Missoula Board of County Commissioners to Pilot Loan Program for Water, Sewer Connections

Last week the Board of County Commissioners OK’d the use of $15,000 to assist low and moderate-income households with water and sewer connection repairs.

"We have this revolving loan fund that the county has a say over that's supposed to help low and moderate income folks and we can set this up to do that," County Commissioner Jean Curtiss said. "We've only had a couple of people use it. But we have other sewer and water districts in the county that we're responsible for that we thought, well we should just spread this out so folks in that situation can use it too."

Curtiss said extending the loan program just made sense, especially when issues like this need to be addressed immediately.

"This is for county sewer and water districts. We have the one in Lolo, we have several water districts throughout the county. We have one out in Clinton in a small trailer park out there that has a sewer and water system," Curtiss said. "This is mostly if somebody has a catastrophic repair that they need to do."

Curtiss said the Community Development Block Grant offers a one-percent simple interest deferred payment loan to eligible property owners to all county-managed and operated districts.