City of Aransas Pass Receives 10.5 million Dollar CDBG-DR Grant

Never do people need the federal government more than after a major disaster. Aransas Pass knows these challenges all too well. The City has done its best to rebuild and become more resilient to protect itself against storms. Still, Aransas Pass residents, as well as people throughout the country, need funds. The City received a 10.5-million-dollar grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Community Development Block Grant - Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) to help repair storm pipes and city streets.



"The projects we are looking at, the majority are storm water because, as you know, during Hurricane Harvey our infrastructure took a hit. A lot of debris got washed into our storm pipes and caused damage. A lot of them blew out; some just had punctured holes to the pipes. Most of that money is going to that. We do have two sewer projects that are associated with this group, and it is the same thing, the grounds shifted with the water infiltration through them and caused the pipe joints to break apart. So there will be two of them that will be with sewer, and the other 13 will be storm related," said Public Works Director Fernando Quintanilla.




The funding will allow the City to move forward on 15 much needed projects. The biggest and first on the list is addressing McCampbell Street.




"It is where the majority of our city drains. It follows the 13th Street ditch, and it flows up to that point till it goes underground. So that intersection has water coming from South McCampbell going north to Rife, Houston, and all the northside of town that goes through that open ditch and meet up on that intersection. The pipe at that area, after Harvey, completely got blown out. So there was a huge sinkhole there, and that project is our priority right now," said Quintanilla.






The CDBG Program provides annual grants to states, cities, and counties to develop communities. With most federal funding it takes time, and the city must meet certain requirements before receiving grant money.




"This one, unfortunately, had to go through archaeological research, through historical, and environmental. The environmental is what took the longest, and we just received a clearance on the environmental in late January from the GLO, and that gave us the green light to go ahead and proceed with these projects. We have McCampbell out for bids. We opened bids yesterday," said Quintanilla.


With no cost to the City, they will be able to make much needed road repairs.


"I hear it too, 'why is the street not fixed? Why is this issue still there?' Streets, we can do some patch work on it, but in order to do a full reconstruction of a street, we have to consider the infrastructure underneath. It is pointless to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on a street when the infrastructure is not up to par. It is going to continue failing until the infrastructure gets fixed. So we are targeting the infrastructure with these grants, and luckily, as a result, these roads get included with those. When the infrastructure gets fixed, the roads will get fixed as well," said Quintanilla.


These grants will also help replace many of the City's drainage pipes.


" A lot of these old pipes are tin horn, and in this area, it is not very conducive because of the sand and salt water. It starts eating up the metal, and they have been there for a long time, and all these years the pipes have started to corrode and wash out and deteriorate. When Harvey came along, and all the debris got washed through the system, it caused a lot of these pipes to burst, and it just saturated the issues we had, and it is to the point we had massive problems. Fortunately, we were able to get these grant funds, and we can start doing these repairs," said Quintanilla.




The majority of the projects are expected to be completed by the end of 2021. The city is hoping to complete all 15 projects by March of 2022.