News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Cookeville’s water department is negotiating a purchase of the rights to serve water to a portion of Double Springs Utility District’s customers.
The purchase would include around 490 Double Springs’ customers located in the city limits of Cookeville. Cookeville Director of Water and Sewer Ronnie Kelly said said he delivered the latest version of the contract to Double Springs this week.
“In our current co-sale contract with the Double Springs Utility District, we have a provision that we can buy portion of customers inside their boundaries of their service area within the city of Cookeville,” Kelly said.
Kelly said Cookeville and Double Springs verbally agreed to the purchase but need to complete a contract with an exact price before completing the process. If Double Springs’ board signs, Kelly said the next step is to present the contract to Cookeville’s City Council to approve the purchase.
“You have people inside the city limits of Cookeville that we’re not able to provide services to,” Kelly said. “Our water rates would be cheaper than a customer outside the city limits. The city has a had a push to acquire those customers since they are in the city limits and benefit from those lower rates.”
Kelly said the purchase includes all meters and water lines of the customers. Cookeville already provides Double Springs water through a whole sale contract. Kelly said Cookeville would not absorb any of the employees of Double Springs.
“After we do that, we are going to go out there and replace a lot of those lines,” Kelly said. “We got to be able to provide fire protection, so we will be doing quite a few upgrades.”
Kelly said negations with Double Springs started around the late 90’s. The purchase of customers is not related to the March tornadoes that hit the Double Springs area.
