$284M loan from feds helps tackle key water projects

County, EPA tout effort to fix effects of long neglect.

Flanked by homes, heavy machinery and, mercifully, many shade-providing trees, Dekalb County officials and bigwigs from the Environ- mental Protection Agency gathered Thursday morn

on Miriam Lane. One after another, they touted the potential that comes with a $284 million federal loan the county will use to complete water infrastructure projects — big, vital undertakings like the nearly finished water main replacement in the south Dekalb community where they stood.

“In many instances here in DEK lb, we’re deal- ing with over 100 years of necessary replacement of pipes and infrastructure,” County Commissioner Lorraine Cochran-johnson said. “Through the expansion, replacement and enlarging of those pipes, it increases our capacity to grow as a county. And it creates a new trajectory for us all.”

Dekalb leaders largely neglected the county’s water and sewer infrastructure for decades, as decrepit pipes, mismanagement and corrup- tion created a steady stream of headaches and health concerns for residents.

County CEO Michael Thur- mond has made reversing that neglect a priority since taking office in 2017. The quarter-billion-dollar Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) loan that was formally announced Thursday will go a long way toward he l ping pay for improvements.

“These WIFIA loans make it possible for us to correct years, quite frankly, of neglect, where we did not make the proper investments,” Thurmond said. “Because EPA has been such an important and engaged partner with Dekalb County, we are able to make the investments and do it in a way that is not overly burdensome to our ratepayers.”

The federal loan program offers local governments infrastructure funding with lower interest rates than the general market. Dekalb recently approved a 6% water and sewer rate hike for residents, the first such increase in several years. It goes into effect in August.

But officials have said it could’ve been much worse if the county took another approach to financing longawaited improvements.

Radhika Fox, an assistant administrator in the EPA’S Office of Water, said Thursday that the county stands to save $62 million over the life of loan.

The new WIFIA loan is the second Dekalb has secured in less than two years, a feat that Fox called “quite an accomplishment.”

Money from a $265-million loan announced in the fall of 2020 is primarily being focused on county sewer projects.

Dekalb has committed spending more than $2 billion to repair, improve and expand the county’s water and wastewater systems, a sum that includes hundreds of millions of dollars in sewer projects mandated by a renegotiated agreement with state and federal environmental regulators.