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KINGSPORT — Attention 80 or so residents of the remote Beech Creek community in Hawkins County with sulfur and calcium in your well or spring water: help may be on the way in the form of more than 22,000 feet of water lines mostly funded by the federal government. Through the office of U.S.

Rep. Diana Harshbarger, R-1st, the city of Kingsport is applying for a federal State and Tribal Assistance Grant or STAG grant of up to $5 million. The city would have to cover 20%, or $1 million, of the cost for the water project to serve the 80 Beech Creek Road residents not already on city water.



It is a project that Kingsport and Hawkins County officials have long sought ways to fund and would extend 25,600 feet of waterline, if approved. The Kingsport Board of Mayor and Aldermen Tuesday, May 21, voted 7-0 to ratify Mayor Pat Shull’s signature on a May 8 letter to Harshbarger supporting the project. “Addressing the water needs of residents with poor well and spring water is an utmost priority,” Shull wrote.

Harshbarger, in a May 6 letter to the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations, requested the funding. “The project is an appropriate use of taxpayer funds because the residents ..

. do not have a potable water to drink from, and further this will increase access to public drinking water for Kingsport residents to prevent contamination caused by leaks of existing lines,” Harshbarger wrote in the letter. The project would fall under the federal Safe W.

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