Friday is the big day the Metropolitan Sewerage District was going to reveal to the public the findings of the consulting firm it hired to study a merger with the City of Asheville’s water system. Critics who have already seen the report complained it made no mention of compensating the city for acres upon acres of pristine watershed. Tuesday, an offer of $57 million surfaced.

The report also goes against modern grains to imply it is good to destroy jobs:

A study recently done for the utility by a consulting firm found that savings from a merger would range from $10.3 million to $21.9 million through 2022, depending on how aggressively MSD reduces the number of workers for a combined entity.