Southern Middle TN Today News with Tom Price 10-22-26

WKOM/WKRM Radio

Southern Middle Tennessee Today

News Copy for October 22, 2026

All news stories are aggregated from various sources and modified for time and content. Original sources are cited.

We start with local news…

EPA Loans City $272 Million (MSM)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Oct. 2 a $272 million loan to Columbia to expand the city’s water system capacity and reliability.

The loan, through the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act program, or WIFIA, will help the Columbia Water System deliver safe drinking water to direct customers and other water systems.

“Working on this WIFIA Loan with Columbia, Tennessee, has helped advance the Trump EPA’s goal of making sure water is working for Main Street USA,” said Jess Kramer, EPA Assistant Administrator for Water. “Ensuring safe drinking water is critical to supporting growing populations and growing economies like in Columbia. This $272 million WIFIA loan will help us do just that and continues to prove that we can protect public health while bolstering local economies.”

Columbia will use the financing for its Long Term Water Supply Program, which will expand its drinking water system to continue providing water for its growing regional population. The project includes construction of a new raw water intake structure, transmission main and improvements to the existing water treatment plant.

The upgrades will increase drinking water supply reliability for customers and provide water to rural communities within the city’s service area.

“We are proud to proactively take steps to complete this necessary project to ensure the long-term viability of clean drinking water in our region,” said Jack Baxter, Interim CEO and President for Columbia Power & Water Systems (CPWS). “[By] capitalizing on the most advantageous available financing, such as the WIFIA loan, we are locking in future savings for our ratepayers.”

The loan gives Columbia flexibility to customize repayment schedules, saving the city millions over the life of the loan. The project is expected to support jobs during construction and beyond.

WIFIA has approximately $11 billion in flexible financing available to support additional water infrastructure projects across the country. The program can finance up to 80 percent of project costs for small communities and rural areas. The agency recently announced a commitment to waive WIFIA application and credit processing fees to help small communities access funding.

The State WIFIA program has approximately $3 billion available for loans to state infrastructure financing authorities. EPA is currently accepting letters of interest for funding through WIFIA and State WIFIA.

NASA Scientist Returns to CA Alma Mater (MSM)

Dr. Philip Allen, a NASA engineer and Columbia Academy alumnus, returned to his alma mater last Tuesday night to describe his work as deputy chief engineer for the Artemis II mission — and to teach students life lessons drawn from his career.

Artemis II sent a 322-foot rocket around the earth twice, around the moon once and back to earth. The record-setting trip covered just under 700,000 miles in nine days, beating the Apollo 13 mission by only about 4,000 miles. Artemis II reentered the atmosphere at Mach 36, or 36 times the speed of sound.

Allen graduated from Columbia Academy as valedictorian of the class of 1993 and went on to earn engineering degrees from Freed Hardeman University, the University of Memphis and Tennessee Tech, where he earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. He started working at NASA in 2003 as a field technician and supervised about 5,000 NASA engineers when planning his last spaceflight.

“I haven’t been in this auditorium in quite a while,” he told his Columbia Academy audience. “We’re going to talk about the rocket some too, some of you just came to see that, but I’m going to tell you some stories because I think that’s where you really learn life.”

“April 1st, at probably 3:30 in the morning, I walk out of the hotel, TownePlace Suites, where I’d basically been living off and on for the past few months trying to get ready for this launch… with the chief engineer, John Blevins,” he recalled of the day of the launch. “We’ve done this over and over and over again, so in some ways this felt like just another day at work. But it wasn’t, because the rocket on that pad, we were about to load four of our friends into that and send them to the moon… four brave explorers ready to ride the most powerful engine NASA has ever launched.”

Aside from a design error that delayed the flight by a month, Artemis II went off without a hitch, and NASA is already planning Artemis III, a collaboration with SpaceX and Blue Origin, to practice for the moon-landing mission Artemis IV. Allen admitted, however, that it made him nervous to watch his friends climb into a rocket that he felt barely qualified to build and spot-check. Among NASA engineers and even the astronauts, he wasn’t alone.

“At dinner tonight, one of the young people asked about imposter syndrome. I said, ‘Every one of us has imposter syndrome’… You’re going to get put in positions in your life where you’re going to go, ‘Why me? I’m not ready,'” he told his young audience.

“All four astronauts said, ‘We don’t feel like we were ready, that we deserved it.’ Two of the guys said they were going to get each other nameplates to put on their vests, that just said ‘Imposter.’ [But] don’t worry about it. God put you there for a reason.”

Allen acknowledged the role that providence and apparent chance played in his career. When he went to college, he had no idea that mechanical engineering was a degree, much less a career.

