Election-year jitters make Democrats finally pay attention to state’s inadequate rural water infrastructure

NASHVILLE - Are election-year jitters making Democrats in Nashville take note of problems that Democrat Gov. Phil Bredesen has ignored for years?

It certainly looks that way from the 2008 Legislative Agenda released by the House Democrat Caucus in advance of Gov. Bredesen’s Monday “State of the State” speech.

Two months after the Tennessee Republican Party challenged the complete lack of attention paid by Bredesen and his administration to the state’s inadequate rural water infrastructure over the last six years - despite three comprehensive reports by two different state agencies detailing the broad scope of the problem - House Democrats are now promising to “focus on economic development programs including projects designed to bring running water access to remote, rural areas.” 

Last fall, the small town of Orme, Tennessee, in Marion County made national news for having a 3-hour per day water supply while living within miles of the Tennessee River. Monteagle, Tennessee, began mowing its reservoir that due to complete drought and closed the I-24 Visitor’s Center. The center remains closed today. To both of these highly visible situations, Governor Phil Bredesen and the legislative leadership of these communities offered no action and made statements indicating that it wasn’t the state’s job.

Now, displaying a complete turnaround in the House Democrat Caucus release, state Rep. Mike McDonald, a Portland Democrat, is quoted saying, “Water is a necessity of life, not a luxury for those who can afford it. There are too many families in Tennessee who, even in the 21st century, still have no access to running water. That’s unbelievable.”

That certainly contrasts with the “let ‘em drink sand” attitude expressed last year by Gov. Bredesen in the middle of the worst drought to hit Tennessee in decades when he told the Associated Press that he doesn’t see it as the state’s responsibility to repair rural communities’ inadequate water infrastructure.

It also contrasts with the complete lack of attention paid by Bredesen to the state’s inadequate rural water infrastructure over the last six years, despite three comprehensive reports by two different state agencies detailing the scope of the problem, a six-year drought of action that only allowed the problem to grow and become more costly.

A review of reports from the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) in 2001 and 2007 shows that state’s water infrastructure needs have increased by nearly 13 percent across Tennessee under Bredesen’s watch.

TACIR’s 2001 and 2007 editions of the report Building Tennessee’s Tomorrow: Anticipating the State’s Infrastructure Needs estimates that total water infrastructure needs statewide increased from $2.83 billion in April 2001 to $3.19 billion today, an increase of $364 million.

In 2005 the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation issued a separate study, the Tennessee Rural Water Needs Report, which said that more than 112,000 households across Tennessee lack access to a public water system.

The TDEC report put the cost of fixing that problem at $1.7 billion.

The Bredesen administration put less than $2 million into the state’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund in fiscal year 2006.

But after last year’s drought, and after the TRP called attention to Bredesen’s neglect of the state’s water infrastructure, the governor began running around the state handing out federally-funded grants for water infrastructure in an effort to shore up his bad PR on the issue. And now the House Democrats have suddenly discovered the state’s rural water woes.

“The people of Tennessee expect their government to solve problems of this magnitude and import, not neglect them,” said Robin Smith, chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. “Hopefully, the election year will spur a new found awareness among Democrats on illegal immigrants receiving state-funded services, a desire to reduce the sales tax on food and requiring that driver’s license testing be administered in the same language as the road signs, English.”

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GRAND-STANDING GOVERNOR FAILS TO ADDRESS REAL TENNESSEANS’ WATER WOES
- TNGOP.org, November 6, 2007