(1) The authority shall establish an incentive program that allocates funds from the water and wastewater service regionalization account that encourages the regionalization, merger, and consolidation of water and wastewater systems and elimination of structural and administrative duplication. Established incentives may be used by government owned and private systems.
(2) The incentive program shall target water and wastewater systems that have high debt, inadequate operational and maintenance resources, high maintenance costs, old and inadequately maintained treatment works, a history of violations of the Division of Water's statutes and administrative regulations due to inadequate operational and maintenance resources, or insufficient financial resources to extend system service to unserved or underserved areas.
(3) In developing the incentives to encourage governmental agencies to merge, regionalize, consolidate, and partner with target systems and develop or maintain an asset management plan, the authority shall give priority to those projects which have been identified in a water management planning council plan prioritized under KRS 151.607 and meet the funding priorities established by the authority.