Water Authority Makes Progress

The Fannin County Water Authority held its regularly scheduled meeting on Wednesday, October 16, 2013.The meeting begin by coming to order and a unanimous decision to approve the September 18th meeting minutes.

After the motion to approve the minutes was carried, Chairman Mike Queen said

“Today we have good news. We are digging and laying water lines in the Forge Mill area”.

The CDBG project was then discussed by county water employee, Ed Hawkins. He explained that the project was moving slowly right now because of the extraordinarily large rock that is under the surface of the ground.

“While most of it is coming up, we are having some issues in different places”

he said. In the problematic places, the ditch for the water line will be bedded with smooth gravel to keep the movement in the lines from rubbing a hole in the line as time goes on.

The engineer on the project stated that they expect the project to move quicker after this first part because that’s where all of the rock is that is causing the problem.

The government shutdown has directly affected Fannin with the My Mountain water project. With the shutdown of the USDA, the letter sent to them that included revised plans for the project has just been bouncing around with UPS. Once the office is reopened, it is expected to be delivered. After the easement acquisitions are complete by county attorney, Lynn Doss, there will be a 30 day advertising period before bids can be acquired.

After discussing the two projects, the board was presented with a bid from the billing company called Arista. Representative, Sam McGill gave some information about the company and explained that Arista is owned by an electrical co-op group that serves multiple utility companies including Tri-State EMC. The company is just a billing company and does not provide software for the billing process. Essentially, Arista is set up to receive a data file and to generate the bill then mail it out. According to McGill, they mail out over 8 million utility bills a year.

The Fannin County Water Authority plan on making a decision regarding Arista at a later date, when the My Mountain water project is closer to completion.

The next regularly scheduled meeting will be held on Wednesday, November 18, 2013. FYN will be there to bring you the latest developments on the My Mountain water project and much more!