Board continues effort to get funds to assist with frozen water lines

Frozen water lines and let-runs are a continuing issue across the whole Upper Peninsula.

The Marquette County Board heard an update on the Senate Transportation Committee Meeting in Lansing dealing with that issue at its meeting Tuesday night.

A congregation from Marquette County spoke to state senators March 24 to discuss the freezing water pipe issues and get guidance for financial assistance, since Governor Rick Snyder denied the county’s state of emergency request last month.

“We’re hoping that by us going down there and let the know what happened with what the issues are—and a lot of the senators did tour some of the sites that were having problems so they know there’s an issue, so we’re hoping with that we can get some kind of financial assistance,” Marquette County Emergency Management Coordinator Teresa Schwalbach said.

“We were there not only for Marquette County, but also to let them know that there’s issues in other counties of the U.P.”

Schwalbach said right now, there is over $5 million in damages across the U.P., including over $1 million in Marquette County.

The board is trying to look for ways to help with the damages, but there are no funds available.

“If they don’t get the financial assistance through either the state or the federal government to recoup what they’ve spent thus far, they have no monies to move forward with and it’s going to get to a point where they’re not going to have any monies to fix anything in their water system,” Marquette County Board vice chairwoman Debbie Pellow said.

The board is planning on sending another letter to Governor Snyder detailing more water pipe issues, especially since it is expected the problems will get worse before they are resolved.