Published: June 13, 2006 02:04 pm            

VAW rejects county offer

Rejection letter to be sent this week

WEST POINT — The Vinemont-Anon-West Point Water Board decided not to accept a proposal to merge with the Cullman County Water Department, but made no official motion during a special meeting held Monday.

According to Chairman James Graves, a letter rejecting the offer will be sent to the county sometime this week.

Graves also indicated the issue could come up again, but made no estimate as to when.

During the 90-minute meeting, he took a large portion of the time to explain how the offer came to be and why it was rejected.

According to Graves, the county asked to meet with members of VAW to discuss the system’s plans for the future.

During that meeting, he said he and board member Calvin Whittle presented an offer to provide the county with treated water, at a lesser rate than the county buys from the city of Cullman.

That water was reportedly to come from the West Morgan-East Lawrence Water Authority, which Graves said had made the offer to sell large volumes of water to VAW earlier.

Despite the cheaper rate and large water resource, he said County Commission Chairman Wiley Kitchens and the county water department director David Bussman rejected the offer from VAW.

Kitchens confirmed that in a previous interview.

While unsure of who brought the matter up, he said the idea of a merger was discussed then, and that he asked for a letter to present to the board for consideration.

“I expected a letter, and instead, what I received was this very limited agreement type thing,” Graves said, indicating the proposed agreement that was obtained by The Cullman Times more than a week ago.

Graves emphasized that the meeting was informal and that no obligations were made when explaining why he had not made the information public earlier.

Whittle also made a comment to the board about his involvement in the matter, saying while he originally thought a merger could be a positive move for the system, he had since reconsidered.

“Seemingly, the county wants to do one thing, but we’re in a different situation than they are,” he said, indicating VAW’s access to West Morgan-East Lawrence water, which he said could provide all of VAW’s water requirements if the need arose.

Currently, VAW gets approximately 30 percent of its water from the out-of-county source. At that rate, he said the system should not need to make changes for five to 10 years.

“For right now, I’m going to back off,” he said.

Together, Graves and Whittle painted a fairly uncertain picture of water resources for the area.

Calling the Duck River Dam project a “Dead Duck,” Graves said he thought many entities including the county and the city were looking for alternative water sources.

“Lake Catoma cannot continue to be the city’s primary water source,” Graves said.

Reportedly, at the current rate of growth, the city of Cullman and the entities it sells water to are expected to exceed the capacity of Lake Catoma in an estimated 20 years.

While the Duck River Dam project was supposed to make up the difference and several entities — including the county — already signed onboard in 1998, environmental concerns and court litigation has held the project up.

According Woody Jacobs, Cullman City Council President, court proceedings have since been closed, and the city is now awaiting a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

If that permit is granted, the city will have to re-evaluate the project, he said.

According to Jacobs, they are also looking at other alternatives, such as the Tennessee River and the Decatur Water Authority.

In any case, contracts with city’s customers, who signed on to help pay for the project, will have to be re-negotiated.

According to Graves the county, too, has also been looking into building a pipeline to the Tennessee River to buy raw water or to Decatur to buy finished water.

Whittle indicated that there is also a possibility the county may be looking into building it’s own water treatment plant.

In the meantime, both Whittle and Graves indicated they feared any action taken by the city or the county to provide additional water resources would create such a large debt to complete that the rates would be unaffordable for the small system.

In that case, the idea of a merger is likely to come up again, but it is not clear with whom.

While any merger must be approved by the VAW membership, it is possible that the board may discuss the issue again behind closed doors.

According to Graves, it would be impossible to conduct all business in open meetings. Similarly, he said the board does not have to notify the public when it holds a closed meeting or executive session since it is a private company, not a government entity, meaning sunshine laws do not apply.

“To get work done, to plan, to talk and all that, (you can’t). Otherwise, you’d have 15 to 20 people in here asking questions. ‘Well, what do you want to do that for? Well, what about this and that?’” he said. “You could never make any progress. You’d have to have some peace and quiet to work in.”

After the meeting closed, Whittle responded to questions about why he did not return calls made by The Times requesting comment on the aforementioned document.

According to Whittle, while he received the calls, he was “under heavy medication” at the time and his doctor told him not to respond.

“I really didn’t have any information that would have been of benefit, or I would have discussed it with you,” he said. “There’s some people down there that said some things that wasn’t too kosher.”

The issue of a VAW-county merger arose over a week ago when The Times obtained proposed document between the two entities.

According to an attached cover letter, the issue was to be voted on by the board in an executive session.

VAW board member Zane Hill confirmed the document’s authenticity and said informal talks had been conducted between the county and VAW board members.

The news came on the heals of claims by Graves and Kitchens that no talks were being conducted.

When the document turned up though, they confirmed the talks, but indicated they were completely informal and did not necessitate release to the public.

In addition, while the source of the document was originally unclear, with Kitchens and Graves both claiming the other entity had written it, Kitchens later stated that it was in fact written by county attorney Dan Willingham.

Blaming his error on a miscommunication, he said the document, which he called “a letter of intent,” was written without his knowledge.

Willingham confirmed the statement.

Hill was not present for Monday’s special meeting.

        

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