To the editor:

Well my friend, it’s not yet winter but our Canadian friends have already sent us a sample of their cold winter air.  I thought we closed that boarder to arctic air blasts.

As you know my friend, the Tiny Kingdom is located within the larger fiefdom of Polk, and it is that larger fiefdom of Polk that has caught the attention of the thinking citizens. A half dozen years ago, someone noticed that the Inman Campobello Water District’s (ICWD) main transmission line from the Broad River Water Authority’s (BRWA) treatment plant in Rutherford County ran along the edge of Polk County.  Well some sharp county manager, I suspect it was the one who expected to come back to his job after a year’s active military duty and instead the county leaders paid him $178,000 to stay away.  How’s that for supporting our veterans?  Anyway, this person realized that if Polk wanted to get serious about economic development it had to have a real infrastructure. Mild winters and the fewest number of traffic signals of any county in N.C. do not count as an infrastructure.  But, a water system does.

Here’s where it gets coo-coo.  Instead of talking about a partnership with the Tiny Kingdom’s of Tryon and/or Columbus, towns that already operate a water and sewer department, and yes, Polk, at some point in the future you will need a sewer plant, this group who say they have the best interest of the citizens at heart, start talking with a transportation company, the ICWD.  If this was a 150 years ago we would call the ICWD carpet baggers!

Now, all of a sudden, after being in business for 60 years, the ICWD wants to expand.  ICWD says it is serving 130 new customers in Polk and expects to serve less than 1,000 new customers by 2030.  Plus, they say they’ll spend over two million dollars repairing the dam.  Does this make sense?  Spend over two million to gain fewer than a thousand new customers over a 15-year period.  No, my friend, I think the ICWD has seen the handwriting on the wall and in the future Federal regulations will say that any water distribution system must be more than a transportation company that bills its customers for water treated elsewhere.

I call the ICWD a transportation company because pipelines are a mode of transportation.  And all the ICWD does for fun and profit is buy its water wholesale from the BRWA and run it through a series of pipes and retails it to its 12,000 customers.  The ICWD has no reservoir and no treatment facility.  The Tiny Kingdom does and it’s within the walls of the Fiefdom of Polk.

Hopefully you have noticed my friend that I’ve not mentioned any revenue coming back to Polk County.  What’s being considered is all one way.  Lake Adger as a reservoir goes to ICWD, new customer billing goes to ICWD.  When ICWD gets ready to build a treatment plant it will be in S.C.  (I wonder how many Polk Folk will be employed at that plant!)

John Calure
Landrum