Saint Landry parish now has more than 4 million dollars to fix water pipelines across the parish. Opelousas alone received 2 million dollars to repair pipelines and sewage lines throughout the city.
Opelousas Mayor Julius Alsandor tells me the pipeline would push contaminated water into the city. But these federal dollars will now ignite change for the sewage plant.
"It allows our system to run efficiently and being able to filter out all of the solids but make the improvements so our digesters in our clarify and our bell press all our working components at our sewer plant is improved."
The federal government approved the funding Thursday and work could start as soon as this year.
"But I'm hoping within the next 9-12 months that we can have some of this work applied at our sewer plant."
The city of Opelousas has seen this problem for quite some time. State Representative Dustin Miller explained what the investment means for the city.
"This in my eyes is one of the biggest and most important things that we have done as a district and a state in a long time. We are investing in our sewer and water. Once we get these water plants up to the 21 century the next step is the water lines across all these districts."
Miller adds repairing pipelines is a start, once this is underway, repairing other infrastructure throughout the parish can begin.
