Southern Middle TN Today News with Tom Price 4-1-26

WKOM/WKRM Radio

Southern Middle Tennessee Today

News Copy for April 1, 2026

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

Lumber Liquidators to Headquarter in Lawrenceburg (CDH)

Lumber Liquidators will relocate its corporate headquarters and warehousing operations to Lawrenceburg, according to Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development.

The announcement was made March 31, backed by Gov. Bill Lee and Deputy Gov. and Department of Economic Community Development Commissioner Stuart C. McWhorter.

The company, based in Richmond, Virginia, will create 76 jobs and invest $32.4 million in Lawrence County in southern Middle Tennessee.

“Tennessee’s business climate is strengthened by the trusted brands that choose to call the Volunteer State home, and I am proud to welcome Lumber Liquidators to Lawrenceburg," Lee said. "This relocation will create greater opportunity for families across the region, and our highly skilled workforce will serve their business well.”

The relocation is estimated to improve the company's supply chain operations by aligning shipping schedules and distribution efforts with Lumber Liquidators' parent company, F9 Brands, which currently operates in Lawrenceburg under the brand, Cabinets to Go.

“Cabinets To Go has been a valued member of our state for nearly a decade, and F9 Brands’ decision to relocate Lumber Liquidators to Lawrenceburg reflects the company’s continued confidence in Tennessee’s business climate," Commissioner McWhorter said. "Our state is recognized nationally for its low-tax environment, skilled workforce and strong alignment among stakeholders, and this announcement further strengthens that reputation.”

Founded in Boston in 1993 as a seller of all types of building materials, Lumber Liquidators now operates more than 200 stores across the U.S. specializing in hardwood flooring.

“After moving our Cabinets To Go distribution and headquarters to Lawrenceburg in 2016, we found Tennessee to be a great place to operate a growing business," founder and chairman Tom Sullivan said.

"We are excited to now add Lumber Liquidators national distribution to the area, which will bring our two brands together into one location, providing greater operational efficiency and allowing us to continue to offer customers the best price on cabinets and flooring. We are proud to deepen our ties to Tennessee and look forward to growing along with our neighbors here in Lawrenceburg.”

MCWS Working on Pipeline (MSM)

Work continues apace on Maury County Water System’s latest major project: a six-mile pipeline that will transport three million gallons each day (MGD) of treated water to their customers.

Maury County Water started searching for a source of additional water in 2016. In 2023, Shultz said, one particular project idea began to emerge as the fastest and cheapest: buying water from the Hillsboro, Burwood & Thompson’s Station Utility District (HB&TS), which was capable of treating and shipping an additional 3 MGD of Cumberland River water on top of what their customers were already using.

“We’ve had a long-standing, good relationship with HB&TS and their General Manager Cody Lovett, we’ve had water lines next to each other on Highway 431 for many years,” Shultz said. “Just by contacting them, looking at possibilities… it grew into a contract and project.”

MCWS locked in the total price of the pipeline, easements and installation at about $14 million. A windfall against this already low price came in the form of an American Rescue Plan grant, arranged with TDEC, for $7.76 million, covering more than half the cost of the project.

The MCWS pipeline will tie into HB&TS’s water line near the intersection of SR-431 and I-65, then run south along the highway through Williamson County for six miles.

“The pipeline will benefit and be utilized by everyone along the way, which has made it [relatively] quick and painless [to pass through] the many private front yards and pastures on the east side of Highway 431,” Shultz said. “This has made the project mutually beneficial for both utilities… [it’s] an added benefit of buying and transporting potable water.”

Construction is being handled by Hawkins & Price, a firm with a good working relationship with MCWS.

“They install a lot of potable water line, sewer line, storm drain,” Shultz relayed. “They’ve been around for a long time, very good contractor. They’ve actually done projects for Maury County Water.”

The work itself is laborious: so far their workers have had to bore under the interstate, dig up and replace segments of well-traveled roads that intersect with SR-431, break up subterranean rock, use a machine pump to keep a creek flowing as they cross it,. Work on the pipeline began in November, and Shultz expects it to be finished, online and shipping potable water in September 2026.

“It might not be the largest [project in our history], but it’s up there with our larger projects for sure,” the superintendent confirmed.

MCWS has been busy keeping up with growth, recently finishing installation of 10-inch water lines and a new pump station, working to lay a 16-inch pipe under Beechcroft Road and beside Gravel Hill Road and designing a 2 MGD water-storage tank served by 18-inch pipes.

