A week after a computer lockout authorized by the board of the South Cumberland Cooperative District (SCCD), computer-based operations at the Cullman County water department are back to normal.

That’s the word from county officials who took control of the water department and its headquarters on Beech Avenue in Cullman late last week following a county commission decision to suspend the department’s manager, David Bussman, and launch an investigation into the department’s administrative activities. Attorneys representing the SCCD quickly challenged the commission’s right to access the department’s facilities, but those objections were overruled by a circuit court order last Friday reaffirming an earlier injunction that temporarily keeps the department in county hands until litigation surrounding the SCCD’s legal legitimacy has been resolved.

Last week’s skirmish for access to the department’s headquarters focused most intensely on computer servers housed in the facility, which were access-locked almost immediately after Bussman had been suspended. That block came from a contracted Information Technology (IT) specialist who had been instructed by the SCCD board to deny county officials and employees access to all data stored on the department’s systems.

That lockout could have disrupted the department’s day-to-day operations — particularly the billing of customers and collection of payments — but county attorney Rusty Turner said Friday that staff with the county Information Technology department had worked tirelessly to reconfigure the password-blocked servers so that they could once again be accessed by department employees.

“It’s ninety-nine percent resolved,” said Turner, “thanks mostly to the Herculean efforts of the county IT department. Everything is operating without a hitch at this point.”

That everything would operate without a hitch was not guaranteed last Thursday, when county officials first learned they could not get into the department’s digital files. Some close to the department and the water boards had speculated that, unless the SCCD voluntarily relinquished the passwords that granted system access, the entire operation inside the department’s offices might have come to a standstill until one side or the other gave way.

While the water system may be in the clear, operationally, the legal battle that will determine the department’s permanent owner continues to grow more heated, convoluted and, in some cases, more personal.

Earlier this week, the legal defense of the SCCD — along with that of the GUSC and former associate county commissioners Doug Williams and Wayne Willingham — was abandoned by the Birmingham law firm that had been associated with the water utility boards from the days they were created. That move came just after the SCCD board elected to retain the services of a new law firm. Attorneys for the new firm, Wilmer & Lee of Birmingham, demanded the county to reverse its course after a commission meeting last week saw the suspension of Bussman; the formal repudiation of the GUSC and SCCD; the dissociation of Cullman County from any legal services tied to defense of the GUSC and SCCD; and a reassertion of the commission’s intent — since carried out — to re-up its long-term water purchase contract with the City of Cullman.

Instead, Turner met SCCD board members and an attorney with Wilmer & Lee last Friday at the water department with the circuit court order, allowing himself and others designated by the county commission to gain access to the department headquarters and any information contained inside.

County commission chairman James Graves said Friday the investigation into department funds — particularly financial activities that have taken place since April — is still ongoing.

Board member Stan Wood said Friday that he and others on the board remained committed to defending its right to exist, despite conflicting reports that he might be considering a resignation of his seat.

“I’m still on the board,” he said. “Somebody must have gotten their wires crossed on that one. Most of my reason to be on the board was to be in support of David Bussman, and the county has seen fit to go a different way on that. This thing has changed course so many times, and right now we’ve got a board and a department that’s just sitting there. But I do think that somebody had their wires crossed to report that [I was resigning]. That’s just false information.”

* Benjamin Bullard can be reached by e-mail at bbullard@cullmantimes.com or by telephone at 734-2131 ext. 270.