Cookeville Water Looks to Expand with Record Expenditures

The City of Cookeville Water is projecting a record of $16.17 million in capital expenditures during the new fiscal year.

The largest item in the proposed budget is the $4.32 million expansion of the Cookeville Water Plant. Director Ronnie Kelly said that with plans almost complete, he hopes to get the projected funded and started soon.

“We’re adding 7.5 million gallons of capacity,” Kelly said. “Design is 99.9% finished, and so once we get that finished we’ll be bidding probably at sometime at the end of the month.”

The renovation will allow the plant to pump some 22.5 million gallons of capacity. The budget also includes some $2.6 million to extend sewer to the county’s Fairgrounds property along Tennessee Avenue. Another big ticket item is the remaining $3.2 million to finish work on the sewer plant rehab projects.

Kelly said he hopes the council will dedicate the majority of its $9 million allocation from the federal government’s new COVID relief funds to water and sewer projects.

“My request is to give us some of that money,” Kelly said. “It will go a long way–it goes across the community–everybody uses water, everybody uses sewage in the city limits, so you cover everybody.”

Kelly said that in using the COVID relief money on existing projects, they can be sure they use it before the spending deadline of December 31, 2024.