It may seem simple, but keeping a park drinking fountain safe takes a lot of work and money. Rockford's drinking water is getting a complete overhaul. The Federal Government is helping by lending about seven-million stimulus dollars.

"We'll be able to do some badly needed projects that deal with water mains, the possibility of us tearing down some of our old water towers that we don't need any more our water tanks as well as treatment and iron removal and radium removal on some of our wells," says Rockford Capital Program Manager Pat Zuroske.

The Stanley Street Pumping Station provides water to the downtown business district. There's several similar ones expected to be built throughout the area, which means many new jobs.

"There's making improvements to water mains, to plants and construction of new facilities, so you're talking about a large number of jobs that are created on a temporary basis, but then there's also a benefit to the communities, if their waste water treatment is expanded for example that allows them to attract other businesses or more residents to their community," says Illinois EPA Director Doug Scott.

And that's the case in Pecatonica. It received about six million dollars to build a new sewage plant.

The design life expectancy of a waste water treatment facility is 20 years. This one has been here for 50, so as you could imagine that requires a lot of maintenance.

"It makes it right now where we can't get new subdivisions we can't get new areas in town here so ultimately with the new treatment plant, the engineers made it so 20 years from now we could add onto it if we need to and ultimately it's great for the community," says Pecatonica Village President Shawn Conners.

The community could see construction begin sometime this summer.

The other two local communities getting money are Dixon and LaMoille, which is about 30 miles southeast of Dixon. Dixon received about four- million dollars to build a new water treatment facility, and LaMoille gets about 200-thousand dollars to upgrade its public water system.

The money doled out is a 20-year no interest loan. And the communities only have to pay back three quarters of it. Those in charge say this is huge for all of us because that means us taxpayers won't be asked to help chip in.