Southern Middle TN Today News with Tom Price 8-21-25

WKOM/WKRM Radio

Southern Middle Tennessee Today

News Copy for August 21, 2025

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

We start with local news…

Hardison Resigns, McCullen Accepts (MSM)

At last week’s Columbia City Council meeting, the council selected a new city councilman for Ward 1. DaVena Hardison, the representative since November 2024, resigned to get married and start her family, and Mayor Chaz Molder spoke for the other council members when he said that they were sad to see her leave and wished she were there to receive their final farewell.

“This opportunity to represent and serve our community has afforded me that honor. I am grateful to all who have supported my journey. It has been a privilege to build relationships with each of you,” Hardison wrote in her letter of resignation. “Thank you for your understanding, and I wish the entire city council continued success in efforts to serve the community.”

In her place the city council nominated and accepted former city councilman Carl McCullen, who resigned his post as District 4 county commissioner to accept the city position. Hardison’s own pick to replace her, pastor Demetrius Nelson of Carmack Boulevard Church of Christ, was disqualified because he had spent part of the previous year living outside of Columbia.

“I think that Carl McCullen will be able to hit the ground running with his prior municipal experience,” Molder said. “We tell him congratulations… and we look forward to him sitting next to Council Member Huffman at the next month’s meeting.”

County commissioners Jerry Strahan and Gary Stovall attended the meeting, and Molder asked them from the council podium to remind the County Commission, when they choose McCullen’s replacement, to consider the welfare of the City of Columbia.

Maury Alliance quarterly presentation

The Council heard the quarterly presentation from Maury Alliance CEO Wil Evans. Growth measurements like jobs added, business expansions and capital investment are slightly lower than in recent years, but they’ve still dramatically increased in the same time frame. In other metrics, Maury County’s median household income rose by 36 percent since 2020, retail sales grew 85 percent from 2013-2023, the civilian labor force grew four times as fast as it did in the rest of the country, and by all growth metrics Maury County outperformed the rest of the Nashville metropolitan area and the State of Tennessee. This kind of growth, and their workforce development initiatives, make Maury Alliance a chooser, not a beggar, when courting investment: they can select companies which promise higher earning potential and sustainable, desirable work.

Among the established companies here, General Motors and Ultium Cells will retain their current employment numbers and retool their operations in 2026: GM to build the gas-powered Chevy Blazer and several Cadillac models, Ultium to produce cheaper lithium ion phosphate electric car batteries. Evans also said that Maury Alliance is working with JLL, the broker for the Fiberon factory in Columbia, to look into finding a client business which could feasibly use the 500,000-square-foot facility. After building the facility, Fiberon chose to consolidate their operations elsewhere.

City business

The council considered several important new developments, most significantly the approved easement for the Columbia Power and Water Services (CPWS) intake pipe in the Williamsport stretch of the Duck River. The $500 million pipeline, which has been approved by the EPA, TVA and TDEC, will draw 12 million gallons per day from the Duck for Columbia and its municipal clients.

Miracle League Opening (WKOM Audio 2:05)

Yesterday, the Miracle League of Columbia broke ground for their new ball field at Maury County Park. WKOM’s James Dickinson attended the ribbon cutting and spoke to Miracle League leader Julie Beck…

Spring Hill Hen Ordinance (CDH)

Spring Hill's policy for keeping backyard hens has just been updated, following the Board of Mayor and Aldermen's Aug. 18 narrow passage of an amendment that will now allow more than four hens per household.

An additional amendment was also introduced by Alderman Vincent Fuqua that will eliminate the distance required for additional hen enclosures located within property lines.

The initial proposal amended the existing ordinance, which allows a maximum of four hens per household regardless of lot size. The new amendment of the ordinance will now allow a maximum of hens based per 5,000 square feet of landowner property.

An updated version of the proposed changes was presented during the Aug. 18 regular meeting.

The new changes for backyard hens would allow:

• Four hens for the first 10,000 square feet

• One additional hen for every additional 5,000 square feet

"It was never my intention to overcomplicate this," said Fuqua, who first proposed the changes to the existing ordinance. "The neighbors that are opposed to this, I think we worked through it."

