BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
A major influx of revenue for a Starke water project will cause an unavoidable delay in progress.
Justin deMello explained the tradeoff to city commissioners, saying they are reevaluating plans to ensure they meet the intent of the grant.
DeMello, a vice president and engineer with Woodward and Curran, and his team work with the city on water and wastewater improvements and help identify funding sources for ongoing and future work.
DeMello discussed how they worked with the city to harden the city against Hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024 as well as document the impacts on the city such as power outages, downed trees and sewer overflows. This helped the city obtain a major $23 million award for the drinking water system.
“We did a great job, I think, and your city staff did a great job during the event, immediately following the event, making sure folks had power restored and other things, but then in the days and months after the event, to position themselves for these grant opportunities that subsequently came out of it,” deMello said.
He congratulated the city, explaining while the funding is technically a loan, it comes with 100% principal forgiveness, making $23 million available for plans important to the city’s growth. That includes upgrades to the city’s water plants and a new elevated storage tank that will also help extend water down State Road 16 to the bypass.
Much of the work in the city’s plan has moved through the design process and construction was getting close. The funding will, however, delay progress, deMello reported.
“Because of this, what I call massive windfall for the city, we are going to have to pause the construction process that we’re currently on, make sure that all the planning documents that we’ve developed, as well as the designs, meet the intent of the grant that you guys have secured in order to move forward with the grant money,” he said. “So, while a grant is incredible and it’s worth stopping, applauding and cheering for that, I’ll remind us that it is going to delay some of the progress on that work, because we need to make sure that it checks all the boxes.”
Not everything will be covered by the grant but that creates an opportunity to identify additional upgrades the grant will cover.
“Our project that we were in process of design for your water system upgrades I think amounted to somewhere around $16 million to $18 million. Most of that project is going to qualify for this grant. Some of it is not. Some of it, specifically the water meter replacement. We’re planning to replace your water meters. Unfortunately, this grant, because it’s related to storms and vulnerability and impacts to future events, they’re not going to see that as an eligible expense,” deMello said. “So, we still have some pieces of what we designed that will still need to be funded elsewhere, but that’s going to leave a pretty substantial amount of additional grant funding that we can use for other priorities that weren’t identified in those previous designs or planning documents.”
For that, deMello said he was excited.
The water project to the bypass had been designed, and construction bidding was expected to take place in early 2026. The design for the wastewater extension is in progress and should be wrapped up by this summer, deMello said, with construction bids in the fall. Revisiting the water project design will likely push construction bids to the fall for that project as well.
“So, I’m looking at about a six-month delay in exchange for $23 million,” deMello said.
“This is all working towards the same goal, the same end game. So, we got a six-month pause due to a $23 million increase. That’s not bad news,” Mayor Andy Redding said.
