The Marshall County Commissioners agreed to provide a letter of support for an application submitted by the Michiana Area Council of Governments (MACOG) for an electric charging and fueling infrastructure grant.
Leah Thill from MACOG presented the information to the commissioners during their last meeting.
Thill said, “We believe that the private sector is not investing in providing charging in our rural areas compared to urban areas and along interstate highways so we would like to assist in providing a basic level of charging infrastructure in those communities. It would primarily be a destination level charging. It’s a little slower. It’s referred to as Level 2. We’re looking at a number of small towns. We have interest at least from Bremen, Culver, Plymouth, and then we also have interest from developers and owners of multi-family housing projects where people don’t have the ability to charge at home.”
Charging could take a couple of hours that would provide 50 miles of travel time in an electric vehicle. She mentioned that there is interest in Level 3 charging which is quicker.
“It’s much, much faster. The location would hopefully be U.S. 30 somewhere around the U.S. 31 interchange because right now we don’t have funding for a project slated to be there in the next five to ten years. That’s really important to us that we get something along U.S. 30 because we know that there’s charging going in along U.S. 31, but we want to see that east/west travel from Fort Wayne to Chicago passing through this area covered as well.”
The formal site placing will be determined if the grant is awarded.
Several other government agencies on a local level have also agreed to provide a letter of support for the grant. There was no ask for matching funds.
The grant application was submitted by deadline at the end of May.
