Ayres is celebrating along with our client, the Village of Prentice, Wisconsin, as news has come in that applications we wrote for the Village have netted the community $6,422,000 in U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grants and Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) and $2,337,000 in USDA loans to fund reconstruction of the Village’s aging wastewater treatment plant.

The approximately $8.8 million in funding will cover 100% of the cost of the project. Before assisting with the funding applications, Ayres and subconsultant Applied Technologies Inc. (ATI) provided the Village a study of the community’s existing plant and laid out various design alternatives for upgrading or replacing the facility, along with cost analyses. The Village opted for the alternative that entails constructing a completely new treatment plant and equipment building.

In addition to replacing the plant with one matching the capacity of the old plant, the project involves replacing the aged control/equipment/office building with state-of-the art, energy-efficient electronic controls and mechanical and electrical equipment. The project also will replace the main lift station with state-of-the-art controls and pumps.
This is the biggest chunk of funding Ayres has ever won for a client for a single project and brings our total of funding secured for clients to around $237 million. The grant money was secured through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development grant program and the Wisconsin Department of Administration’s CDBG Public Facilities grant program. The loan was secured through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Loan Program.

Ayres has acted as the Village of Prentice’s designated engineer for decades and has completed dozens of projects for the north-central Wisconsin community.

The design work is already complete, with ATI handling most of the plant design and Ayres handling the site civil design work. Ayres staff will be the resident project representative with assistance from ATI for the plant-related submittals and reviews. Construction is expected to begin in spring and last approximately two years.