The town of Nashville has received all the funding it asked for to carry out four water infrastructure improvement projects.

On Dec. 1, the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs announced a $592,000 grant award to Nashville through the Community Development Block Grant Program.

Coupled with a $1.2 million low-interest loan the town secured earlier this year from USDA Rural Development, the town has enough money to cover the estimated $1.8 million cost of the projects without raising water rates, Town Manager/Economic Development Director Scott Rudd said.

In fact, he said the town would like to work toward lowering customers’ water bills eventually.

With the grant and loan money, a water main will be extended on Freeman Ridge Road to provide another source of water for town customers.

About one-third of the meters throughout the Nashville Utilities system will be replaced to improve billing accuracy and reduce labor costs.

An unneeded water tank and booster station on the hill at Kirts’ Garage will be demolished.

Also, the booster station in Schooner Valley will be replaced to distribute water to town from East Monroe Water Co. when needed.

After the grant letter is signed, the town has 18 months to complete the projects, Rudd said. Several steps have to take place before the town would be in a position to actually start work on any of them.

Rudd and Town Utility Coordinator Sean Cassiday said they’d like to see the meter replacement project done first, if possible.

The new meters will be able to be read by radio, remotely, in a large batch, instead of by climbing into individual pits that might be filled with water, Rudd said.

“Some of our guys walk 10 miles a day, three to five days a month reading these meters,” he said.

Especially in winter, eliminating all the physical labor that goes into just reading a meter will be a huge boost to morale among the water staff. It will also save on labor costs, he said.

If a customer suspects a leak, that can also be determined more easily with the new meters, Rudd said.

The other three projects were recommended by engineering firm BLN last year, out of a list that was initially much longer and more expensive.

The Freeman Ridge water main extension is an important project to improve the water supply for firefighting, providing another source of water flow in times of high need, Rudd said.

Having another line feeding town may also help reduce the number of people affected during line breaks, when a boil order is needed, Rudd said.

A fifth priority project, which is not funded yet, is installing pressure-reducing valves at key points in the Nashville Utilities water system. When it studied the system last fall, BLN found very few working valves, which adjust the pressure of water at different elevations and can help prevent line breaks.

Rudd said even though homes are required to have pressure-reducing valves, some don’t have them, or the pressure is so great that the valves aren’t able to bring it down to a normal level.

Nashville Town Council President “Buzz” King encouraged Rudd and Cassiday to find money to pay for that project as well. BLN did not give a cost estimate for it in the preliminary engineering report.

Earlier this fall, the town contracted with an accounting firm to take a hard look at how it’s allocating money and form a plan to save for long-term priority projects.

Improving roads and sidewalks were some of the ones Rudd mentioned, as well as finding ways to eventually lower the cost of water service.

“Consultants will say you should never reduce your water rates, but they’ve obviously never lived in a place where they have to pay rates that are so high,” Rudd said.

The minimum bill for water is $33.10 for in-town and $40.35 for out-of-town users of 2,000 gallons, not including any sewer charges which are billed with water, billing clerk Sharon Crabtree said.

A spring 2014 study by financial planner Umbaugh and Associates of 14 Indiana communities of like size showed Nashville’s water rates to be the fourth-highest among those communities — and that was before a 26-percent rate increase took effect that May.

Rudd believes that “under the right conditions” — like careful financial planning and boosts in funding such as the OCRA grant, which allow the town to reduce its labor costs — water rates could be “sustained or reduced in the near future, or both.”

“I think we’re going to be seeing some vast improvements to our utilities and to the town in general,” Rudd said.