AS ALL KNOW, Cave Spring is small, quiet and quaint. If residents are now seen high-fiving and elected officials doing celebratory backflips usually reserved for having scored a touchdown, such is entirely warranted. The city has pulled off what many thought would be impossible.

In extremely competitive statewide applications for limited Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority low-interest loans, plus similar quests for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (stimulus) money, Cave Spring has gotten both to fund a desperately needed $8.7 million overhaul/expansion of its water system.

This is huge for the community, which has already made some remarkable progress in recent years in changing its decades old image of “sleepy” into wide awake and on the move.

Of the granted sums, $2.9 million is an outright recovery act gift and doesn’t have to be repaid. Another $4,343,818, the maximum possible, is a 20-year loan at 3 percent interest from the state. Some 1,600 potentially eligible Georgia communities applied for a slice of a total of $144 million the state had available ... and Cave Spring was one of the winners. So were all of the 1,550 water customers it has, many outside its city limits and even into Alabama.

While the loan payments will cause an estimated $18 a month boost in water bills that’s a bargain for something so desperately needed and without which the little city could perhaps not long survive, and certainly not grow. It could have easily been three times as much going any other way, if a loan could have even been found.

No doubt many thought city leaders were out of their skulls in thinking they had a shot at this given all the hurdles, paperwork and extra work that was required. Certainly the County Commission adding a token $350,000 for the project in the upcoming SPLOST referendum helped as it showed general support of the wider community toward the effort.

Cave Spring’s future becomes very bright with this and its long-range survival assured — the city has no municipal property tax and its citizens hate that idea, so all it has to support itself is pretty much a small slice of the countywide sales tax penny ... and profits from water sales. That flow, like that of water from its fabled super-pure spring into homes and businesses, is now assured for years to come. And with new pipes, pumps and even water tanks, too, that promise an end to perennial and annoying service/pressure interruptions.

By the way, a note to readers who haven’t been down that way in some time: Cave Spring has already made remarkable progress in several other ways recently and has gained a vitality that is as noticeable as its scenery. It’s worth taking a look at the new look there ... and partaking, by the way, of some nice places to dine and shop.

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SOMEWHERE in a subterranean war room beneath City Hall, linked by tunnel to a similar county facility beneath the Historic Courthouse, elected officials are secretly planning a massive and amazing offensive to take advantage of the upcoming economic stimulation and tourist visibility for the ever-nearing 150th anniversary of the War Between the States.

One assumes that this must be so since nary a peep has been heard from them in response to repeated suggestions from this space in that regard: Finally restore Fort Norton, have daily demonstration firings of Civil War cannon made here, bring back to Broad Street the monuments/statues commemorating that era sent off to exile at Myrtle Hill Cemetery and so forth. Since no movement or mention has occurred on those ideas, one can only suppose Rome/Floyd leaders and preparing something even better.

Certainly, money can be no worry. Why just the other day the Dalton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau unveiled a new, marked driving tour of the area’s historic Civil War sites, Special distinctive signage, like that which Rome has to point the way to The Forum, downtown, Chieftains Museum and so forth, is already in place.

It is accompanied by a booklet for visitors telling the stories behind each location — the Western & Atlantic Depot where a telegrapher jumped from a train chasing the stolen locomotive “General” to message for help; Buzzard’s Roost Gap, where Yankee soldiers tried to build a pontoon bridge across an artificial lake blocking their advance, and so forth. The booklet, which also tells of the general situation at the time, plus a special CD and a guide to the route are being sold for $15.

It couldn’t have cost all that much to do to start with and no doubt the sales from now on to the end of eternity, and not only in 2010-2015, should defray the cost and perhaps even turn a profit.

Certainly this could not match what the Rome area has the ability to pull off — not many places have an actual fort site left intact, nor are headquarters to some of the best-known artillery and band re-enactors in the land. Still, it’s something ... and already done besides. That’s sure more than Greater Romans have to comment upon.

Meanwhile, back in the underground bunker ...