HATTIESBURG, Miss. (WHLT) – Leaders with the City of Hattiesburg unveiled their largest water and sewer project to date.

Hattiesburg Mayor Toby Barker and Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann (R-Miss.) announced the major infrastructure upgrade to the water and sewer lines along Martin Luther King and Tuscan Avenue on Tuesday, October 17.

The $4 million project will include replacing water and sewer lines to provide more water pressure and lessen the occurrence of brown water.

This is the Hub City’s first project to be funded by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and Mississippi’s Municipal and County Infrastructure Program.

“Anytime your city is 140 years old, you’re going to have infrastructure that needs to be replaced. And in our first term, we did over 50 town hall meetings and heard from residents and in most neighborhoods the refrain for water and sewer work, it comes about. And so, in this particular case, we knew that ARPA dollars were available. We knew that then we could get a state match because of the work of Lt. Governor Hosemann, our delegation. And so to have a $4 million project happen was almost all of it, construction-wise, was being paid for by the state and federal governments is a big deal for us,” said Barker.

“We got $1.8 billion in the state. When we got that, I just was very concerned that we do not turn around two or three years later, and not be able to find anything we’d done with it. So, we allocated $450 million dollars to match cities if they would put it in water and sewer. And of course, Hattiesburg, under Toby’s leadership and the city council, has great leadership here. So, they jumped on it right away. And there will be $20 million that will go into water and sewer and all of these neighborhoods and be here for generations,” said Hosemann.

The project is expected to be completed in 2025.