Civil and Municipal - Mar 2023

87 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 3 DOUGLAS , ARI ZONA Since the announcement of the project’s major funding, the City of Douglas, along with its partners, has worked on planning the necessary utilities and infrastructure for the new port. In December 2022, Arizona Governor, Doug Ducey, announced the allocation of another $8.9 million grant from the American Rescue Plan Act in order to support water initiatives for wastewater, groundwater, and storage. The construction of the commercial Port of Entry is anticipated to begin in 2025, and the project is expected to be completed in 2028. “We’re being told by GSA and our Mexican counterparts that the team that we have set up, and our approach to all this, has been key to making this run smoothly and they’re taking some of the lessons on how we’re doing things to other areas when it comes times for them to expand their Ports of Entry,” Huish exclaims. In anticipation of expansive growth in Douglas and surrounding areas when the new LPOE is complete, Huish says the city is looking to improve other aspects of its aging infrastructure. “Water is very key to us in Arizona. We’re having to retrofit wells; we’re looking at new wells to add additional capacity. We don’t have an issue right now; the water is still plentiful; it’s good water. But we understand that we need to be proactive in making sure that our infrastructure doesn’t get out of date and we have an emergency. A lot of our water valves throughout the city are very, very old, especially in the original town site – they’re a hundred years old. So, we’re trying to be proactive in replacing those rather than waiting for them to erupt in the middle of the intersection.” “Streets are also a big challenge,” he continues. “We did a study here two years ago. It came back to $67 million to redo all our streets. That’s so far out of reach; our bonding capacity is upwards of $12 million. It was quite sad. So, we’re looking at some grants from the