TWO CAPE COUNTY TOWNS WILL GET JOINT WATER SYSTEM

WHITEWATER -- At the town's lone convenience store, the talk Wednesday was of water.

The governor's office announced late Tuesday that Whitewater and the neighboring town of Allenville will receive a $753,500 Community Development block grant to construct a water system.

The grant was part of $30 million awarded to 80 communities for flood recovery projects.

The two west Cape Girardeau County communities are about two miles apart. Residents of the two towns get their water from individual wells.

About two years ago, the two towns began looking at installing a joint water system.

Flooding along the Diversion Channel last year contaminated some of Allenville's wells, further emphasizing the need for a water system.

Funding for a water system is good news to Doyle Eakins and John Kinder. Eakins is chairman of Whitewater's town board; Kinder is on the Allenville board.

They spent part of Wednesday morning in the Whitewater store talking about plans for the water system.

Whitewater, settled in 1866 and incorporated in the late 1890s, has a population of about 130. Allenville, founded in 1859, is home to about 100 people.

The two small, incorporated towns may be the only rural communities in the area that don't have their own municipal systems or are served by water districts.

"We are about the last ones," said Eakins.

Plans call for construction of a water tower on a hill overlooking Whitewater. A second tower would be built at Allenville and water lines would be laid.

Both communities would be served by a well that would be dug in the Whitewater area.

"We have had the preliminary engineering already done," said Eakins. Construction could begin this spring, he said.

Kinder said the town boards haven't determined exactly how the water system will be run. One possibility is to set up a separate administrative board.

Kinder said the water system project isn't popular with everyone. "Some want it, some don't," he said. Kinder, however, welcomes the system.

In the 1970s, Whitewater looked at the possibility of putting in a municipal system. But the town couldn't afford it.

Under the block grant project, the towns combined will have to come up with $1,500.

The Southeast Missouri Regional Planning and Economic Development Commission assisted the towns in applying for the grant. Tom Tucker, executive director of the planning commission, said it was decided two years ago that it would be more affordable if a water system could be installed to serve both towns.

Then came the flood of '93, which contaminated a number of wells in Allenville.

Tucker said it wouldn't make sense to drill a well in Allenville, which is in a flood plain. That was all the more reason for both Whitewater and Allenville to look at a joint project.

"We kept coming back to the same thing. We still had to get the well out of the flood plain," Tucker said.

Eakins said the flood turned out to be a benefit. "If we hadn't had the flood, we wouldn't have come up with the money."