ANDREWS, Ind. (WANE) -- On a stormy Monday night, there was hardly an empty seat inside the Andrews Town Hall. Residents of the small town were glued to a small screen in the front of the room, anxious to learn the future of their drinking water. “You know, people are just scared… they're scared of the water,” said Laura Dillon, Town Council President. Andrews has dealt with water contaminated with chemicals for decades, and resources are finally available to fix the problem. On Monday, the Lochmueller Group presented a regional water plan to pipe water from Huntington to Andrews.  “We’re going to have a preliminary set of drawings,” said Anthony Goodknight, Fort Wayne Area manager with Lochmueller. “We’ll have that figured out in the next 3-6 months” The town is locked in a legal battle that it hopes will solve all of its issues. However, the battle has gone several rounds, and no end is in sight.  Outside of that fight - the county and state are working to provide safe, clean drinking water for Andrews. “The town doesn’t need to make a decision…  we’re moving forward, we’re with IFA at this point,” Goodknight said. The Indiana Finance Authority (IFA) has funded preliminary plans to build the pipeline from Huntington to Andrews, and the first several steps can start without the town. A big part of the plan isn’t just getting water to the town, but also fixing the pipes that are already there. Up to 50% of the water that gets pumped through the current pipe system is lost. That means getting new water into town is only half the fight, what’s the point of getting your cake if you can’t eat it too? “There are some [water] mains that will have to get replaced at some point, the question is how many,” Goodknight said. “We want to make sure that the project we’re doing is the project that needs to be done.” In short, Lochmueller received $1.5 million from the state to do all of the prep work on building the pipeline and fixing Andrews' infrastructure. The money will take Lochmueller through the final plan being put together including design, permitting and modeling. What it won't do is pay for construction. Whose bill is it anyway? "RTX has offered us $5.8 million for this regionalization project which we are greatly appreciative of that," Dillon said. It's not clear how much it will all cost, but some officials at Monday night's meeting quoted a number near $8 million for the pipeline project. "You'd say $8.5 million to get it running just guessing?" said Tom Wall, Huntington County Commissioner. Wall believes the project can be done without putting Andrews into great debt combining the RTX settlement and grant money. Then it would just be on the town and the city of Huntington to come to a water rate agreement. The town would pay as a bulk customer, billing out all the town's water usage to Huntington each cycle. But paying another municipality for water is a sore point for Dillon. “I think it's premature of Andrews to proceed forward with any kind of obligation to increase rates or talk about rates,” Dillon said. She still prefers a solution where the town gets its own water treatment plant, but if it doesn't come to that Huntington says it will come to the table honestly. "It's going to be a fair shake," said Huntington Mayor Richard Strick. "It'll be an equivalent rate." Wall has noted how he appreciates the city stepping up to help out and the state throwing money toward the project. Ultimately he's excited about the future. "This is a collaborative effort, Wall said. "I think if we can get this done we'll probably be up for many awards for getting you guys water in 2026 or 2027."' For now, progress will be slow. Lochmueller expects to bring a final report to the table in October, then the town will have some big decisions to make about funding, and beyond that come to terms with Huntington as its provider of water.