(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds says it’s critical to ensure Iowa has enough electricity and upgraded water treatment plants, to support business expansion. “Especially for rural Iowa, we need to figure that out,” Reynolds says. “We’ve got a lot of capacity in rural Iowa, but if you don’t have the load capacity or you don’t have the water treatment capacity, it’s hard for those existing businesses to expand or think about locating there.”

Water treatment plants are expensive. For larger communities, it can cost 12 million dollars for a plant that can handle an average of 10 million gallons per day. Reynolds says the cost for smaller communities, while less, cannot be easily borne by residents who’d pay higher utility bills to pay for it.  “The populations aren’t where they need to be to sustain it,” Reynolds says. The State Revolving Fund provides communities with low interest loans to finance drinking water systems, water treatment facilities and sewers, but Reynolds says she’s asked the director of the Iowa Economic Development Authority to review the range of state incentives that are available — and could be proposed for the future.

“We’ve just kind of delving into that right now and taking a look at how do we then project that for the next 10 to 20 years,” Reynolds says, “and how do I get in front of that and make us competitive when businesses are looking at locating and expanding in Iowa.” The E-P-A recently announced a dozen drinking water systems in Iowa need upgrades to remove so-called “forever chemicals” that are linked to sites where firefighters have used foam to quickly put out fires.

(The following drinking water systems are cited: Buffalo, Burlington, Camanche, Davenport, Dubuque, Muscatine, Osage, Sioux City and Tama as well as Bayer Crop Science near Muscatine, a mobile home park in Muscatine and the Peteschs campground near Bellevue.)