It lasted almost a year. At times, those involved will tell you it felt much longer.

In some ways, the water saga in Cullman County has lasted much longer. Even in its most recent permutation — one filled with lawsuits, shifts in political fortunes, character damnings, conflicting interpretations of fact and, in the latter stages, tedious confusion and lots and lots of waiting — the buildup to the creation and, now, the dissolution of the two county water utility boards at the heart of a year-long controversy indeed was long in the making.

Now it’s over. No more boards. As a condition of this week’s settlement of all the civil suits and the dissolution of the two boards — the Governmental Utility Services Corporation of Cullman County (GUSC) and the South Cumberland Cooperative District (SCCD) — no one can sue anyone in civil court, on either side, over anything that anybody did in relation to the boards. Whether the legal system takes an interest in any criminal malfeasance — and no evidence of any has been brought forth, to date — is another matter.

Not everyone’s happy with the outcome. The way the two sides in these lawsuits behave in the wake of the boards’ dissolution says much about which side claims victory over the other.

Ask anyone who became involved in the lawsuits over the two boards’ creation last April, and you’ll get a muted response. The feelings may run deeper than any of the players cares to let on. On the defendants’ side, sadness at the boards’ demise carries the day. For the plaintiffs, who desired the boards’ dismantling, the tone is one of tempered, dignified relief. No real gloating. Commission chairman Graves did a little fist-pump in celebration at Tuesday’s county commission meeting, when the boards’ dissolution was announced. That’s been about it.

The paperwork doesn’t take sides. It simply says there is no more GUSC; no more SCCD; no more litigation; no more public meetings; no more “mad as hell” — as one plaintiff, at the height of the emotional pitch the controversy took last fall, had stated to an angry crowd from the top of the courthouse steps.

Even those opposed to what happened — the creation, at an April 27, 2010 county commission meeting, of the GUSC and SCCD; of the deeding of the $30 million Cullman County water department to the SCCD; of the diversion of water revenues from Cullman County to the new cooperative — will tell you that, in spirit, it probably wasn’t a bad idea. Nearly all who opposed the two boards were angered over one thing:

“It’s the way it was done.”

“It’s always been about the way these boards were created,” said plaintiff attorney Todd McLeroy. “They could have done this correctly. If Doug [Williams] and Wayne [Willingham] had wanted to create these boards, they could have held a public meeting; advertised it; solicited input; maybe take a tonguelashing from the people.

“And if they had first done that — and then, if they had walked into a public commission meeting the very next day, they could have voted 2-1 to create these boards, and there wouldn’t have been a thing anybody could have done about it legally. It might have been unpopular, but there would have been nothing wrong with it legally. But they didn’t do that.”

Former associate county commissioners Williams and Wayne Willingham, who often formed a quorum of the three-member Cullman County Commission on legislative matters, passed the GUSC and SCCD into existence over the passionate objection of chairman James Graves last April.

That day-long, multi-session meeting saw a lot of conflict, but it wasn’t the last time they’d fight it out at a commission meeting, or in a conference room, or in court. It was only the first salvo in a battle that eventually led to the end of Williams’ and Willingham’s stints in the commission office. Both men never made it past the June primary in their bids for re-election. Even after June, the victors in that primary united and filed a lawsuit against the commission for water and budget actions that Williams and Willingham passed over Graves’ objections late in the fall.

Which side best represented the good of the public will ever be open to interpretation in this case. Williams offers a similar motive for creating and supporting the two water boards, even if his position is opposite that of Turner’s.

“We attempted to protect the customers of this water system, and now they have no protection,” said Williams. “For one thing, we tried to put a board in place to protect the county’s general fund from liability. Just as importantly, a board protects the water system from the commission — not just this one; from future commissioners; it removed the politics from the Cullman County water system.

“The losers in all of this are the customers of that system. They’ve lost control of their own destiny as far as water is concerned. As time goes on, I truly believe that people will begin to realize that more and more.”

Read the complete story in the April 1, 2001 print edition of The Cullman Times.

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