By Brittany Woodby

BWOODBY@CULLMANTIMES.COM

As the area’s water supply dwindles, Cullman’s city and the county leaders are working on plans to secure a lasting additional water source to carry residents not only through the drought, but through increased water demands in the future. For nearly 15 years, the City of Cullman has sought the advice of engineers who have advocated building a dam on Duck River and creating a reservoir capable of producing enough water to meet the county’s needs for the next 50 years. County officials, however, have hesitated on the project since the beginning and instead have favored a plan to draw water from the Tennessee River. As Lake Catoma’s levels fall each day, the push to solve the area’s water problem has reached a critical point and both the city and the county are ready to put some plan in action to avoid an impending crisis.

The first time in the area’s recent history when the potential for a water shortage was realized was in 1993. Cullman County was renowned for its booming poultry industry and pumped millions of dollars into the state's economy. Local officials began assessing the industry and determined there was one large threat to its continued success in Cullman County---diminishing water supply. At that time, the City of Cullman and the Cullman Utilities Board formed the Cullman/Morgan Water District, which was made up of the mayor of Cullman, the chairman of the Cullman County Commission and the Morgan County commissioner from Morgan County's District 3. It was later expanded to include a representative for the independent water systems and another representative from the City of Cullman.

Since the late 1960s, Cullman County has received water from Lake Catoma, which is capable of producing 18-20 million gallons of water a day. However, experts predicted population growth and industry would overload Catoma's production ability and the city's demands for water would exceed 23 million gallons a day by 2015. If Catoma failed in the meantime, due to potential contamination or natural disaster, the result could be a devastating $85 million to the poultry industry statewide from just two days without water.

Collectively, the water district enlisted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to find the most efficient and economical solution to the area's impending water emergency, then two decades away. The corps, along with additional engineers and researchers, came to the conclusion that of all the available water sources in the area, damming the Duck River in northeast Cullman County to construct a 650-acre reservoir was the best answer.

When it came time to discuss financing of the project, the water district decided to go through the Cullman Utilities Board to pay for it.

“This way it didn’t go against the debt limit of the city or the county,” Duck River Project Manager Dale Greer said.

The utilities board needed 30-year-contracts from its water customers to pay for the 30-year-bond it intended to take out in order to pay for the dam.

“All the customers agreed to participate in Duck River,” Greer said. “We had to have 33 people sign and we got 32 of the 33 to sign the agreement.”

The only person who did not agree to the agreement was former Cullman County Commission Chairman George Spear.

In 1998, when the city moved closer to beginning construction on the dam, Spear said he was opposed to the project because signing a 30-year contract meant staying a customer of the city utilities board for at least 30 more years.

“It really all boils down to this: Cullman County, in 30 years do you still want to be a renter or an owner?” he said.

Instead, Spear favored a move towards splitting from the city water service, and taking with it 40 percent of the utilities board’s customer base, to create a county-owned water system. To do that, Spear proposed building a water treatment plant on Smith Lake at an estimated cost of $24 million. The end result, he said, would be paying to construct something the county would have control over.

A week after Spear opposed the project and publicly accused Cullman City Councilmembers and the mayor of making deals with other commissioners behind his back, the county commission voted 2-1 to join the city in the Duck River project and signed the contract to remain a water customer for 30 years.

However, the water customers’ commitment to participate in funding Duck River became void when the city’s Section 404 Permit to begin construction was repealed by a federal court judge in 2003 as a response to a lawsuit filed against the project three years earlier. The construction delay permitted inflation to raise the cost of the project from its initially-projected $42-million to more than $50 million. Each of the customers’ contracts put a $50-million cap on the cost of the project.

In November 2006, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers re-issued the Section 404 Permit to allow the Cullman Utilities Board to begin construction on Duck River. A month later, the Cullman County Commission voted to purchase 25.79 acres of land in Morgan County for $205,000, which county water superintendent David Bussman said could be used to construct a pipeline to draw water from the Tennessee River and into Cullman County.

It was not until after the purchase that Cullman City officials were notified of a possible dissent from the mutual agreement to pursue Duck River. Green said he was disappointed the county decided to break away from its informal agreement with the city to seek future water reserves jointly.

“They need to do what they need to do. But if they’re going to go off on their own we need to know, so we don’t spend tax-payer money to benefit customers we won’t have in the future,” Green said in January 2007. “We’re a little disappointed they would entertain doing this without discussing it with us first. We’ve always tried to be open with them.”

Current Cullman County Commission Chairman Wiley Kitchens responded the commission had only approved of purchasing the land and had not moved further with any plans that would indicate they expected to pull off the city’s water service.

“We had an opportunity to buy the land, and that’s all we did,” he said.