Then, during the vote, Fuqua made the motion to amend the ordinance further by not having additional distance requirements beyond 25 feet for enclosure placements for each additional hen. His motion passed without discussion.

The ordinance read, "enclosures containing more than four hens shall be constructed or placed no less than 25 feet from any property line plus an additional five feet per hen."

Fuqua's amendment eliminated the requirement to place an additional five feet per hen for enclosures backing up to neighboring properties.

"It may even convolute it when it comes to policing, which I don't think is fair for folks like Mr. (Jose) Periut, who might have neighbors counting chickens," said Fuqua, who said he owns property near the properties in question.

Jose and Jaime Periut, two Spring Hill landowners who raise chickens and also describe themselves as "the source of this 'chickengate,'" spoke in favor of the ordinance changes during the public hearing ahead of the vote.

"I do support being more strict than the original [proposal], which was one chicken per 1,500 square feet," Jose Periut said. "It's industry standard, but I would be willing to compromise and make it even stricter than that at 3,000 square feet, because I don't want there to be an odor issue."

Tom McClennan, a neighbor of the Periuts, added that he believed the changes are "reasonable and can make everyone happy."

"I think the proposal that is out there right now is a viable compromise," McClennan said. "The only other thing I would say is that I hope there is no grandfather clause enacted where things can just stay the same before the date this is voted on."

Residents in the Hunter's Pointe subdivision initially spoke out about the ordinance due to concerns about the increase in the number of chickens permitted, odor, and lack of enforcement of the existing code.

They explained that smaller plat subdivisions like Hunter's Pointe that back up to larger plats of land in rural areas could be disrupted by a high number of chickens.

Jean and Raymond Tamburello of Hunter's Pointe said they were "surprised" at the last minute amendment pertaining to enclosures.

“I am surprised everything changed after all the homeowners seemed to be on the same page, after all the research and discussion with board members and Dara Sanders’ hard work on the amendment,” Jean Tamburello said.  

“When codes aren’t clear, it only creates problems, and we want to see what's best for the city of Spring Hill."

Ray Tamburello encouraged the city to enforce the ordinance during Aug. 19 public comments, especially for abutting neighborhoods to maintain use and enjoyment of their properties.

Resident of Hunter's Pointe Mike Horvath said he was "disappointed" in the last minute amendment to the ordinance.

"It was that change I was most curious about. All speakers on both sides seemed to agree that the amended ordinance, created by experts, was reasonable. The alderman introducing a change that late didn't allow time for discussion."

The final vote, however, was a 5-4 split, with Mayor Matt Fitterer and Aldermen Erinn Hartwell, Scott Wernert, Brent Murray and Fuqua voting in favor, while Vice Mayor Trent Linville and Aldermen John Canepari, Jaimee Davis and Alex Jimenez opposed.

Duck River Planning Partnership Meets (MSM)

The Duck River Watershed Planning Partnership, a working group put in place following Gov. Bill Lee’s Executive Order 108, to continue preservation efforts for the Duck River, heard updates from partners, stakeholders and activists in a public meeting at the Farm Bureau of Tennessee headquarters in Columbia last week.

During the four-hour meeting, partnership committee members from Manchester to Maury County heard from government agencies, such as the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and the Duck River Agency, and were given updates on their research into the current status of the Duck River and where the river stands in terms of drinking water availability for the growing need along the watershed.

Public outreach

Leaders of the meeting touted the work done to collect and publicize valuable information, using intergovernmental digital networks based on ESRI’s ARC-GIS mapping platform, and best practices like the Army Corps of Engineer’s Hydrologic Engineering Center’s-River Analysis System (HEC-RAS) river-impact model, to obtain information, create graphs and maps, and share them with the public.

Sunny Fleming and Mike Bialousz, who worked extensively in conservation before taking positions with ESRI, spoke of the mapping software’s potential to make the water situation “intuitive” to the layperson. They have partnered with federal and several state governments to visualize and fix the water situations of many sites across the country — resilience plans for two watersheds in Wisconsin, maps of aquifer levels in southern California and Arizona, and “story maps” of drought and pollution remediation in Kentucky, North Dakota and Florida. ESRI can also assimilate information received from experts and government teams into their interactive maps. Such teams retain “control” of their data and whether to publish it to the public site, and they can use all the data to create “story maps” to craft narratives about a particular aspect of the conservation process.

