News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Plans to extend waterlines to parts of Western Putnam County will have to wait a little longer.
That’s because the state has declined Putnam County’s $600,000 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) application. Mayor Randy Porter said the county wanted to use the funding for adding new lines to Shaw Branch and McBroom Branch Road in the Martins Creek area.
“We are growing and booming so much that it makes it difficult for us to get these grants. Most of the counties getting CDBG grants have less growth and lower incomes,” Porter said. “We weren’t approved for the project, and one of the reasons was because the area we’re trying to reach is scarcely populated. Even though we were going to run two or three miles of waterline, there wasn’t enough houses for it to have enough points on the grant system.”
Porter had also recommended extending waterlines to Green Mountain Road, which runs off Brotherton Mountain Road in the Eastern end of the county. He said the county will seek other grant opportunities for the proposed projects.
“We have our engineer looking at what other ways we could do it. We’re even looking at coming in the back way from Jackson County. Maybe a joint project with Jackson County, where they could feed the project from the back so we would not have to come off the mountain,” Porter said. “That will be the process we will be going through this winter.”
The Putnam County Commission voted to apply for the CDBG grant in January. At the time, Porter estimated that 700 plus addresses in Putnam County did not have access to public utility water.