The county’s water issues quieted down at the beginning of 2007 as rainfall picked up and officials began to doubt engineers’ predictions that the area would need as much water as Duck River could provide. Green even made the comment that he doubted if “the Duck River project will ever be a reality.”

Months later, the area became engulfed in what experts across the nation called a “100-year drought,” and the city’s water supply plummeted. City officials immediately returned back to Duck River while county officials began planning for a pipeline to the Tennessee River.

“No one anticipated this type of drought,” Kitchens said. “No one realized how severe the water situation could be. There was no real need. I think if the city had looked down the road and could have seen this coming, we all would have been looking to make plans.”

Though Duck River had been in the works for years and had twice been permitted to start construction, Kitchens said the legal complications associated with the project kept the commission from wholly supporting it. After the Duck River permit was re-issued following the first time a federal judge contested it, another lawsuit was filed by environmental groups against the second permit.

“We just don’t know how these lawsuits and things will play out,” Kitchens said. “Like we saw with the last lawsuit, a federal judge can do a lot of things. ... Other groups have come forward and said more lawsuits will be filed.”

He said impending lawsuits could postpone construction for so many years or stop the project in mid-production, costing the county and the city millions more in inflated labor, legal and supply costs or delay the end result so much that the area would still go without water.

“We just don’t know, will we spend the next two years fighting a lawsuit?” he said.

While engineers hired by the city say no long-range water plan is litigation-proof, Kitchens said he feels confident a plan to build a pipeline to the Tennessee River could be constructed with little or no legal repercussions.

In 2006, Senator Zeb Little addressed the Cullman County Commission and said a compromise had been made in state Legislature to allow for a separate Morgan County and Marshall County bill to allow them to withdraw water from the Tennessee River. Little said an amendment to the Morgan County bill would allow Cullman County to withdraw water from the Tennessee River as well, provided the county owned land along the river. Kitchens said the bills passed and Cullman County has full right to take water from the Tennessee River, provided it is granted a permit by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

“Legislative action gave Cullman County the ability to go to the Tennessee River,” he said. “This plan is covered under that legislative action.”

Before planning to build a 30-mile pipeline from the county’s land on the Tennessee River, Kitchens said commissioners met with Morgan County officials and got their unofficial blessings to pursue the project.

“Before we ever got involved with this, I met with commissioners in Morgan County,” he said. “I asked if it would be a problem for us to cross their right-of-ways, which were established for the purpose of putting in utilities, and they agreed they did not see any problem with us coming up their right-of-ways. We felt like if we could do this, it would be the fastest way for us to get water without the legal complications.”

Kitchens said environmental interest groups, like those which contested the Duck River project, could not protest the pipeline in court since the pipeline would go along Morgan County-owned utilities right-of-ways.

The pipeline’s projected route, however, would cross a few miles of state-owned utilities right-of-ways. Kitchens said the commission does not have the state’s permission to use the property but he does not foresee that being a problem.

“I don’t think the state would have a problem with us putting a pipe in about five or six miles along their right-of-ways when we are trying to bring water to the county,” he said. “I can’t see them doing anything to stop us from getting water here.”

City officials disagreed that the pipeline would be exempt from public legal action.

“It’s not a litigation-proof alternative,” Green said. “Anyone who doesn’t think the pipeline is a good idea can sue.”

Kitchens said the real decision whether or not to permit the pipeline would be TVA, which would have to issue a 26a water intake permit request. Information provided by TVA estimates major projects which do not require modifications could be permitted within 90 days of application.

The county has applied to withdraw 30 million gallons of water a day from the Tennessee River and Kitchens said the county is eligible to be grandfathered in under old TVA regulations and not be charged for the water it takes.

Greer said preparing for a pipeline from the Tennessee River would require the same amount of mitigation the city had to go through with Duck River, meaning years of environmental assessments and environmental impact studies. He also said the pipeline would be subject to requesting a permit under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act — the same permit which took the city nearly a decade to obtain for the construction of the Duck River dam.

“This isn’t a short-term process for anyone,” Cullman Economic Development Agency Project Coordinator Susan Eller said.

Regardless of whether the county is fully approved by all entities involved in the pipeline process, Kitchens said he and county authorities are trying to look at all options objectively, including Duck River.

“There are just a few differences in this project and the Duck River project,” he said. “One of those is cost. Money-wise, the two are pretty comparable.”

The latest engineering estimate of the Duck River Dam project places the construction cost at $59.5 million. Kitchens said the county’s consultants project the cost of the pipeline at slightly more than $50 million. Constructing additional infrastructure, such as the county’s own water treatment plant or a pre-treatment plant necessary to pump water from the Tennessee River into the utilities-board-owned Lake Catoma, could jump the cost of the project up to $117 million.

Greer and other city officials said they were opposed to mixing water from the Tennessee River into Lake Catoma, which has been acclaimed by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management for its high quality. They also said engineers discouraged mixing raw water sources in the city’s water treatment plant as that would create a need for more chemical treatment and more expense.