“The data can become very complex,” Bialousz said. “That’s where graphics and data maps come into play… to make it understandable.”

“Tennessee is already leading in a lot of these areas… You are already using this technology,” Fleming said encouragingly.

What the Planning Partnership needs for the Duck River Watershed, she argued, is a “system of systems”: an ARC-GIS hub in which agencies could communicate and collaborate for the best response.

The beginnings of such a hub can be seen at their new website for the Planning Partnership, which features not only mapping and narratives but also subpages and links — to datasets from the TVA, TWRA and TDEC — covering the other metrics of the Duck River and its management. Members of the public can also continue to submit their concerns and hopes to the Duck River’s online survey, bit.ly/DuckRiverSurvey, which the committee encouraged people to take before it closes on Oct. 15.

David Money, the new executive director of the Duck River Agency, announced that digital tools available on their website will track key HEC-RAS indicators for the Duck River online — effluent releases, water intake, the level of water in the Normandy Dam and data from United States Geological Survey (USGS) measuring stations on the Duck River, among other metrics. The DRA are also digitizing their 30 years of historic records and publishing them to their website.

TDEC personnel presented their and Duck River Watershed municipalities’ ideas for water conservation. Policy Advisor Emma Bartolo broached the topic of reusing non-potable water, especially “gray water” (household wastewater not contaminated with sewage) for household uses like lawn and garden irrigation and more industrial uses like watering golf courses. As a strategy, it prevents the over-withdrawal of fresh water and keeps nitrogen and phosphate, which cause destructive algal blooms in large quantities, from being reintroduced to the Duck River with wastewater.

Angela Jones, TDEC’s manager of engineering services in the Division of Water Resources, noted that at a systemic level, TDEC now requires water permit applicants to look into such water-reuse policies before they’ll grant a withdrawal increase, and they advocate for requiring developers to install “purple pipe” water recycling systems in their new construction. 17 sites across the state already recycle water, one for industrial use and the rest for irrigation, and Memphis’s pioneering proposal would use 13 million daily gallons of treated wastewater to cool its controversial new xAI data center (which powers the large language model “Grok”).

“This is an expensive project, over $30 million. So that’s something that the Partnership is considering,” said Director of the Office of Policy and Planning at TDEC Peter Murrey.

April Grippo, the director of TDEC’s Water Resources division and a resident of Maury County, transmitted the Drought Working Group’s recommendations to the Duck River Agency. They include revising the Regional Drought Management Plan; monitoring drought and clarifying TDEC’s role in drought management; updating the Comprehensive Regional Water Supply Plan; creating a state-wide water monitoring council and Duck River watershed dashboard; and partnering with the users and stakeholders.

As for Maury County’s water use, Grippo confirmed that TDEC has approved CPWS’s request to put a second intake valve in the Duck at Williamsport, which will take in up to 12 million gallons per day for Maury County and its municipalities. Spring Hill’s application for an input line of its own is complete, and the permit is expected to be issued in a few weeks. Meanwhile Maury County Water Systems is working on its own inter-basin transfer project, only the 28th in the state, to bring in Harpeth River water through a partnership with Hillsboro, Burwood & Thompson’s Station Utility District. Their TDEC permit allows two million gallons per day, but the county Health AND Environment Committee recently discussed widening the pipe to take in three million.

Competing solutions to water supply

During public comment, representatives of competing interest groups and nonprofits spoke for and against different ideas to protect the Duck River and meet the water needs of the Watershed counties.

Jason Gilliam, who sits on the Maury County Water Utility, advocated for a dam on the Duck near Columbia. He framed it as the most fiscally responsible choice. Gilliam estimates it would cost $500 million to build a dam, though no formal studies have taken place to justify the estimate. He claimed a dam offers guaranteed water, flood control and recreational uses worth $350 million a year in economic benefit — a better return on investment than $500 million for the Williamsport intake valve planned by CPWS, or the estimated $1 billion that Maury County and its municipalities are considering for a 50-million-daily-gallon line to the Cumberland River that would service entities in Williamson County as well. A feasibility study on the Cumberland River option, commissioned by Middle Tennessee utilities in Maury and Williamson Counties, is nearly complete.