“Everything else that we have right now are [serving] developments,” Schultz said. “MCWS will continue exploring every possibility for additional water supply to serve Maury County.”

Residential Development on Old Monsanto Property (MSM)

The Maury County Planning Commission was presented for the first time with a long-rumored development proposal which was contested by public commenters.

Barge Design Solutions staff unveiled plans for Crosswaters, a planned community on 1,339 acres of the former Monsanto campus in Santa Fe. Certified Planner Ron Yearwood and project manager Ian Jay presented the plan as a concept, not seeking the Planning Commission’s approval for any particular part of it.

“We’re proposing… ecological and economic renewal,” Jay said.

The Crosswaters Planned Unit Development would feature approximately 1,300 housing units, a hotel, retail and a golf course and resort. They estimated a 20-year economic impact of $5.1 billion, 1,500 jobs created paying out $932 million in wages and tens of millions in development fees and sales, hotel and property taxes for the county.

“The vision is to create a destination, not just a subdivision… a live-work-play environment, rather than a single-use development,” added Yearwood.

The real attraction at Crosswaters would come from preserving 982 acres of land and the 325-acre body of water now popularly known as “Monsanto Lake” for profitable use, recreation and environmental preservation. The Barge representatives proposed to draw the development’s water, in case CPWS couldn’t deliver on its conditional-availability letter, from the lake, which they claim holds a billion gallons now and could hold up to 4.4 billion with the correct modifications.

Though the Monsanto Corporation mined and processed elemental phosphorus and other substances on its Santa Fe campus from the 1930s to the 1980s, the Barge representatives pointed out that the portion of the campus under review was put to agricultural and residential use long before industrial, and the character of the area continues to make it fit for its old uses. In 2007 TDEC restricted the possible uses for the site, though it was never put on the federal list of Superfund sites.

In 2022 Barge Design was brought in to conduct “phase one” environmental assessments of the 1,339 acres now proposed for Crosswaters. Since then, they’ve taken a total of 1,725 soil samples, one groundwater sample, six sediment samples, six surface water samples and 42 other water samples from the 325-acre body of water.

Monsanto Lake, which Yearwood and Jay proposed as “the reservoir” of the development, once served as a “tailings pond” where Monsanto dumped the clay-like byproducts of phosphorus refinement. Local attorney Ashley Posey later called it “Tailings Pond 15” during her public comment, and Apple Maps currently labels it as “Monsanto Number Fifteen Lake.” Jay described the tailings dumped in the pond as “fine-grained soils, washed dirt, silts and clays [with] high water content.”

“No significant findings were discovered after conducting extensive site investigations, property evaluations and environmental samplings,” Barge announced in the Crosswaters concept plan, which claims that the old “Monsanto Lake” has lower concentrations of metals and suspended solids than the EPA allows in tap water. “[In fact], the results of the sampling determined the water quality of the discharge [from the reservoir] to be equivalent or superior to the quality of the Duck River.”

In response to Barge’s testing, TDEC lifted the environmental restrictions on that tract of the old Monsanto property in 2024 and made a “brownfield voluntary agreement” with the developer. In a 2025 letter to Maury County Commission Mike Kuzawinski, Deputy Director Evan Spann explained that back in the day, Monsanto only investigated pollution in the acreage south of the Duck River, not the 1,339 acres north of the River set aside for Crosswaters, though Monsanto Lake was known to be a tailings pond.

“The largest tailings pond at the Monsanto site (pond number 15) was almost 200 feet deep in settled clay [tailings],” Spann wrote. However, “Pond 15 or Monsanto Lake… is located on the north side of the Duck River and was not associated with any phosphorous processing, [so] it was never considered part of the site during investigation but was included in the [use restrictions] recorded in 2007.”

Posey and Dustin Kittle, two environmental attorneys whose 160-acre ranch adjoins the proposed Crosswaters site, challenged not only the suitability of Crosswaters for the area, but also the accuracy of Barge’s testing.

“Tailings Pond Number 15 is not a ‘reservoir,’ it is a tailings pond,” Posey said. “They want to turn this legacy industrial waste pond into a recreational reservoir and use the water for irrigation, recreation, etc.”

During her research, Posey found that the EPA’s 1982 investigation of the Santa Fe site discovered radioactive uranium-238, thorium-232, lead-210 and polonium-210 in ponds on the property, and that Monsanto’s own internal documents mention “large volumes of PCBs at this plant from the 1940s to the 1980s.”

