The Middle Nolichucky Watershed Alliance board voted Wednesday to clean along Holley Creek on May 3, a Saturday, after an earlier date was rained out.

Fred Kaufmann, president, commended Candy Adams of Keep Greene Beautiful for calling off the Saturday, April 5, scheduled cleanup when heavy rain was predicted, because the forecast turned out to be right.

Kaufmann said he would attempt to contact several organizations that have helped with the cleanup in the past, and ask them to participate in May. He urged others present to do the same.

The Saturday morning, May 3, cleanup will focus on Holley Creek between Snapps Ferry Road and Laughlin Memorial Hospital, he said. The cleanup will end with a grilled hot-dog lunch at the Big Lots parking area.

Volunteers will compete for prizes, some of which will be hidden in the creek.
“This will be the beginning of a major cleanup” of several creeks, Kaufmann said. Other creeks to be cleaned up include Richland Creek, Lick Creek, Little Chuckey Creek, Pigeon Creek and Sinking Creek.

Grant Received

Treasurer Mark Benko reported that the Alliance had $8,973 on hand, after receiving a $3,000 grant from the Tennessee Valley Authority. The TVA grant had been requested in February.

Kaufmann said this total does not include $1,000 that the Alliance is expected to receive from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, to be used for planting shrubs and installing protective fencing along Holley Creek.

In a related matter, Greeneville Alderman Ginny Kidwell reported that the Alliance has been told that it can apply for funding from the Greene County government for next year.

Kidwell said she had been told that the letter directing the Alliance to apply again had been misrouted, and thus the Alliance missed an application deadline.

Kidwell said that a reply has now been written to County Executive Roger Jones, requesting the same contribution as this year, which is $1,000.

Real Estate Project

Kidwell also reported that she had been contacted by Roy Settle, of the Appalachian Resource Conservation and Development Council, and Cheryl Summers, who represents the Cherokee National Forest on the Alliance, regarding a real estate development in the preliminary stages in Greeneville.

Kidwell said Settle and Summers suggested the Alliance consider exploring whether the developer would be interested in working with a landscape architect and possibly an engineer “to make it a model development.”

Kidwell said that helping with the cost of this landscape architect would be a good use of some of the Alliance’s money.

One of the stated goals of the Alliance is to educate real estate developers about ways to develop land profitably while enhancing the watershed where the property is located.

The planned development is located near Sinking Creek in a recently annexed area of Greeneville.

Paul Hayden, who represents the Greene County Soil Conservation District, said it is possible that some money from that agency may be available, since Sinking Creek is also one of its targeted creeks.

The board asked Kidwell to pursue the possibility.

Wetlands Project

Clint Jones, representing TVA, asked Kaufmann where things stand regarding the
Alliance’s attempts to repair and improve the county-owned wetlands area next to the Wal-Mart Distribution Center along Pottertown Road.

Jones said he continues to believe that this project could be very beneficial to the county and the watershed.

“I’d like to be able to do something with it,” he said.

Benko said this project is at a standstill because the Alliance has been unable to
acquire permanent legal access to the site.

The site is bounded mostly by the distribution center, but also by other private land, and the county government does not own any road frontage.

Greene County agreed to create the wetlands in the last days before the agreement on locating the distribution center was signed in 1996.

The county government agreed to create an artificial wetlands on donated land to “offset” or mitigate the destruction of natural wetlands during construction.
Later the county government turned over maintenance of the artificially-created wetlands to the Greene County Fishing & Hunting Club.

But the club said almost two years ago that the log dams and earthworks that were built to impound shallow water to create the wetlands have begun to fail, and that maintaining them was beyond the club’s financial ability.

Kaufmann and Benko are officers of that club.

Benko said that “feelers” were put out last summer and fall about the possibility of using state funds to acquire access.

But, he said, “when the governor raided the wetlands acquisition fund” in a recent budget-cutting move, that possibility “dried up.”