BATON ROUGE - The Water Sector Program has allocated $750 million in accordance with the American Rescue Plan Act to improve some of the worst water and sewer systems in the state. 

The program has completed round two, allocating nearly $300 million across the state. 

”When we first applied the money, we of course had it split between water and sewer, 70% water, 30% sewer, and then within those categories we split them nearly evenly among small size systems, medium-sized systems and large-size systems." Sen. Mike Reese, co-chair of the Water Sector Commission, said.

Local grants include:
Pointe Coupee water - $11,338,200
Livingston water - $2,535,625
Tangipahoa sewer - $17,896,463
Ascension sewer - $5,000,000 
East Baton Rouge sewer - $5,000,000
Assumption sewer - $2,622,520
West Baton Rouge sewer - $2,756,966

"There were so many around the state that were just at an absolute implosion point. I think they were in every region, and that was what was most eye-opening to me is that it was a problem that was unique to one rural region of Louisiana. It existed in areas of the suburbs of Baton Rouge, for example," Reese said.

After multiple reports from WBRZ on the poor water quality in the town of Killian, we asked Reese if Killian had received any funding.

"There's not a corner of our state that's not fighting some battle to rehab their infrastructure for water and sewer,” Reese said.

Killian is currently in receivership.

"We have a system that if you are taken into receivership, that receiver has the ability to come to the water sector commission and seek some emergency dollars to put in the repair of the system to try and stand it back up," Reese said.

The program has until February 2026 to spend the money.