The Birmingham Water Works Board is spending $795,000 to buy three cabins along the banks of Inland Lake in Blount County that they plan to abandon.

The price for the group of three rustic buildings in rural Blount County at a flat rate of $265,000 per cabin is significantly lower than recent purchases.

The water works board has the first option to buy and reclaim the contracts when they are put up for sale.

The utility has long paid top dollar for rustic buildings like these. The board in 2024 spent $1 million to purchase two cabins to be destroyed.

To date, the utility has spent about $5 million for cabins over the last two decades.

The new flat fee for all new cabin sales ends the former process where the owners named their own price to sell the buildings. Those prices were not determined by appraisals, but rather by how much the cabin owner wanted.

That system sometimes led to outsized purchase prices that yielded heavy profits for the cabin owners at the expense of the public utility.

“It could be a cost reduction because the price was going up,” General Manager Mac Underwood told AL.com. “People realized that the Birmingham Water Works wanted to purchase the cabin so they would be getting a high cost or high purchase price and they would expect us to pay that price.”

For example, the water works in 2024 paid $450,000 for a cabin that was valued at $79,000. The cabin purchase was five times what the structure was worth according to Blount County property assessment records.

Cabin inhabitants own the actual buildings, which they pay property taxes on, but not the land. They pay the water works annually in a contract for the rights to the site, under long-term land leases that began when the property belonged to the former Birmingham Industrial Water Board.

Under the agreements, owners use the cabins for recreation and pay a $1,800 annual fee for the lots and access to the boathouses and docks. Boat access is the only way to the properties.

The board at its last meeting Feb. 26 approved buying the buildings from Virginia Brengelman, James P. Barnhart and Gary Whited.

There are about 43 cabins on the site. The water works now owns 22, and 21 remain in private hands.

“We’re going to continue to purchase them until they are all gone,” Underwood said. “Anything that sells at Inland Lake we’re going to offer $265,000 for it and hopefully we can get the cabins purchased and off the lake for that price.”

Origins of the agreement go back decades. The cabin owners also have the right to sell or bequeath their agreements to heirs.

The Water Works about 30 years ago acquired both Inland Lake and Lake Purdy when it acquired the former Industrial Water Works Board in 1994.

The board in the early 2000s then established a policy of reclaiming the cabins under the premise of protecting the watershed from possible contamination.

“We’re really concerned about the septic system because this is around an area with no infrastructure,” Underwood said. “If the septic system fails, then it could cause harm to the water supply. The main thing is to stop the septic use.”

Board members in the past have acknowledged the price to reclaim the Inland Lake cabins was expensive, but said they had no other choice if they wanted to secure the area.

Others have criticized the program as an unchecked waste of public money. The water works did not pay a realtor to handle the purchases.

The program began under the leadership of former longtime water board chairman Anthony Barnes in the early 2000s.

Barnes, who died in 2015, called the old cabin agreements outrageous, even though he advocated buying the buildings and keeping people off the lake.

Barnes at the time told The Birmingham News that in addition to securing the watershed, he had a philosophical objection to a select group of people having exclusive use of private cabins that sit on public property.

‘’We’re paying for something that we own essentially,” he told The Birmingham News in 2005.

Underwood said the utility is committed to protecting the watershed from unnecessary long term use and development.

“Depending on where they are, they are really left to go back to nature over time,” Underwood said regarding the structures. “The septic tanks will dry up and go back to nature.”