It's official.

Congress has set aside money for a new federal prison to be built in eastern Kentucky.

This has been an ongoing conversation at the federal level for almost two decades.

The recent U.S. government spending bill that was passed by the Senate and championed by Mitch McConnell included money for the prison project.

U.S. Representative Hal Rogers of the fifth District has long supported the plan, but there are mixed feelings in the region about it.

Clayton Dalton has more.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons recently held a public meeting in Letcher County, the potential home for a new medium security prison to hear from locals and other interested parties.

The prison would be constructed on the site of a former coal mine, some Letcher County, and support the project.

They think it will boost the economy and bring in good jobs.

During the construction phase.

Hundreds of workers and contractors will be in the county building Housing.

Medical care will frequent local restaurants fast food establishments, buy groceries and fuel for sure.

A huge boost out of the this prison being built here.

We need an immediate economic development and improve the infrastructure that will come along with the prisons.

We need the jobs, good paying jobs that are needed here, and we are using those just day to day.

But some locals feel differently.

They fear the prison will hurt the town rather than help.

It.

Along Letcher County.

And always a concern.

And I think that this prison is a terrible idea for our region.

The people are put in prisons, are promising some kind of pie in the sky.

Job creation will be the salvation of legend.

Manning.

According to the Varghese Old report, the number of new hires with the planning labor force is expected to be small.

Larger county, environmentally alone, and will show the overwhelming majority of schools in the county are not suitable for building projects of the size and scale.

Our soils are unstable and because of serious slippage and erosion on steep mountain science and additions, new prisons are built on other sites that have been mined similarly, and based subsidence issues, compromising some structural integrity in the prisons.

People from out of town even chaired one person from LB Virginia, the home of a federal prison just across Kentucky's border, says bringing in a federal prison isn't a lucrative venture.

And water treatment system is failing.

Excluding the county's struggling to come up with the money to stabilize the downtown and buildings that are built on flood plain, the high school is closing down towns and dying.

Downtowns and dysfunction boils down to local families and has been deteriorating.

A few people from Washington, D.C., who were previously incarcerated shared their opposition to the prison as well.

It's common for people convicted in D.C. to serve sentences in rural prisons, and they say this project is a bad idea.

The draft bombing impacts.

They can see the ambition of the Bureau of Prisons if they go for that remaining insecure environment.

And like I said, I know what's going to happen, have to be able to be and I'm going to continue to be obedient.

None of the word may not a word made in a present imposible eligible to be noticed.

I know that a lot of balls would be me.

However, most of them are false.

The Bureau of Prisons is still taking written comments on the project until April 15th.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Clayton Dalton.

Congressman Hal Rogers issued a statement about the project saying in part, Building a medium security prison and camp in Letcher County will add more than 300 jobs in our region, employing people from surrounding counties and providing other economic development opportunities.

If this new prison facility isn't built in Letcher County, it will be built in another state, and Kentucky will lose out on the funding and opportunities that come with it.