“When I went to school, I didn’t even know what an engineer was… I knew people said you’re good at math and you’re good at science, so you need to be an engineer,” he recalled. “God worked in that path for me to get to work at NASA. He opened some doors that I never could have dreamed of. And when God does that for you, you just have to be willing to walk through them.”

He later heard about a graduate fellowship opportunity to work for NASA and applied for it at the recommendation of his major professor.

“I applied for that, and I promptly did not get it. I said, ‘Well, that was a good try,'” he smiled. “About 6 weeks later, they called me and said, ‘Never mind, you got it’… Anyway, that’s how I ended up at NASA. Somebody was looking out for me.

Allen told the students to seek out both good mentors and challenges that would push them to realize their potential. At the encouragement of an early work mentor, Mike Prince, Allen moved on from field technical work to a “detail” as a deputy chief engineer for liquid rocket engines. His performance there got him noticed, so that he was invited to work in the Chief Engineer’s office. When his later and more complex jobs overtaxed his powers or overwhelmed him with their stakes, Allen would call another mentor, chief engineer Terry Prickett.

“All of life is a job interview. I had no idea at the time… but apparently I didn’t mess it up too bad because they asked me to come back… I would never have ended up there talking to you today if it wasn’t for Mike Prince. Listen to good mentors,” he said. “And when you listen to them, choose the hard thing… Choose to do the thing that when you’re my age, you’ll look back on it and say, ‘I used what God gave me.'”

Allen also urged his young audience to prepare for the work they want, to take risks, to learn to communicate and do interpersonal “politics,” and above all to be themselves. He told self-described “introverts,” like himself and most engineers, that their natural reserve not only calms down communication and decision-making at high-stakes moments, but also makes people listen all the more to the information they choose to share.

“Young people, I especially want you to listen to this one: don’t try to be somebody else. Even as an adult, I learned from my mentors, I learned from other people. I learned from some great people at NASA. When I got this job, the chief engineer John Blevins said, ‘I’m not hiring you to be another John Blevins. I’m hiring you to be Phil Allen,'” he said. “[Blevins] has a very different personality [and experiences] than I do, we balance each other… [So] be the best version of you that God created. Don’t try to be somebody else.”

“How do you glorify God through engineering?” asked one of his last questioners.

“Excellent question,” Allen replied. “You need to be conscious of it, every day in every way, to make sure He gets the glory, and you need to be intentional with that. When you talk to people, you need to talk in terms that He’s glorified… With this mission I was praying that God would allow people to see their planet in a way that they might not have thought about it in a while: that they would see how fragile it is, that… all of us are here in this together, and why in the world are we fighting each other all the time? And why don’t we love each other more with this beautiful [world] that He’s given us?”

250th Lecture (MSM)

Dr. Learotha Williams presented his lecture “The Long Road to Freedom” on Oct. 10 as part of a yearlong series marking the United States’ 250th anniversary.

Williams said his purpose was to move beyond thinking about the Civil Rights Movement as something that occurred only in the 1960s.

“As soon as people of African descent arrived here in this country and they saw how things were going to play out, they actively tried to make their lives and experiences better,” he said.

The series is part of the Maury 250 Commemoration Committee’s programming. It is funded with a grant from the Tennessee Commission for the United States Semiquincentennial, administered by the Tennessee State Museum, as part of Tennessee America 250. The Maury County 250th Committee includes representatives from the African American Heritage Society of Maury County, Columbia State Community College/History Department, Maury County Archive, Maury County Historical Society and the Spring Hill Library.

Williams began with the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The Constitution “laid out freedom in a way that other historical documents had not before,” he said, but it was still flawed because the same rights and privileges did not apply to people of African descent, Native Americans and women. He pointed to the 20-year protection for the slave trade, the counting of African Americans as three-fifths of a person for taxation and representation, and provisions concerning enslaved people who escaped into free territory.

He discussed Elizabeth Freeman, an African American woman living in Massachusetts who challenged her status in the courts in 1781, and Richard Allen, who was born into slavery, purchased his freedom and became a minister. After Allen and his followers experienced discrimination while worshiping in a white church, they created their own denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Williams emphasized the continuing importance of churches to the civil-rights struggle.

“Our churches become crucibles for Black leadership,” he said, pointing to leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Bernard Lafayette and C.T. Vivian.

He also discussed the Colored Conventions, which began as early as 1830. Primarily free Black men and ministers, among them Frederick Douglass and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, met across the country to discuss “what a civil and equal society would look like.”

In Maury County in 1830, more than 9,000 people were enslaved, approximately 99 percent of the county’s Black population. Williams chose 1830 for a reason: 35 years later the Civil War, which Williams called “a chapter in the struggle for equality,” would be over.

