MORGANTOWN — Of the $20.6 million in American Rescue Plan Act money received by Monongalia County, more than $17 million, or approximately 85%, was spent on water, sewer and broadband projects.
County Commission President Sean Sikora detailed the county’s ARPA spending earlier this week during the body’s final meeting of 2024.
“Out of that $20.7 million, we were able to leverage $46,854,000 worth of projects by bringing our dollars to the table and bringing in people who wanted to do projects with us,” he said.
All told, the county distributed $8,825,247.21 in COVID relief funds to assist with 19 water and sewer projects, including nine with the Clay-Battelle Public Service District and four with the Morgantown Utility Board (Chaplin Hill water and sewer extensions, Upper Popenoe Run sanitary and stormwater improvements, Morgantown Industrial Park sanitary sewer upgrades).
The county also provided ARPA funds for two Little Creek PSD projects as well as water/sewer projects taken on by the Ministers Run Water Association, West Virginia Botanic Garden, the city of Westover and the town of Star City.
As for broadband, $8,654,045.79 was used to create the county’s strategic broadband plan and finance five deployment projects, including four with Comcast and one with Frontier.
“When that $20 million first came through there wasn’t a lot of direction as to how to spend it, so we waited until we got direction,” Sikora said. “We stuck with the water, sewer and broadband the bill was originally intended for.”
While water, sewer and broadband were the original focus of the $360 billion allocated directly to states, counties and municipalities nationwide, those guidelines were eventually loosened, allowing recipients to utilize up to $10 million for revenue replacement, meaning it could be used for essentially any purpose.
The county used $3,104,600 for electrical upgrades to the Morgantown Industrial Park in support of the Mountaintop Beverage project and provided $30,000 to the Mon River Trails Conservancy.
“Two of those projects we mentioned, the MUB project in the industrial park and the Mon Power project in the industrial park, both of those are revenue generating projects. The revenue comes back, so we get revenue up to the amount we put into the project,” Sikora said “So, that’s potentially $6.2 million coming back.”
The county’s ARPA dollars generated about $1.4 million in interest. The commission is considering earmarking at least some of that money to assist with future broadband expansion projects.
“If you take all of that and look at the infrastructure we’ve invested in, it’s almost impossible to calculate the induced or indirect benefit our county will receive from those dollars,” Sikora said. “Just overall, looking at the overall project number, $46 million from a $20 million investment – I think we did a good job.”
The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act was signed by President Joe Biden on March 11, 2021.Dec. 31, 2024 marked the deadline by which all directly allocated funds must be obligated.
