Rural enough for ya? Photo of dirt road in the Delaware County town of Meredith by Flickr user somervillebikes; shared in the Watershed Post's Flickr group.
A newly-released report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends a change in the agency's definition of "rural," a shift that would make larger towns newly eligible for a variety of USDA grants.
The new definition, if adopted, would replace several different definitions currently used in different USDA grant programs with a single criterion: To be considered "rural," a community must have less than 50,000 people.
Under the old definitions, to be eligible for community water and waste disposal grants and loans, a community could have no more than 10,000 people. For community facility grants and loans, the upper limit was 20,000 people. Read more