“This group would be really the first group of African Americans in this county that are pushing for civil rights,” he said.

Roughly 180,000 African-Americans fought for the Union in some capacity. Reconstruction brought the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery; the 14th Amendment, which made Black people citizens; and the 15th Amendment, which gave Black men the right to vote. Williams also discussed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875.

“We see progress being made, but it’s not always linear,” he said. “You might take a step forward, then two steps back.”

Williams noted the efforts against “Jim Crow” laws as further evidence that the struggle for civil rights began long before the 1960s.

“Jim Crow was, first of all, was perfected in the North before it comes to the South afterwards,” he said, referencing the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson. “But nonetheless, it’s most visible here in the South, in that we see it manifest itself in various real ways.”

To remind the audience that segregation is not ancient history, Williams described how the railroad tracks divided the community in his hometown of Tallahassee. Those living north of the tracks were typically white, while those south of the tracks were typically Black. He also recalled visiting a segregated cemetery in Columbia with a fence running through the middle of it.

“I was born in a segregated hospital,” he said, “and I don’t consider myself to be an old man at all.”

Moving into the modern Civil Rights Movement, Williams identified Charles Hamilton Houston, who became dean of the law school at Howard University, as its “architect.” Houston told his students to challenge Jim Crow by showing that Southern states could not meet the “separate but equal” standard established in Plessy v. Ferguson.

Among those lawyers were Thurgood Marshall and Z. Alexander Looby. Williams emphasized Looby’s importance to Tennessee and Columbia and his role as the lead attorney in the case following the 1946 racial conflict in Columbia. After spending considerable time studying NAACP records, including what Looby and Marshall wrote, Williams found that Marshall, who was sick at the time, credited Looby by name “for making things go the way they did here in Columbia.”

Williams concluded by asking people to preserve their own histories. By saving those stories, he said, people can give a fuller account of history and “discover the progress we’ve made from the Constitutional Convention to today,” while also paying attention to where the nation has stumbled so that “we can learn to do better.”

“Talk to your grandkids, your nieces and your nephews, and let them get you on video or tape,” he said.

Maury Regional Drug Take-Back (Press Release)

Maury Regional Health, in partnership with the Maury County Sheriff’s Office and Maury County Prevention Coalition, will host a free drug take-back event Saturday, Oct. 24, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., offering community members a safe and anonymous way to dispose of expired, unused or unneeded prescription medications.

A drive-thru drop-off will be available in the Building B parking lot on the Maury Regional Medical Center (MRMC) campus at 1222 Trotwood Ave. in Columbia. Members of MRMC’s security team and the Maury County Sheriff’s Office will collect medications directly from vehicles for proper disposal. The service is free and anonymous, with no personal information required.

The event will also feature family-friendly activities hosted by the Maury County Prevention Coalition and Maury County Sheriff’s Office, including face painting, a slide and a free lunch of grilled hot dogs.

The drug take-back will be held rain or shine. Family activities will be available weather permitting.

“We are pleased to once again offer our community a convenient and safe way to dispose of unused, expired or unneeded medications,” said Scott Nations, MRMC security director. “We encourage residents to take advantage of this important opportunity.”

Proper disposal of unused or unwanted medications can help prevent accidental poisoning and misuse while also helping protect the environment.

Only medications in pill or patch form will be accepted. Items should remain in their original containers, if possible. Liquids, needles and sharps cannot be accepted.

For more information, contact the Maury Regional Medical Center Security Department at 931.381.1111, ext. 4327.

Spring Hill License Kiosk (MauryCountySource)

The Spring Hill Police Department has introduced a new Driver License Self-Service Kiosk in the lobby of its headquarters at 800 Hathaway Blvd. The kiosk is open to all Tennessee residents—regardless of county—and offers a convenient alternative to visiting the DMV.

Available Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., the kiosk allows users to:

* Renew a driver license

* Obtain a duplicate license or state ID

* Change their address

* Pay reinstatement fees in full

The kiosk does not accept cash or checks; payment must be made using a credit or debit card.

No appointment is necessary. For more information about the service, visit www.tn.gov/content/tn.

And now, Your Hometown Memorials, Sponsored by Oakes & Nichols Funeral Home…

Mrs. Nancy Susan Cromwell Wiser, 80, a longtime resident of Columbia died Friday, October 9, 2026, at Maury Regional Medical Center. A memorial service will be conducted Friday, October 23, at 5:00 PM at Oakes & Nichols Funeral Home. The family will visit with friends from 3:00 PM until 5:00 PM at the funeral home.

