The village of Homer, is a small town in Northeast  Nebraska located in Dakota County.  The village was experiencing  unaccounted for water reaching nearly 17 percent of the water pumped throughout the system.  Residents in part of the town were not receiving adequate water pressure. One resident went so far as to drill their own well.  The village was able to meet maximum daily demands for water, but were seeing a continuing decline in production of water due to iron bacteria  fouling the screens and aquifer.  One of the wells was meeting the Safe Drinking Water Act for primary      contaminant levels, but was not meeting the secondary limits of iron and manganese.

To make the needed improvements to the water system, the village was able to secure a $823,000 direct loan  through the USDA Rural Development Water and Waste Disposal Loan & Grant Program leveraged with village funds of $115,517. 

The project consisted of four major parts.  The first was installation of a new well within 1,000 ft of an existing well.  This provided an additional water supply source and backup to the system.  The second part was constructing water mains.  This helped upgrade the distribution system and reduce the impacts of potential breaks and also helped to reduce pressure loss. The third area of improvement was increasing pressure to users by the installation of a booster station.  The last area of improvement consisted of various valve installations and replacements.  Work was also done to the water tank roof to alleviate the leaking helping to ensure that the water supply storage would not be contaminated from outside sources.