Casper City Council on Tuesday unanimously agreed to sign and submit a Wyoming Business Council community enhancement grant application for North Platte River restoration funds.

Now that the city council has given its consent, the city of Casper will ask the Wyoming Business Council for $500,000 that the city wants to use to help chip away at the $12.8 million Platte River Revival.

If the business council approves the application, city officials say they'll spend the money on projects connected with the river restoration effort that aim to improve water quality, aquatic and terrestrial habitat, recreational use and riverbank appearance.

Casper mayor Paul Meyer says, though decent progress has been made in recent years on the river, more work still needs to be done.

“For 100 years, we looked at that river as a very large sewer stream, and I think that annoyed the people in Nebraska and didn’t do the fish and animals any good, either,” Meyer said. “I am proud to live in Casper when we started remediating the river in 1966, and this is going to be a large, long-term project.”

If the application is approved by the business council, the grant would require a 50 percent match from the city.

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