Plans for a water line to run to Raccoon Mountain homes are in the works once again after over a decade of back-and-forth, though some Chattanooga City Council members say they take issue with the timing of the proposal.
Council member Chip Henderson of Lookout Valley has been working with residents of a dozen homes at the top of Raccoon Mountain since he was first elected in 2013 to get funding for a water line, he said. The homeowners there get water from wells, which they say have begun to collapse and run dry. They pump water into large containers from a nearby community center and drive it up the mountain to ration out day by day, Henderson said during the meeting.
The city has allocated about $1.2 million to the construction project bit by bit over the years. The cost to put in piping all the way up the mountain would be over $4 million, according to Henderson’s Tuesday night presentation.
His proposal would take $3.5 million from a surplus of cash created by interest the city earned this fiscal year and allocate it to the project, he said, so construction can get started.
“This is public health,” Henderson said in an interview after the meeting. “This is public safety.”