HOLT, Fla., April 4, 2025—Holt Water Works Inc. is the recipient of a $4 million grant from the state of Florida to build a new well and water tower on Galliver Cut Off.

Notification from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection came via email Monday.

“This is very exciting news for Holt,” said Holt Water manager Donna Ash.

Anticipating the need to expand the utility began as far back as 10 years ago. Holt Water’s board of directors approved the purchase of a 1-acre lot of land on the east side of Galliver Cut Off south of Country Living Road in April 2015.

Moving the project forward began in earnest in September 2019 when Holt Water hired civil engineer Dale Long of Navarre’s Municipal Engineering Services Inc. to get the ball rolling.

Long designed the project and put together the necessary paperwork to begin the hunt for financing.

Various avenues included applying for funding assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Florida Department of Water Restoration Assistance’s State Revolving Fund.

A third option was a state legislative appropriation for the project, but that was considered a long shot because support from local representatives of both the state House and Senate would be needed.

But it was the long shot that paid off.

“We rolled the dice and won,” said an excited Ash.

The well and 300,000-gallon storage tank project consists of clearing the land, drilling a well to tap into the Florida aquifer, installing a pump, erecting a tower and elevated tank, as well as building a pump house and treatment plant similar to the setup in the Holt Industrial Park.

Paperwork with the state has to be completed before Holt Water can begin looking for a contractor to build the new well and tower.

Holt has two wells and towers with elevated tanks. The one next to Holt School, was built in 1967 and is a 75,000-gallon storage tank designed to service 143 customers via 8 miles of water mains, which increased to 171 customers by the time it came online. It is used as a backup for the larger 300,000-gallon tank in the industrial park.

The newer tank was built in 2005 and distributes water via 29 miles of water mains throughout the community. By comparison, back then, the cost was $2 million for the well/tower/tank/treatment plant as well as a water main from the industrial park that looped in the south end of the service area by way of Trawick Creek/Wilkerson Bluff roads to U.S. Highway 90.

When the larger tank is taken offline to be inspected, the smaller tank is used to keep the water flowing as it did in 2022 when the larger tank was drained and the interior was inspected, sandblasted and repainted. That required round-the-clock monitoring of the smaller tank and pump by maintenance supervisor Patrick Broxson, checking every two-to-three hours day and night, to make sure the flow continued to more than 980 customers.

Currently, both water wells servicing Holt are located on the south end of the system. This means water on the northern end experiences low pressure.

A new well and tank on the north end of the service area will evenly distribute water pressure and flow, eliminating pockets of low pressure that exist within the system, especially throughout the northern end of the system.

The water well/storage project is one of three water improvement projects in the works.

In August, Holt Water was notified that it received a grant to replace more than 650 manually read water meters with radio-read ones. This means meter usage information will flow into a computer program as Broxson drives by the meters rather than having to stop the truck, get out and manually read them. Replacement will begin May 1 by Meter Install Group LLC of Texas.

The third project involves removing the last remaining asbestos cement water main that runs 3,100 linear feet along Hwy 90 from the abandoned pump house next to the old community center to the water tower next to the school. Funding for this project is still being worked.