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Transfer of $759K for Agingan project OK’d
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Posted on Aug 11 2005
Gov. Juan N. Babauta has approved the reprogramming of $759,000 from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Water Infrastructure Grant Fund to the EPA Wastewater Infrastructure Grant Fund.
The reprogramming was made at the request of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. and with the concurrence by Department of Environmental Quality.
Under the existing guidance for the Drinking Water Infrastructure Program, the governor is allowed to transfer 33 percent of the total allocation of program funds from the drinking water program to the wastewater program. The funds being reprogrammed is a portion of the total allocation of water infrastructure funds from fiscal year 1997 thru 2005.
CUC has also received concurrence from the Water Task Force on this proposal. The funding comes from monies the U.S. Congress authorized under the 1996 amendments to the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.
The reprogrammed funds will provide additional needed funds to the existing EPA grant to CUC for construction of an outfall for the Agingan Wastewater Treatment Plan. This project is being primarily funded through EPA wastewater construction grant funds. The design of the outfall has been completed and a contractor selected. With the addition of these funds, construction work can proceed.
The Agingan Wastewater Treatment Plan has been under an EPA Administrative Order since 1999 because the effluent discharged from the Agingan outfall is not in compliance with the effluent limits of its EPA-issued permit. CUC has chosen to construct an outfall which will discharge treated effluent in deeper water off Agingan Point, as one means of coming into compliance. The new outfall will lessen the impact of the discharge to the marine environment and to public health. This outfall project has been the top-ranked project on CNMI’s wastewater project priority list for EPA funding since 2001.
The public is invited to provide written comments by Aug. 15, 2005 to the DEQ office located at the Gualo Rai Center Building, Gualo Rai, Saipan. All written comments received will be made part of the public record and will be considered.
Contact the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. Grants Office at 664-6128 with any questions. (PR)
