Maysville officials detail $25.6 million CSO grant, plan water-line, vow better resident alerts

Utility staff reported a $25.6 million line-item grant from the Kentucky General Assembly for Maysville’s combined sewer overflow project and outlined plans to use the funding to avoid borrowing and to accelerate repairs to aging water lines.

The grant “will keep us from having to raise sewer rates for the foreseeable future because we don't have to pay this money back,” the utility manager said. He described the combined sewer overflow (CSO) program as a multi‑phase, consent-decree driven series of upgrades that includes work at six sewer pumping stations and upgrades at the wastewater treatment plant.

That funding, officials said, also gives the city flexibility to shift available cash or to take on new bonding to begin replacing worn distribution mains that have produced repeated breaks. The utility manager said the city had previously repaid KIA loans at roughly $900,000 a year and would have…