Keys officials expecting long-delayed federal dollars from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were told to keep waiting.

The corps, which controls the $100 million of federal money promised for Keys wastewater projects, met with municipalities throughout the Keys on Nov. 7 to discuss the projects awaiting those funds.

"Everybody wants to know when they are going to see the money," said Shelley Trulock, the corps' project manager for the Florida Keys Water Quality Improvement project.

"This is a step to get the money flowing."

Keys officials said they are glad they're finally seeing forward motion from the corps, but remain skeptical.

"It's exciting, but we will have to wait and see. We have heard it before," said Islamorada Mayor Chris Sante.

In 2001, U.S. Congress passed a bill that authorized $100 million for wastewater projects in the Keys. In the last four years, Congress appropriated $7.5 million of those funds, but no money has reached the area.

The corps was put in charge of distributing the funds. Corps officials said that in order to administer the money, a number of steps had to be accomplished, including having an environmental study done that covered possible environmental and socio-economic impacts of the various projects.

Corps officials said that they are finally close to being able to cut checks to the various municipalities in the Keys.

"It has been a long road, but we are almost there," Trulock said. She estimates the expense of all the preliminary steps is $2.5 million. She said that money will be reimbursed to the project accounts at a later date.

One crucial step to getting the available $5 million flowing, said Trulock, is creating and finalizing project cooperation agreements between the corps and each entity in the Keys due to receive funding for wastewater projects.

To create those agreements, the corps needs to know the current status of all the wastewater projects in the Keys, which was the purpose of the meeting in Islamorada on Tuesday, Nov. 7.

"We got a status update on what has and has not been done. We also found out what projects are coming down the pipeline," said Trulock.

The money can only be used for new construction or to reimburse design expenses. Trulock said that she needed to know where each entity was in the process of connecting their area in order to determine what projects were eligible for funding.

"We met with each municipality one on one just to verify that we were 100 percent up to speed on which projects the federal monies would be going to," Trulock said.

The $5 million has already been divided between the different agencies in the Keys with Islamorada, the Key Largo Wastewater Treatment District and Marathon each receiving $500,000. Key West is receiving $2.48 million and the remainder is divvied up between Layton and Key Colony Beach.

"This is money that will not come out of local taxpayers' pockets," said Key largo's General Manager Chuck Fishburn.

Trulock said the entities should receive a draft of the agreements by the end of the year.

She hopes to be able to get final approval by March. After the agreements are approved, money can start to flow, she said.

"Everyone is frustrated that the money has been slow to flow. But we have made a lot of progress lately to get the money flowing," Trulock said "It shouldn't be much longer."