LANSING - Ludington's old lift station has been pumping waste out of sewers and into treatment plants since 1936--the year the city built its first wastewater treatment plant.

"We've kept her going," said Rob Allard, superintendent of the Ludington Waste Water Treatment Plant. "And we're gonna keep her going 'till her last day."

But the days of "the old plant lift," as Allard calls it, could soon be come to an end. Ludington is using a $148,218 state grant to craft a plan to replace the lift station, as well as a 130-year-old section of leaky sewer.

The grant is one of 67 awarded by the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) that cover up to 90 percent of the costs local governments incur in undergoing the planning and design process required to apply for construction loans from the state.

The grants, totaling more than $26 million, will help cities plan and design improvements for water treatment plants, said Chip Heckathorn, DEQ's program manager.

"The underlying premise behind all this work is to protect water quality in Michigan's lakes and rivers," he said.

John Shay, Ludington's city manager, said the grants make local governments more willing to take advantage of low interest loans from the state.

"It made a big difference," he said.

Before the grants existed, Shay said, local governments were skeptical about committing funding to the planning and designing process, which is expensive.

Ludington has spent $70,000 of its grant putting together a blueprint for the changes it wants to make, Shay said, adding that the engineering firm the city hired accounted for a significant portion of the expenses.

Increasing the size of wastewater treatment facilities to accommodate a growing population, replacing old pumps and fixing cracked sewer pipes are among the common improvements that cities make, Heckathorn said.

Some cities use their grants to implement innovative programs.

For example, Alpena is spending part of its $326,959 to plan for a fee-based  program to dispose of septic tank waste, said Brian Jankowski, an environmental engineer at the DEQ's Cadillac district office.

Jankowski said that disposing of septic tank waste at a waste water treatment plant is becoming more common because the state has strengthened the laws that regulate the dumping of septic tank waste.

"More and more wastewater plants are looking at that as a revenue source," he said.