“In regard to building the Columbia Dam… we owe it to the people of Duck River basin to do the right thing,” he said.

Other public commenters spoke in favor of the dam idea as well, but opponents of the dam also made themselves heard, bringing up geological problems, further property confiscation by eminent domain — a fate Gilliam’s own family farm suffered when the first, unfinished TVA dam was being built — and the loss of up to 54 of the most beautiful miles of the Duck River in Maury and Marshall Counties.

“There will never be a dam built in Columbia where TVA originally planned,” according to TVA reports, said Sarah Gilliam, an organizer of the Facebook group Don’t Dam the Duck. “There are less invasive alternatives that have been proposed; these need to be considered before damming the Duck River.”

Jason Gilliam, water activist Bart Whatley, Brian Rivers and Duck River Conservancy president Doug Jones all favored raising the walls of Normandy Dam to capture more rainwater until a permanent solution could be reached. Randal Braker of the Duck River Utility Commission pointed out that recent hard rains had only added a couple feet of water to the Normandy Reservoir, as much of the rain soaks into the ground.

Jones warned that Hickman County, where his conservancy started, experienced a severe drought last fall which was a sign of things to come. Whatever the solution was, he knew it wouldn’t be easy, but it needs to come quick.

“It’s not the same anymore. We’ve got massive growth,” he said, recalling the testimony of waterfront property owners who watched it “disappear into the karst.” “I’ve got a buddy in [the] Marshall County [fire department] — they couldn’t get enough water to put a fire out.”

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

Amy Mae Ingram, 80, died Wednesday, April 30, 2025 at Levine and Dickson Hospice House in Charlotte, North Carolina after a brief battle with cancer.

A graveside service will be conducted Saturday, August 23, 2025 at 11:00 AM at Bryant Cemetery in Mooresville. Oakes & Nichols is in charge of arrangements and online condolences may be extended at www.oakesandnichols.com.

Now, news from around the state…

BNA Hits Milestone Year (MauryCountySource)

Nashville International Airport® (BNA®) today announced a landmark fiscal year marked by remarkable growth, groundbreaking partnerships, and national recognition. The airport welcomed a record 24.7 million passengers, reflecting a 4.2% year-over-year increase, setting a new benchmark in BNA’s history.

Key highlights from BNA’s banner year include:

• In June 2025, BNA welcomed 2,426,794 departing travelers—the highest number of screened passengers ever recorded in a single month at the airport.

• June 22, 2025, became the busiest day in BNA’s history, with a staggering 110,000 passengers flowing through the terminal. Of those, 48,039 were screened at security checkpoints—an all-time high for a single day.

• Unveiled two new international airline partnerships just a week apart—on September 27 and October 4, 2024—and followed through with the transoceanic flight launches only two days apart: Icelandair on April 10 and Aer Lingus on April 12, 2025.

• As of July 2025, BNA offers service to 113 nonstop destinations—the most in its history.

o    The number of nonstop destinations increased to 114 on August 5, 2025, kicking off Fiscal Year 2026 with another historic benchmark.

“These achievements represent far more than impressive numbers—they’re the result of bold vision, unwavering dedication, and a team committed to delivering excellence every single day,” said Doug Kreulen, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority (MNAA). 

Final Story of the Day (Maury County Source)

Dust off your boots and lay out your finest jeans, Nashville Zoo’s Sunset Safari: Rhinestones & Rhinos presented by Middle Tennessee Honda Dealers, returns on Friday, Sept. 19, from 6:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Sunset Safari is the Zoo’s signature fundraising event featuring culinary delights from some of Nashville’s best restaurants and beverage purveyors. Guests can expect live entertainment and close-up encounters with some of the Zoo’s most interesting animals. Tickets are on sale now and can be purchased on the Zoo’s website.

The annual fundraising event helps fund the Zoo’s operations, ensuring the well-being of the animals, supporting education outreach, and improving visitor experiences. Guests can explore the Zoo while sampling food and drinks from more than 50 vendors, including Nashville’s best restaurants, spirit brands, bakeries, and coffee shops. 

For more information and to register, please visit www.nashvillezoo.org/sunset-safari.