Cumberland County Mayor Allen Foster has approved the merger between the Crab Orchard Utility District and the Cumberland Plateau Water Authority.
Foster said he and several other local entities created the Cumberland Plateau Water Authority to address the water concerns on the Cumberland Plateau. Foster said he believes this first merger agreement is generationally transformative.
“This is something that my grandkids kids are gonna benefit from having a water source and water supply that they don’t even have to hopefully worry about,” Foster said. “So it’s something that if you are looking at it this moment right now you may not see it, but if you look at it, it’s a transformative thing that’s gonna mean so much to the near and distant future.”
Foster said the idea of the authority was to bring together multiple water providers to address future water needs.
With the Crab Orchard merger approved, all eyes will turn to Crossville. Foster said he will not push a Crossville merger forward, but instead let Crossville decide as they see fit.
“It’s up to them entirely that you know they are their own entity, and I think everybody understands that we have talked with them some,” Foster said. “Before, like I said, it was the former city mayor James Mayberry that, he was one of the powers behind this that started the talk, so I think it behooves us in some way to work together. I think the city sees that too, I’m sure, and at some point we will figure out what that is.”
Foster said change is hard, and so getting other utility districts to join has been a slow process. Foster said the private act does not mandate utilities to come together but empowers them to do so.
“They can come together with lots of different ways of working together from a full-blown merger to just other ways to pull resources and to plan and to do these things, so it’s not meant to be a threatening private act, it gives people to do something with thought, with a little forethought,” Foster said.
The Crab Orchard Utility District and the Cumberland Plateau Water Authority will officially merge on May 26.
