The city of Jackson will be receiving $1.3 million in funding from state leaders to help Breathitt County with flood damages.
These funds are the first to be announced from the 2021 Disaster Recovery Program. State leaders announced $123 million in funding was available from this program in April to help communities affected by serve weather in 2021.
Breathitt County was impacted by flooding in both 2021 and 2022. Additional funding from the Disaster Recovery Program will be allocated for counties impacted by the devasting flooding in 2022.
One of the big projects the city of Jackson will use the funding for is the Federal Place Apartments Rehabilitation.
Mayor of Jackson, Laura Thomas, said the apartment served as a place for senior citizens as well as disabled people to live.
“During the flood of 2022, water came into the basement and of course this is unprecedented historical flooding. Two of the units that were on that basement level were destroyed and then the elevator was destroyed,” said Thomas. “So, you have mainly elder or disabled people living in the building and so on the third floor. You have maybe thirty stairs going up and without the elevator I mean that is the only way somebody can get up and down to their apartment.”
Mitigation measures will be made to move the elevator operating mechanism to the rooftop to prevent damage in any future serve weather events.
The funds will also go towards improving the county courthouse and purchasing new playground equipment.
“We will be matching it with probably over $50,000 because when we applied for the project was like two years ago and prices have gone up,” Thomas said. “We will be replacing our two playgrounds which were original to the park. They are over 20 years old and they need replaced and we are excited that we were able to get the Land and Water Conservation Funds to help replace our playgrounds.”
The playground improvement project will head to the National Park Service to receive final approval at the federal level.