And now, news from around the state…

Environmental Law Study Questions Boring Co. (Tennessean)

The Boring Company's plans to tunnel beneath Nashville could trigger sinkholes and spread toxic contamination through the city's groundwater, a new report warns.

The report, released Oct. 21 by the Southern Environmental Law Center, raises concerns about the risks of digging through Nashville's porous limestone bedrock, where water has dissolved underground caves and voids known as karst formations.

Chris Groves, a hydrogeologist at Western Kentucky University who authored the report, found that Boring Co.'s planned Music City Loop tunnels would encounter karst-prone rock beneath the Cumberland River, Mill Creek and other waterways, despite the company's stated intention to avoid such formations.

The report also raises concerns about tunneling near the former Aladdin Industries site on Murfreesboro Pike, where soil and groundwater have been contaminated with industrial chemicals, including the carcinogen trichloroethylene.

Trey Bussey, an attorney with SELC, said the company's lack of transparency has left unanswered questions about how it plans to manage those risks and who would be responsible if something goes wrong.

"We don't know what happens if a tunneling machine gets stuck under Mill Creek, what happens if there's a sinkhole in a downtown street that interferes with traffic and undermines the structural integrity of buildings along the route," Bussey said. "Who pays to fix that?"

The Boring Co. did not respond to a request for comment. The company publicly acknowledged Nashville's geological challenges in 2025 and developed a karst mitigation plan, according to documents obtained through a records request. CEO Steve Davis described the city's geology as "an engineering problem that's fairly easy and straightforward to solve."

In a 2025 environmental impact assessment, the company concluded that tunneling would not significantly affect Nashville's geology, endangered species, air quality or other key resources. The assessment stated that the company will "attempt to avoid tunnel boring in areas where karst development is identified."

But the SELC report challenges those assurances, finding that portions of the planned route cannot avoid karst-prone rock.

Geologists have likened the karst layers of rock under Nashville to Swiss cheese, with underground caves and voids that can pose significant challenges for tunneling projects.

"There is extensive literature that describes sometimes severe karst-related problems that in other tunneling projects have included massive water or mud inflow and flooding, sinkholes and ground subsidence above the tunneling, and machine entrapment with 'stuck' (boring machines)," Groves said in the SELC report.

Currently, The Boring Co. has two sets of tunnels planned, and once they are completed, drivers will transport passengers through them in a setup similar to rideshare. The first set of two one-way tunnels will run 9.5 miles from downtown Nashville to Nashville International Airport under 8th Avenue South and Murfreesboro Pike, and the second will run 2.9 miles from West End down Broadway and under the river to Nissan Stadium.

While The Boring Co. intends to avoid known karst formations, Groves warned that underground cavities can be difficult to detect before excavation, particularly when exploratory boreholes are spaced roughly 500 feet apart.

The company's mitigation plan outlined how it would identify and respond to underground hazards through drilling, geophysical testing and probing ahead of its tunneling machines. But Groves found that the plan provides little explanation for its methods or how they draw on lessons from previous tunneling projects in similar geological conditions.

A separate report by a company contractor assessed the risk of encountering karst formations as "low to moderate." But Groves identified several large underground cavities near the planned airport route, including one measuring 13.5 feet — roughly the diameter of the proposed tunnels — and a cave with passages measuring up to 30-by-40 feet.

Encountering underground cavities filled with water or mud can flood tunnels, damage boring machines and bring construction to a halt, according to a 2017 study cited by Groves.

Geological researcher Bin Liu warned that failing to identify karst formations before excavation can lead to severe consequences, including collapsing rock and sudden water inflows.

"In the worst case, it will end up with heavy casualties and serious economic losses, or, even worse, with construction cessation or rerouting of the current underground construction," Liu wrote in the study published in the Journal of Applied Geophysics.

Final Story of the Day (Maury County Source)

Former Eagles guitarist Don Felder will make an appearance at Gibson Garage Nashville on Friday, Oct. 23, for a special interview and fan meet-and-greet.

Felder, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame guitarist, will be interviewed on the Gibson Garage stage at 3 p.m., followed by a meet-and-greet at 4 p.m. Gibson Garage is located at 209 10th Ave. S. inside Cummins Station and serves as the guitar company’s global flagship store. It regularly hosts free performances, artist appearances and special events.

Best known for his years as lead guitarist of the Eagles, Felder co-wrote the band’s iconic hit “Hotel California” and performed its memorable guitar solo alongside Joe Walsh.

His solo career includes the albums Airborne, Road to Forever, American Rock ’n’ Roll and The Vault (Fifty Years of Music). Felder is also a New York Times bestselling author and continues to tour and record music.