“I don’t believe [their statement that they tested for PCBs] because I believe [Monsanto Lake] would show PCBs, and nothing in their 2024 report [mentions] PCBs, dioxins or anything,” she said. “I haven’t seen anything in all of TDEC’s files or what they published online about PCBs.”

Meanwhile, she claimed that Barge’s own 2022 tests detected barium, chromium, lead and phosphorus, and that they didn’t test for all of the common phosphorus byproducts, nor in the most contaminated places.

“Composite sampling detected potential hotspots: the 2022 phase one [tests] detected barium, chromium and lead in the sediment,” she claimed at the meeting. “The June 2024 evaluation omits sediment samplings entirely. Sampling locations were shifted away from the source and towards diluted points. No analyses were done for PCBs, dioxins, asbestos, radionuclides or the full heavy-metal panel in 2024.”

Posey also noted that neither she nor her neighbors had received any notice when the hazard rating of the property was downgraded in 2024, though the developer was required to send notice of this by state law. She ended her filing by asking the Planning Commission to deny approval when Crosswaters would later come before them, and that the relevant authorities demand independent and more comprehensive tests.

“TDEC is captured, there is no question about it,” Kittle claimed, pointing out that Barge hired Bass, Berry & Sims, a law firm with a former TDEC deputy commissioner on staff. “Think of how you might get preferential treatment when it comes to getting certain things permitted through TDEC.”

“[At the beginning of my career in liability prevention], I evaluated plants exactly like this one,” he continued. “If… one of our clients asked, ‘Could we potentially turn that into a residential site?’, I would’ve said, ‘You have lost your mind. You will ultimately kill people.'”

Kittle hypothesized that Crosswaters wasn’t a serious proposal, and that it was meant to widen the window of possibility so that a landfill or other industrial use would seem relatively plausible.

“This is not a serious proposal,” he said. “They’re putting this out there to try to make people concerned, [then] circle back to something.”

“Who actually is the ownership of this company?” Planning Commissioner Peder Jensen asked owner representative Reed Martz earlier in the meeting. “Tell me a little bit about who we’re actually dealing with… Is it at all connected to Trinity [Business Group]?”

“Yes, there is some connection between Crosswaters and Trinity,” Martz confirmed, without specifying.

Trinity Group has previously attempted to build a landfill and other waste management facilities near the property in question.

Salon Grand Opening (WKOM Audio 1:33)

Yesterday, a new salon held their grand opening in downtown Columbia. Front Porch Radio’s Delk Kennedy stopped by the ribbon cutting for Sela Salon and spoke to the proprietor Dacey Delk to learn what the new business offers its customers…

City Acquires Traffic Barriers (Press Release)

The City of Columbia is further strengthening public safety at community events with the acquisition of 18 portable traffic safety barriers designed to protect pedestrians and deter vehicles from entering crowded public spaces.

The barriers were funded through the State of Tennessee’s Violent Crime Intervention Fund (VCIF) grant awarded to the City in December 2025, supporting ongoing efforts to enhance public safety citywide.

“These VCIF grant funds allow us to take a proactive approach to public safety,” said Police Chief Jeremy Haywood. “By investing in equipment like these barriers, we are better equipped to protect our residents and visitors.”

These barriers are engineered to stop vehicles weighing between 5,000 and 12,000 pounds traveling at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour, bringing them to a halt within 7 to 10 feet. Their “Drop and Stop” design allows for quick manual setup and easy relocation, making them a versatile solution for a variety of applications.

City Manager Tony Massey said, “The safety of our residents and visitors remains a top priority. These barriers provide an added layer of protection at community events.”

The barriers are well suited to secure entry points and roadways at public gatherings. They will be deployed at some of Columbia’s most well-attended events, including First Fridays in downtown Columbia, helping ensure safe and enjoyable experiences for all attendees.

Public Works Director Jeff DeWire said, “These barriers are a practical and effective tool for our crews, designed for quick deployment while enhancing safety for both the public and staff.”

This investment reflects Columbia’s continued commitment to public safety and to supporting a secure, vibrant community.

MRMG Opens Retail Pharmacy (Press Release)

On March 27, Maury Regional Health celebrated the grand opening of its new retail pharmacy location now open and serving patients at the Maury Regional Medical Plaza in Columbia.

Designed with patients’ health and convenience in mind, the new location offers streamlined pharmacy services for the community, patients and employees of Maury Regional Health. The opening of the Medical Plaza pharmacy location marks another milestone in the health system’s ongoing commitment to providing expert care that is both accessible and seamless for patients.

