The City of Jasper is pleased to announce that the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority (GEFA) has awarded the City $15 million dollars through GEFA's Hurricane Helene Resiliency Funding Program. This program was designed to help communities build redundancy in their utility systems after the destruction of Hurricane Helene in September 2024 and will allow the City to bring critically needed water and stability to our drinking water system and our customers through the construction of a new major water transmission main to a groundwater supply project that the Ellijay-Gilmer County Water and Sewer Authority (EGCWSA) is currently developing. The terms of the funding will be a $15 million dollar loan with 50% of this amount given as principal forgiveness or grant funding ($7.5 million grant). The loan will be for a term of 20 years at 0% interest.

This project significantly reduces the vulnerability of the City's existing surface water and groundwater sources, the RAW water intake structure, the RAW water transmission main to the treatment plant, the aging treatment plant and provides an avenue by which the system can receive additional water. "The City withdraws and treats approximately 75% of the drinking water needed each day. An issue at any one of these critical points could be catastrophic for our community as we do not currently have the ability to purchase enough finished water to replace what we produce ourselves," said the Mayor. "Redundancy in the water system allows the City to then concentrate on identifying and fixing infrastructure issues throughout the system and provides an avenue for the system to receive additional water."

Mayor Kirk D. Raffield stated that "The City has been working on a solution to the water supply issue in our community for over 4 years. When the Georgia Environmental Protection Division advised us that the best option to solve the water supply issue is to build a line to where the water is in Gilmer County, we heeded that advice and have sought funding from every source possible for the last 4 years." He added that the GEFA Hurricane Helene Resiliency program is not the City's first-time requesting money for a major water transmission main project. "This project was included in the original 2023 request of $24 million dollar to GEFA; however, the project was not funded due to the issuance of only $8 million dollars from GEFA at the time. Even though we had to temporarily pause this project, Council and Staff have never given up on finding the financial resources to make this project a reality. While there are many details to be worked through, this is a major win for our community and a major step forward in securing the water capacity that the community needs," he added.

The City of Jasper will start the initial environmental work required with State and Federally funded projects and the preliminary design work while EGCWSA continues to make progress on their groundwater source development.

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