Baldwin County has been awarded a $1.1 million grant for improvements to the county’s industrial park site.
According to a press release from the office of U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff, the funds will be used to upgrade the Smith-Sibley Industrial Park’s water infrastructure.
“Sen. Ossoff brought Republicans and Democrats together to deliver $1.1 million for the project through this year’s bipartisan government funding package,” the release stated.
“I remain focused on expanding economic opportunities for Georgia families in every corner of the state,” Ossoff said in the press release.
“Bringing Republicans and Democrats together, I’m delivering new resources to strengthen water infrastructure at the Smith-Sibley Industrial Park and attract further economic investment.”
Baldwin County Manager Carlos Tobar said Tuesday afternoon that, while the announcement referred to the project under the general heading of ‘water infrastructure,’ the proceeds will go for a sewer line.
“We have a 10-inch water line there, and this will get the sewer to that site,” Tobar said. He said the county applied for the grant in March of 2023, and it will require matching funds of approximately $800,000.
The project will accomplish two goals, Tobar explained. It will get sewer service to the industrial site off the 441 West Bypass, and a lift station will be taken offline, with sewage no longer pumped but moved by gravity flow.
“Only the part that extended the sewer to Smith-Sibley was eligible for grant funding, not the replacement of the lift station,” he said. “We’re paying for that with SPLOST funds.”
Tobar could not pinpoint when work on the project would start, recognizing that numerous agencies are involved in the permitting process.
“The environmental process on our part has already started,” he said. “As soon as we found out, we started working on the environmental. Our part will take four months. I have to wait and see what other hoops we have to jump through before I can guess when we will have authorization to proceed. Each agency is different.
“My job,” he added, “will be to make sure we – staff and engineers – at the county have the pedal to the metal on this project.”
Tobar noted that the Smith-Sibley property will not be the only benefactor of the grant.
“The neighbors, everyone who is on that lift station, will be converted to gravity sewer,” he said, explaining that sewer system users there will no longer have to worry about lift station pumps failing, causing backed-up sewage. “And,” he added, “it’ll open up development right there along 441.”
The project will consist of 1,500 linear feet of sewer pipes to the Smith-Sibley site, and both the water and sewer lines will end at the entryway.
Milledgeville-Baldwin County Development Authority Executive Director Jonathan Jackson confirmed the site is raw land at this point.
“Currently there are no physical improvements at the park outside of a turning lane, decel and accel lanes,” he said Wednesday, adding that the county has owned the land for about eight years. “The property was purchased by Baldwin County in 2016…The total size is 1,586 acres, of which 1,500 acres are contiguous and developable.”
Jackson said the property was purchased with SPLOST (special purposed local option sales tax) funding from a single issue-referendum calling for the purchase and development of the site for economic development.
“The SPLOST was approved with 70 percent of participating Baldwin County voters approving,” he recalled.
Jackson acknowledged there has been little progress on development of the site due to numerous issues. Among those, he said, have been differences of opinions that led to disagreements.
“Hopefully,” he observed, “this infusion of funding from Senator Ossoff’s office in the federal budget will allow us to move beyond personalities and into executing what the people voted for us to do.”