The Charlottesville City Council has been awarded $7.1 million funding from the federal government to replace some of the remaining iron pipes that convey natural gas to customers in the city.
The funding comes from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration in the U.S. Department of Transportation and ultimately from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
“The project will enhance the resiliency of the gas system along West Main Street, a central artery that connects downtown Charlottesville to the University of Virginia,” reads a press release sent out this afternoon.
This will complete a system-wide upgrade in the early 2000’s that replaced leak-prone iron pipes with “corrosion-resistant high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic pipe.”
The move comes at a time when the city’s utilities division has begun a study about decarbonization of the gas utility.
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