GILMORE CITY — A multimillion dollar water project is set to begin this year in Gilmore City as a means of improving the town’s water system.

Mayor Dennis Miller said the project has been planned for a number of years.

“We’ve been at it for quite some time,” Miller said. “It’s not something that popped up overnight.”

The $2.1 million project will be financed with the help of grants from the United States Department of Agriculture, according to City Clerk Chris McKee.

“We were approved by the USDA for a $1.3 million loan with an $800,000 grant,” McKee said.

Some of the issues the project aims to fix include two wells that are located in town.

According to data provided by McKee, Well No. 2, which was built in 1918, is used as a standby well, and Well No. 3, built in 1957, has casing that has been deterioriating.

The proposed solution is to build another well, which will allow for Well No. 2 to be abandoned and Well No. 3 to be a standby well.

Plans also call for outdated pressure filters to be replaced and to replace the ductile iron piping with PVC piping.

There are also plans to replace the current 50,000-gallon elevated storage tank with a 150,000-gallon tank.

Miller said the water project is important “so we can increase the water pressure on the north end of town.”

He added that the town plans on replacing and relocating the water tower.

Final plans for the project are set to be approved in April. The project is expected to be bid in June, with construction beginning the following month and lasting through July 2018.

The city also recently completed a sewer project that helped solve some longstanding issues in town, McKee said.

“We have a lot of infiltration from groundwater, rainwater,” she said. “So what we did was realigned the sewers.”

It impacted about 80 percent of the town.

“That’s cut down on the flows to our lagoons quite a bit,” she said.

Miller said the sewer project was worthwhile.

“We don’t have the flooding problems we’ve had in past years,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s eliminated that altogether,” McKee added.

This past year, the town also began taking part in a community garden.

McKee said an anonymous donor came forward and offered to plant a garden for everyone in Gilmore City.

Since there’s no obvious place for a garden in town, McKee said the city decided to create wooden boxes at various places in town, including outside city hall and outside the post office.

These boxes are available for adoption, according to McKee, and anything can be planted in them.