Kitchens said one advantage the Tennessee River pipeline has over Duck River is the amount of time the project would take to complete. He said engineers predict the pipeline could be constructed within a year to a year-and-a-half once the project is permitted. A dam on Duck River would require one to two years to construct and another four or five years before the reservoir was filled and water ready to be used.

Kitchens said another advantage the pipeline held over Duck River would be the consistent water supply available from the Tennessee River.

“If our secondary water sources are reservoirs, they are dependent on nature,” he said. “Duck River Dam will have to depend on rainfall to fill it up. In drought situations like we are in now, what would the level be? The Tennessee River is not going to go dry, it’s a nearly infinite water source.”

With the county’s pipeline project still in the early stages of development and the city standing on a firm belief Duck River is the answer to the long-term water shortage problem, both sides have found a mutual agreement they can not pursue either option without the support of the other.

“I don’t think the county or the city could go it alone,” Kitchens said.

Financially, Kitchens said he is uncertain the county could fund the pipeline project without the city. Engineers with CH2M Hill predict the pipeline project could translate into anywhere from a 59 to 244 percent increase in water rates for customers, provided the county could float a bond issue with only minimal infrastructure to offer as equity.

Ratepayers could see an increase of 53 to 83 percent on their water bills to pay for the Duck River dam construction, raising rates from $1.42 per 1,000 gallons in 2007 to $2.40-$2.60 per 1,000 gallons in 2010.

However, Green said if the county does pull off the city water supply, there will be no need to pursue another water source and city customers will still see a drastic increase in water rates to make up for the cost of production.

Kitchens said the county’s objective is not to quit buying water from the city, which sells water to the county at wholesale cost, but to find the best solution to both systems’ needs.

“There have been a lot of questions and a lot of misunderstandings,” he said. “The public asks why the county does not own its own water system. The fact is, it’s a lot cheaper for everyone if we all work together.”

Green said until recently, there has been little communication between the city and the county.

“The county officially has made no comment to the city about what they are doing,” he said. “We had a very extensive meeting about the water situation at the beginning of the year (2007) and they were invited to participate and no one came to it. ... We made a special effort to include the county in everything but they have not done anything to include us in what they are doing.”

“We’ll never close the doors,” Kitchens said in response. “We will meet with anybody we need to meet with to resolve this water problem.”

Public speculation pointed at the county’s dissent from the Duck River plan as being a power move to gain a seat on the Cullman Utilities Board. The board is made of members appointed by the Cullman City Council and includes the mayor of Cullman and the president of the Cullman City Council. There is no representative from any other water customer, including the city’s largest water customer, Cullman County.

“We are just a customer, we don’t appoint anyone to that board,” Kitchens said. “We don’t have any big input on what they do and until the drought came along that has never been an issue.”

Kitchens said the county is under a contract to buy water from the city and the city is under a contract to supply the county with water. He said he has never been interested in holding a seat on the utilities board.

“I sit on the only board I care to sit on,” he said. “This is not a power struggle with me. ... A lot of people try to pit one entity against another but that is not what this is. The county commission and the city council work for the people who elected us.”

Both Kitchens and Green have agreed to meet in the coming weeks with engineers from both projects to compare updated figures and hopefully agree on a project to move forward with. In the mean time, both city and county governments have urged residents to conserve water to buy more time to allow officials to find the best solution to the water dilemma.

THE KEY PLAYERS

Dale Greer: Was named the Duck River Project Manager in the early ‘90s and was responsible for coordinating legal, environmental and financial communication between engineers, city and county government and the Cullman Utilities Board. Greer is now the Assistant Director of the Cullman Economic Development Agency.

George Spear: Cullman County Commission Chairman during the mid to late 1990s. Spear publicly opposed the Duck River Dam project and instead favored the county’s pursuit of its own water treatment plant and water system. He advocated drawing water from Smith Lake instead of agreeing to the city’s Duck River plan. In 1998, he voted against signing a 30-year contract with the City of Cullman to purchase water and to help fund Duck River. The motion passed 2-1 and the county entered the agreement.

Jack Sides: The Mayor of Cullman from 1992-2000 when the Cullman Morgan Water District was formed. He was the leading figure in city government when Duck River was first proposed.

David Bussman: The present Cullman County Water Superintendent. Bussman supports the Tennessee River Pipeline.

Wiley Kitchens: The current Cullman County Commission Chairman. Kitchens voted to purchase the land on the Tennessee River in order to secure the county’s right to draw water from the river as an additional source.

Donald Green: The current mayor of Cullman. Green took office in 2000 and has openly advocated the Duck River Dam project, saying he feels confident the dam and reservoir will meet the area’s future water needs.