JEFFERSON COUNTY, Ohio — The Ohio Mid-Eastern Governments Association hosted a meeting in Steubenville on Tuesday to discuss funding for water, sewer, and various infrastructure projects that are in the works for the area.
OMEGA takes pre-applications yearly for the Appalachian Regional Commission with the state governor’s office of Appalachia funds for workforce development and to tackle projects in the area. Some of those ideas and projects we’re discussed during a conversation with local leaders about the investments.
“Some pretty good projects,” ARC Program Manager Alan Knapp said. “There’s some water and sewer projects, one project for the state GOA has to do with Dovers expansion up there. They have 450 new jobs coming in and we’re going to recommend some funding for some road repairs for that business.”
OMEGA covers a large portion of Eastern Ohio to explore options that will be economically positive for the area and what plans can realistically be implemented.
“OMEGA is a 10-county district,” Knapp said. “So, we go all the way from Zanesville to Steubenville up to Salem, and we have a couple projects in Jefferson County we took a look at. So, all the 10 counties and we do try to spread the money around if we can.”
The meeting featured a look at nine federal-based projects and six that would be handled by the state totaling $4.2 million.
“These grants would be awarded probably next year in 2025 so what we’ll do is we’ll start working with the applicants in a couple months to start putting together the full applications for these projects.”