPA grant from emergency funds appropriated by Congress during the COVID-19 pandemic that the city decided to use to pay for water- and sewer-related infrastructure, Mrs. Pagsuberon said. Some of those funds will go toward software that will correct problems with the current system. “There are a number of issues with the software,” she said. “We have had people where [the software] is suddenly billing them two or three times the amount. We are trying to fix it and we are hoping that this new software will do that.”

The city also is inventing some of the ARPA funds in a new valve machine and valves to replace the aging valves that shut off water to parts of the city during water main breaks. The valve machine will install valves “Some of those valves are so old that they won’t turn and you can’t turn [the water] off,” Mrs. Pagsuberon said.

“A valve will shut an area off so that it doesn’t deplete all our water source and we don’t have to shut everything off.”