Infrastructure Improvement Projects in McGrath
The City of McGrath is always looking to the future and striving to improve public services. Because the revenue for our town is very limited, public and private grants are sought to fund major projects.
The Alaska Energy Authority funded a recently completed, energy audit that lead to an extensive grant project installing energy saving LED street lights, and LED light at the landfill burn-box, LED lights for the McGrath School, and both LED lights and an energy saving hot water heater for the Cap’n Snow Center.
A USDA Rural Development grant through the State of Alaska, managed by the Village Safe Water Program, upgraded the public drinking water treatment plant. This project built a completely new, state-of-the-art, water treatment system involving new types of computerized and mechanized equipment, new pumps, piping and structures to produce clean drinking water from the Kuskokwim River.
The City has secured an Infrastructure Protection Grant through the State of Alaska's Village Safe Water that will purchase materials for new water services for every property that is connected to the public drinking water system.
Village Safe Water will be upgrading the public sewer system beginning in the fall of 2021. Improvements to the Water Distribution System, aimed at preventing leaks in the water main, are scheduled for 2022.
A new initiative from the City has begun to improve the trail system in and around McGrath and the traditional trails to the surrounding communities of Nikolai and Takotna. The National Parks Service Alaska Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program helped the McGrath Trail Committee identify and prioritize thirteen different trails. Information about these trails was published in a McGrath Community Trails Plan that is necessary to seek grant funding and guide trail improvements.
The City was successful securing Federal and State funding to continue building emergency erosion control structures along the Kuskokwim through the Emergency Watershed Protection Program. Dangerous erosion along the riverbank will be addressed by the construction of four large rock barb structures that will slow and redirect the current away from the bank. The rock barbs will be located approximately every 500 feet starting below the Cap’n Snow Center down to B Street. A large, rock, revetment extension will also be constructed at the boat launch / log haul-out. While these features will be lost the revetment extension will stop the erosion and prevent the river from carving a channel further into this section of McGrath.
These projects take years to plan and even longer to find funding.
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