After struggling to get people to apply for individual wastewater grants, Dukes County decided last week to give Martha’s Vineyard Airport an extra $100,000 in federal Covid relief funds.

The county commission voted Wednesday to give the airport the additional cash from its American Rescue Plan Act funds to help chip away at the airport’s $10.9 million wastewater treatment facility upgrades. 

The new plant, which services the airport and the surrounding business park, is largely completed and airport manager Geoff Freeman hopes to have the facility fully operationally later in November or December. 

“We do appreciate the county giving us the additional funding,” Mr. Freeman said Friday. “Every part counts, it is a large-scale project and it is being funded – a majority of it – by the airport and revenue generated by the airport.” 

Like municipalities across the country, Dukes County received grant money to help recover from the effects of the pandemic as part of the rescue act, signed by President Joe Biden in 2021. The county has now given the airport $1.6 million of its $3.3 million grant. 

It also had planned to use about $1.4 million to help residents transition to better wastewater systems to help preserve the Island’s water quality. The county commission set aside funds for each Island town, as well as the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay (Aquinnah) and Gosnold to individual homeowners. 

The idea was to directly help people, and the Island’s ponds that have been damaged from nitrogen seeping from old septic tanks. But, after months of working to set up a system that would supply direct payments to applicants, the idea failed to dedicate all the money to projects. Only the down-Island towns received applications for the grants, prompting the county to look at other avenues to spend the grant before a federal deadline. 

Earlier in September, the county commission voted to give $240,000 each to Oak Bluffs, Edgartown and Tisbury for their wastewater efforts, coming to a total of $720,000. Any extra money not expended will be used to cover the county’s administrative costs and legal costs for the wastewater program, and to help supplement its revenue. 

County commissioner Tristan Israel was proud of the county’s effort to help the Island towns. 

“I think our whole ARPA effort ought to be really touted to the Island, to understand that we listened to the towns,” he said.

If the money wasn’t dedicated under a contract by December, it would have had to be returned to the federal government.