Watershed

Dear Editor, The rains came and the difference was amazing. The Herrington Lake Conservation League would like to thank Danville Heart of Kentucky, Janie Pass, the 80 volunteers of the United Way, and the Herrington Lake Yacht Club for their efforts to clean the banks of Herrington Lake during the United Way's Day of Caring. With all of the rain we have had since Wednesday, Herrington Lake has come up more than 10 feet. The northern portions of the watershed received over five inches of rain.

LIBERTY - Casey County Fiscal Court was awarded a PRIDE Community Grant for $50,000 recently in Somerset. The one-year grant will be used to clean up illegal dumps at White Oak Hill, Minors Branch, Martins Creek, Coy Mason Hill, Strong Branch, Butchertown Road and Bastin Creek. The grant also will pay for disposal of trash collected during the county's 2006 PRIDE Spring Cleanup. In addition, Casey is one of several counties that will benefit from grants awarded to monitor water quality in the Green and Cumberland Rivers.

Winchester Municipal Utilities is entering the home stretch on the Lower Howards Creek Wastewater Treatment plant. A public meeting for the final plan presentation for the plant is set for 6 p.m. Thursday at the Clark County Extension Office in the industrial park. The meeting will provide a summation of the plan and reveal collected sampling date, goals and objectives for the watershed and the management practices to protect and restore the watershed. The public will have the chance at this meeting to speak to team members and ask questions about the project.

The privilege fee policy the Winchester Municipal Utilities spent so long developing has seen it's first application. The WMU Commission approved a preliminary application for a privilege fee agreement, or PFA, from Westside Improvements LLC during the board's regular meeting Thursday night. The PFA will apply to about 556.5 acres in the Strodes Creek, Basin B watershed. The proposal consists of about 3,097 feet of 18-inch and 15-inch pipe, and the submittal has 18 potential participating owners.

Dear Editor: Many area residents may not be aware of crossing the path of Clark's Run, the local creek, when driving through Boyle County. But, over the past 20-plus years, the waterway has been the focus of various groups interested in improving the creek and making it a more appreciated asset for the county. This 12-mile-long waterway meanders in a northeasterly direction from Alum Springs to Herrington Lake, draining most of the eastern half of the county. The Kentucky Division of Water has studied Clark's Run for several years as part of its routine water quality sampling effort.

Lincoln County's Hanging Fork Creek is being polluted with sewage, according to a University of Kentucky water-quality study, and last Wednesday the Board of Health finally got to hear the details. At the quarterly Health Board meeting, members of the Dix River Watershed Council, comprised of representatives from UK, an environmental consulting firm and local landowners, presented their report on the condition of the Hanging Fork. None of the news was good. Twenty-four miles of the creek, which runs through the heart of the county, are unsafe for swimming, wading or fishing because of high levels of E. coli bacteria, according to the report by the UK Water Resource Research Institute.

Officials in Winchester and Clark County have submitted a list of 10 community projects with more than $172 million of funding requests in hopes of nabbing federal money coming to Kentucky under the Washington economic stimulus package. The list encompasses major sewer and water upgrades along with industrial recruitment initiatives, transportation enhancements and the College Park pool. Officials have touted many of the projects as part of a comprehensive strategy to ease the local impact of international economic decline.

Local officials are preparing a list of the community's 10 most important infrastructure projects in hopes of obtaining federal economic stimulus money that the U.S. Congress may appropriate to Kentucky. At the Winchester Municipal Utility Commission's meeting Thursday, WMU General Manger Vernon Azevedo and Mayor Ed Burtner reported that local officials have attended two recent meetings with representatives from state and federal offices to determine how stimulus money may be distributed and what projects will qualify.

Jessamine County recently became the first community in the state to receive an Emergency Watershed Protection Program grant to help clean up debris clogging many local streams. Jessamine Solid Waste Manager/Storm Water Coordinator Mike Cassidy said it is a problem that has been compounded by the fallen limbs from last week's ice storm. "Some of the debris in the streams was already there, but a lot of it was caused by the ice storm. We were already getting ready to do some of the work, so this is a good time to really clean a lot of debris away from bridges and areas where it causes flooding," Cassidy said.

The Winchester Municipal Utilities Commission is considering options to finance more than $8.7 million in upcoming expenses this year and will need to finalize a decision by early next month to meet a summer deadline. According to a presentation Thursday, the utility is facing $6.4 million in costs as it ramps up plans for a new water treatment plant in the Lower Howards Creek watershed. Another $2 million in principal and interest payments are due on a $5 million bond anticipation note, which is scheduled to mature in June.