“The opening of this new full-service outpatient pharmacy in our Medical Plaza further strengthens the continuity of care we provide,” said Maury Regional Health CEO Martin Chaney, MD. “By offering these services in the same building where many patients already receive care, we are making it easier for them to fill prescriptions following their appointments. This helps to support timely medication use, improve adherence to treatment plans and ultimately contribute to a smoother recovery process. As always, our objective is to remove barriers and to deliver truly seamless, patient-centered care.”

Located at 854 W. James Campbell Blvd., Suite 102, the Maury Regional Health Pharmacy offers full prescription services along with a wide variety of over-the-counter medications and home-delivery options. The location is designed to simplify the process of managing ongoing medication needs while providing patients with direct access to trusted pharmacy professionals. The pharmacy is open Monday–Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and may be reached at 931.919.1193.

The Maury Regional Health Pharmacy is staffed by clinical pharmacists available for one-on-one medication counseling, comprehensive medication reviews and expert guidance on drug interactions or side effects. 

The Columbia Medical Plaza marks the first in a series of new pharmacy locations intended to bring expert care closer to home for residents across the region. Following this Columbia opening, Maury Regional Health will soon debut an additional pharmacy location at the new Lawrence Health Center in Lawrenceburg, with plans to open other pharmacy locations later this year. These secondary locations complement the existing on-campus pharmacy currently located on the first floor of Maury Regional Medical Center, which continues to serve discharging patients, employees and volunteers.

These new pharmacy locations are being launched in partnership with VytlOne, a leading provider of comprehensive pharmacy solutions for health care organizations nationwide.

“Providing world-class medicine means ensuring it is within reach for everyone in our community,” said Maury Regional Medical Group President Nathan Miller. “We know that when pharmacy services are conveniently located and easy to navigate, patients are better able to stay on track with their health goals. This expansion is a major advancement in how we serve Columbia, providing a one-stop resource where patients have the option to find everything from their prescription medicines to specialized counseling to over-the-counter essentials. We are proud to bring this level of convenience to our patients.”

For more information about Maury Regional Health’s current and upcoming pharmacy locations, hours and services, visit MauryRegional.com/Pharmacy.

And now, news from around the state…

Construction to Halt During Holiday (Press Release)

The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) will suspend all interstate construction work on Easter weekend in anticipation of increased holiday travel.

TDOT crews and contractors will stop all road construction work that requires lane closures beginning Thursday, April 2, at 6:00 p.m. through Monday, April 6, at 6:00 a.m. This will provide maximum roadway capacity to motorists traveling across the state this upcoming holiday weekend.

Motorists can expect to encounter some long-term lane closures on construction projects that will remain in place. While lane closure activity will be stopped, workers may be on-site in construction zones, and reduced speed limits will still be in effect. For the safety of everyone traveling and working on the roadways, motorists are urged to adhere to all posted speed limits, especially in work zones. Slower speeds are necessary in work zones due to the temporary roadway layout and will be enforced. Please also move over and slow down for HELP Units and other first responders assisting motorists.

Gas Prices (MSM)

Gas prices across Tennessee moved less expensive last week for the first time in nearly four weeks. The Tennessee Gas Price average is now $3.63 which is $1.07 more expensive than one month ago and 83 cents more than one year ago.  

“After reaching a high of $3.65 per gallon last week, the state gas price average moved lower for the first time in 25 days,” said Megan Cooper, spokeswoman for AAA – The Auto Club Group. “While this is a nice break in pace, it’s important to remember that continued volatility in the global oil market due to the ongoing conflict with Iran is keeping upward pressure on our pump prices. It’s likely that drivers will continue to see price fluctuations this week at the gas pump.” 

Since the conflict escalated earlier this month, Tennesee’s gas price average jumped $1.08 per gallon, rising from $2.57 at the beginning of March to a high of $3.65 per gallon last week. That marked the highest daily average price Tennessee drivers have seen since August 2022, and adds roughly $16 to the cost of filling a 15-gallon gas tank. 

Final Story of the Day (Maury County Source)

Grammy Award-winning, Platinum-selling, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame legends The Doobie Brothers have announced tour dates for their upcoming North American Walk This Road Tour. The September and October headlining shows will follow on the heels of the band’s previously announced summer tour dates with Carlos Santana.

Produced by Live Nation, the Walk This Road Tour kicks off on Saturday, September 26, in Northfield, OH, and stops in Franklin at FirstBank Amphitheater on October 11th.

TICKETS: Visit TheDoobieBrothers.com.