MUD agrees to buy land for new water plant

Purchase from Cumberland Springs Land Company COO would secure land for proposed expansion

7:02 a.m. May 13, 2026

DUANE CROSS
MCO Publisher•Editor

Moore County’s Metro Utility Department board voted Tuesday to buy a little more than an acre of land for a proposed new water treatment plant, taking an early but important step toward a project officials say could give the county more room to grow.

The county would purchase the land from Alexandra M. Richman, chief operating officer of Cumberland Springs Land Company. Utility Manager Ronnie Cunningham told the board that Mayor Sloan Stewart believed now was the time to act because “we won’t ever get a chance to get the property again.”

Board members said the land itself would cost about $21,000. The final total was not available on Tuesday because closing costs and survey expenses still had to be added. One board member said the full cost could exceed $30,000.

The board approved the purchase without a final total in hand, agreeing to use MUD savings to cover the land, survey, and closing costs once those numbers are finalized.

Glen Thomas made the motion, and Darrel Richards seconded it. Thomas, Richards, Charles Johnston, and Chairman Barry Posluszny voted yes. Greg Guinn was absent.

The vote does not build the plant. It secures land for a proposed treatment plant project that MUD officials and engineers have discussed since at least last spring.

At the MUD board’s April 8, 2025, meeting, Posluszny said the county needed to answer two questions before moving too far: whether the landowner would sell, and whether the site could actually hold the plant.

“Sure as God made little green apples, this is going to come up somewhere,” Posluszny said then. “We may not be sitting here; it may not be us, but I don’t think there’s any problem with trying to negotiate land. That way, we know they’ll sell it to us, number one. Number two, can we put it there, because why buy it if we can’t put it there? Which means we would have to move.”

Engineer Bryant Griffin gave the board the longer history: the county’s current plant location has limited its options for decades.

“The water treatment plant should have been built on top of the hill where you have your intake right now,” Griffin said. “In the ’90s, they looked at doing that, and it was so cost-prohibitive. They expanded your existing plant, and once they expanded it there, you were stuck, and it was expanded again in 2005.”

The land is necessary for clearwell and lagoon expansion. Griffin also told the board in 2025 that upgrades would reduce the plant’s capacity usage from roughly 80% to about 50%, giving the county more long-term room for growth.

Taken together, the comments show why Tuesday’s vote was about more than buying land. It is an early step in a larger water-system conversation: where Moore County can treat water, how much capacity it will need, and how soon officials must act before existing limits become harder to manage.

For now, the board has not approved construction of a new plant. It has agreed to buy the land first, before the county faces the bigger and more expensive questions of how to design the plant, pay for it, and build it.