Illinois EPA Announces $5.9 Million Loan to the City of Decatur

SPRINGFIELD - Illinois EPA Director John J. Kim today announced a $5,911,143 loan to the City of Decatur (Macon County). The low-interest loan is provided by Illinois EPA's State Revolving Fund, which provides funding for wastewater, stormwater and drinking water projects. In addition, the City of Decatur qualifies to have $886,671.50 of the loan amount forgiven by the State.

"The City of Decatur will use this funding to repair infrastructure that is considered to be critical for the community," said Director Kim. "This project will utilize a special repair method designed to reduce the amount of ground disturbance needed to repair the sewers."

The City of Decatur will use the loan funds to repair critical sewers and refurbish existing manholes. Approximately 12,000 feet of sewer pipe will be repaired using a Cured-In-Place Pipe (CIPP) method, which is a trenchless (no-dig) restoration process for damaged pipelines. Prior to repair, the sewers will be televised to be cleaned and assess their condition.

"The City of Decatur is proud of this partnership with IEPA, which maximizes the benefit to our ratepayers. The City has chosen to proactively invest in our infrastructure to reduce long term maintenance costs and minimize the disruptive impacts of reactionary fixes necessary to provide services to our residents and businesses. This program will inevitably provide better quality of life for our residents through reduced flooding and sewer backups throughout our service area," stated Decatur City Manager, Scot Wrighton.

The City receives additional benefit from the State Revolving Fund as the subsidized loan results in additional savings over the life of the loan. The project is expected to be completed in May of 2020.

In FY2019, Illinois EPA's State Revolving Fund loan programs provided low interest loans totaling nearly $684 million. So far, more than $59 million has been forgiven by Illinois EPA to qualifying loan applicants.

To learn more about Illinois EPA's State Revolving Fund, visit https://www2.illinois.gov/epa/topics/grants-loans/state-revolving-fund/Pages/default.aspx.