The City of Beggs received approval for $1,000,000 in funding Tuesday from the Oklahoma Water Resources Board (OWRB) to improve the City’s infrastructure. Improvements to the dam will be financed by the Oklahoma American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grant program along with a $100,000 Rural Infrastructure Grant (RIG) from Oklahoma Rural Water Association and the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality.

The City’s municipal water supply is served by New Beggs Lake and sells water to Okmulgee Rural Water District No. 2. An extreme rainfall event in May 2022 severely eroded the dam’s downstream slope. These funds will be used to rebuild the downstream slope to address four identified areas of damage, and for remediation of the emergency spillway and receiving stream channel.

Joe Freeman, chief of the OWRB’s Financial As- sistance Division, calculated that the City’s customers will save an estimated $1,529,300 compared to traditional financing.

The ARPA grant program is administered by the OWRB with funding from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and appropriated through Senate Bill 13 and Senate Bill 429 for the Water and Wastewater American Rescue Plan Act grants program. This OWRB program has been structured to provide communities and other eligible entities financial resources necessary to address water and wastewater infrastructure needs within their systems. Since 1983 the Water Resources Board has approved over $6.4 billion in loans and grants for water and wastewater infrastructure improvements throughout Oklahoma.

“We are grateful to State Senator Roger Thompson and State Representative Scott Fetgatter for their continued support of our financial assistance programs,” said Julie Cunningham, Executive Director of the OWRB.