Good news and fresh water are coming to the Saltwell community in the near future. A grant procurement, a water source and a means of getting the water to its new customers have all fallen into place. Talks between the Marengo County Commission, the city of Demopolis and Myrtlewood made all the arrangements possible to begin work on the project.

Marengo County Commission Chairman Max Joiner said they would all like to see the project take off very soon.

“We hope to get to work on this as soon as possible,” Joiner said. “We have a lot of the pieces in place and now we just want to get started.”

Joiner said the commission was able to secure a $250,000 ADECCA grant to help with the project. He said after talks with the two cities were complete everything was in place.

“We were able to procure grant money for this project,” Joiner said. “Once the agreement was set to purchase water last week were were on go to get the project going.”

Joiner said the news of the project was huge to the people who have gone without fresh water for so long.

“This is great for the people in the Saltwell area,” Joiner said. “For years the water there had been bad.

This gives them the opportunity to have good, fresh water. We are just happy for those people and glad to see this project near fruition.”

Joiner said hopefully, Saltwell would not be the end of the project. Once work has been completed n this area they hope to move to another community in need.

“When we finish this project we hope to move in to Jefferson,” Joiner said. “This will be a much bigger project, but it will be worth it in the end.”

Joiner said Myrtlewood Mayor Kevin McKinney had been a great help to the project. McKinney’s town will be the center of operation to get water to the people of Saltwell.

“We will provide maintenance and support for them,” McKinney said. “Basically, what we are doing is purchasing water form Demopolis. ”

McKinney said when the water comes through their system they will also make sure the quality stays high and good service is provided.

“Once we get that done we will maintain the water,” McKinney said. “We will take care of the billing, read the meters and that sort of thing.”

The water will have already been treated coming from the Demopolis system. McKinney said with that done, the job would be even easier to add the new customers to the list.

“I think there are about 34 people down there that will get service,” said McKinney. “We will just add them to the 1,000 we already have.”