The City of Fort Wayne announced it will invest over $130 million in neighborhood infrastructure projects.
At a Tuesday morning press conference, City Utilities officials said the plan is to improve aging water mains, fix flooding issues in low-lying neighborhoods and continue an ongoing project to, through a federal consent decree, protect the rivers by bringing environmental improvements and improving sewage overflow.
Some of the work will connect additional areas to the Three Rivers Protection and Overflow Reduction Tunnel, also part of the federal consent decree to protect Fort Wayne’s rivers.
Fort Wayne City Utilities Director Kumar Menon said this neighborhood infrastructure investment went back to 2007 and is a continuation of late Mayor Tom Henry’s vision for Fort Wayne.
“One of my first conversations with Mayor Henry, back in 2007, was you cannot build a thriving city on suspect infrastructure, and that was his push from then on,” Manon said.
Utilities officials said some neighborhoods in Fort Wayne, like Rolling Hills, were built before the city annexed them. As a result, the water infrastructure in them, like the water mains and pipes, are not under the same standard as the city calls for. Therefore, Fort Wayne City Utilities plans to replace those systems with new ones that follow Fort Wayne’s standard.
The work is planned for the Rolling Hills, Monarch Park, Congress McKinnie and Field Stone Place neighborhoods.
Officials said they are still in the design phase of the projects and that they expect construction to begin in the fall.