The piece of Columbia's water financing puzzle that had been sitting in limbo just moved, but it did not move unanimously.
The Duck River Watershed Planning Partnership, the advisory group Gov. Bill Lee convened to sort out how the river's water should be shared across the region, voted Monday, Aug. 10, to formally back the downstream intake and raw water transmission line at the center of Columbia Power & Water Systems' long-term water supply plan. It was the second half of a two-part sign-off: the partnership had already approved the utility's water treatment plant expansion the month before. With both pieces now endorsed, CPWS has the partnership's backing for the roughly $520 million program.
That matters because the state board that actually controls the money, the Tennessee Local Development Authority, had been holding off on CPWS's larger financing request specifically until the partnership weighed in. As the Journal reported last week, the TLDA approved a $75 million state loan for the treatment plant in late July but set aside a separate $315 million request tied to the intake and pipeline, waiting on exactly this kind of recommendation before it would act. That federal loan comes through the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, a financing program most people know simply as WIFIA.
Not a Clean Vote
Unlike last month's unanimous approval of the treatment plant, Monday's vote on the intake and pipeline was contested. Maury County Mayor Sheila Butt was one of two members who voted no, with two others abstaining, according to Butt's own account of the meeting. She laid out her reasoning at length, and it was not a rejection of CPWS itself.
"I will be voting 'no' today and not because I don't appreciate CPWS and what they do for Maury County," Butt said at the meeting. "They have a lot of dedicated people there who keep us in water. They are my friends and constituents. I appreciate what Spring Hill is doing as well."
Her objection was to the process behind the roughly half-billion-dollar decision, not the engineering. "What I am voting against is a flawed process that allows one city legislative body to make the decision to borrow over $500 million dollars and increase water rates 149% in a County that has thousands of people who were disenfranchised by having no representation in that vote," she said. "Many farmers, rural communities, and cattle producers had no representation. They are Maury County as well and had no voice in that legislative body."
Butt argued the underlying issue is bigger than one project. "Water should not be a privately owned resource," she said. "It belongs to everyone in the State of Tennessee and should be shared and governed equally in the watersheds across the State. Until we make that happen legislatively, the one who gets there first, with the biggest bucket, the most money and the most influence will control this natural resource."
She pointed to a WFX study she said points toward a path to real regionalism, including shared governance and economies of scale across the utilities that draw from the Duck River, and said she intends to pursue legislation to get there. "That is the answer to the blatant disenfranchisement," she said. "Until we do that, we are leaving thousands of Tennesseans across the state without a voice. Today, I am speaking for those people in Maury County who had no voice."
Butt said she raised similar concerns with the state's own funding board a month earlier, warning that without legislative fixes to how water governance works across county lines, Tennessee's brewing "water wars" will end up hurting ratepayers and the state as a whole.
What Happens Next
The partnership's vote does not undo the objection Butt raised, and it does not change what Columbia ratepayers are already facing. City Council approved rate increases of up to 20 percent a year for five years back in January, and those increases move forward regardless of how the rest of the financing shakes out. What Monday's vote does is clear CPWS to go back to the Tennessee Local Development Authority and pursue parity status for its $315 million WIFIA loan, a condition the EPA requires before the loan can close, and the piece of financing that had been stuck without a state decision either way.
The utility's interim president and CEO, Jack Baxter, framed the outcome as validation. "This full affirmation from the Duck River Watershed Planning Partnership validates years of diligent planning and science-based forecasting," he said. "Securing our community's water future while safeguarding the Duck River's delicate ecosystem must go hand in hand." Baxter stepped into the role on an interim basis after Jonathan Hardin, the CEO quoted extensively in the Journal's earlier coverage of this project, resigned for personal reasons.
The intake project itself would raise CPWS's withdrawal capacity from the Duck River from 20 million gallons a day to 32 million gallons a day, giving the utility more water for a growing service area and a backup source if drought or an emergency strained the river elsewhere. Whether Butt's disenfranchisement concerns slow that down at the state level, or simply become a talking point in the debate that follows, is the next thing worth watching.
Sources: Duck River Watershed Planning Partnership. Columbia Power & Water Systems. Maury County Mayor Sheila Butt. Previous Muletown Journal reporting.