Comments, questions, requests and complaints lodged at Thursday night’s Nolichucky River watershed management meeting “covered the waterfront,” so to speak.

The meeting was hosted by the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation (TDEC), which had solicited public comments in several press releases.

About 50 people attended, with six being employees of the TDEC, and another half dozen being representatives from other governmental entities.

The rest were citizens with all sorts of backgrounds, concerns and perspectives.

Most of those who spoke dealt in some way with water, but beyond that, the discussion covered a wide range of topics.

Several in the audience were members of the recently formed Middle Nolichucky Watershed Alliance, which includes TVA and other governmental officials, but also environmental groups, farmers and outdoor recreation advocates.

Tim Armstrong Speaks

Greene County Commissioner Tim Armstrong, president of the alliance, asked what can be done if it seems that the flow of a creek or other body of water seems to have been reduced over time.

Tolley said that is a very difficult question to answer, and each stream would have to be considered individually.

Mike Alexander, a member of Friends of the Nolichucky River Valley, said he believes that the volume of Jockey Creek has been significantly reduced over the last 35 years. Alexander said one place not far from where the meeting was being held had a waterfall when he was a boy, but now there is not one, and in fact, grass grows where the waterfall once was.

Alexander previously has been very vocal in his opposition to a sewage treatment plant proposed by Johnson City and Washington County for a site near Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park. That topic came up only in passing Thursday evening, because plans now call for a sewer line from Jonesborough’s sewage treatment plant to serve the new Washington County industrial park at Cherry Lane.

Alexander did say, however, that he believes that farmers are judged by standards that seem stricter, at times, than those applied to municipal treatment plants, such as Jonesborough’s.

Armstrong said he is aware that monitoring of several streams has been done above dairy farms, but not below them, and asked if this is planned. Tolley said that this will probably be done during the five-year cycle.

Nedelman Comments

Dennis Nedelman, who operates Cherokee Adventures, a rafting excursion business on the upper Nolichucky in Unicoi County, asked if the goal of the watershed management program is for more lenient or more strict regulation of streams that are already impacted by “point-source pollution.”

Point-source pollution generally comes from factories.

Tolley said that nothing is going to be allowed that would further degrade stream water quality.

Nedelman said that, if this is the case, why have emergency output permits been granted.

Tolley said that he believed Nedelman was asking about Alltrista Zinc Products Company’s plant, located in Afton, because of earlier inquiries, and said that Alltrista does have a permit for emergency discharges caused, for example, by equipment failure.

Actress Park Overall, who has a home in Afton, asked if such emergency discharges have to be measured. Tolley relied that they do, such measurement being required by law.

Richard Scull, of Afton, said that a large number of cows are kept on Sinking Creek, near the river, on what he said is “essentially a feed lot.”

He asked if that is something that the TDEC would look into. Tolley said that if the concentration of cows is great enough to be considered a point source, then perhaps the agency might look into the situation.

Nedelman then asked what is being done about the Toe and Cane rivers, which are the source of most of the water in the Nolichucky River.

Tolley said that, even though those rivers are in North Carolina, interagency communications between the two states coordinate efforts to clean up those waters.

He said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is the “boss” of water quality control efforts in both states.

Trust North Carolina?

Overall asked, “Surely we’re not expected to trust North Carolina” after the history of mistrustful relations between the two states over the pollution of the Little Pigeon River by Champion Paper Company in Canton, N.C.

Tolley replied, “Hopefully we do have some trust,” and noted that each state is required to go through the same TMDL process that the meeting was initiating here.

E.C. Remine, a member of the Friends of the Nolichucky River Valley, and a newly appointed member of the Greene County Planning Commission, asked what kind of monitoring will be done on the “20-mile stretch of proposed highway” through Greene County.

Tolley said two kinds of permits are required: a general permit for the entire project, and individual permits for each bridge.

He said three members of his 10-member staff “spend a great deal of time with TDOT projects.” Tolley said his staff covers eight Upper East Tennessee counties.

Remine asked if it is adequately staffed. Tolley replied that he believes the office is adequately staffed.

More Monitoring Urged

Greene County businessman T. Anthony Bewley said he would like to see more “baseline data” collected over a wider area, including data collected by volunteers who live or own property along a stream.

Bewley said that this would have a cost, but volunteers could do samples at much less cost.

Tolley said that his concern would be that this could bankrupt the state. “The limited sampling that we do costs $500,000 in our group, in one year,” he said. “Vandalism is a real challenge,” he said, and it is difficult to maintain security of monitoring equipment.

In addition, he said, data collected by volunteers would be of limited value in defending legal challenges.

On the other hand, he said, volunteers could help the state in monitoring flows.

Nedelman said that his rafting business has paid $200,000 in various types of permits and fees since 1982. He said it is “upsetting to me as a taxpayer” that one business, Hoover Ball Bearing in Erwin, has had three violations in a year.

He said his concern is that, once a violation takes place, “nothing is done.”

Nedelman said his customers swim in the Nolichucky, and he would like to see TDEC “be more sensitive to what’s coming out of Unicoi County.”

Tolley replied, “Our main concern is to stop the violation,” but said he did not know what the Hoover violations involved.

Cancer Rates

Wilhelmina Williams, of Chuckey and vice president of Friends of the Nolichucky River, said her concern was with cancer rates, which she said are “higher in counties along the Nolichucky River than in other parts of the state. I would like for that to be part of the record.”

Williams requested sampling of the river at Earnest Bridge on state Route 351N, near where she lives. She said she knew of one family living just downstream from the bridge that has had four family members die from cancer.

Williams said she would like to see testing in depth, “to try to figure out why this is happening.”

Tolley said that TDEC already samples at the Earnest Bridge.

However, he said that what Williams was requesting was actually an epidemiological study, outside the scope of water quality. He said that, unless the family is drinking from the river, it is unlikely that it is the cause of their problems.

Overall said health concerns are a big part of her interest in the Nolichucky River.

Bewley asked, “What’s the future of fencing creeks?” to keep livestock and manure from getting into them.

Tolley said that, in some states, legislatures have required this. This is not the case in Tennessee, he said, but in places where livestock producers have voluntarily used non-stream sources to water their stock, and developed “out of stream crossings,” non-point-source pollution has been substantially reduced.

Audience members said North Carolina and Pennsylvania require such fencing.

Lick Creek Concerns

Bonnie Bullington, of the Midway community, said she is concerned about what the TDEC is doing to monitor Lick Creek and the Pottertown Road area, since that area has “a known history of illegal hazardous waste sites.”

Tolley said that the two farms in that area have groundwater treatment permits, and permits to discharge groundwater.

Another TDEC official said a variety of tests are conducted there periodically, in line with required ongoing monitoring.

Tolley said the two sites are meeting requirements in his department, and other TDEC departments have other responsibilities for additional monitoring, which is also being done.

Bullington said at another point that, according to the TDEC‘s303(d) list of streams that do not meet standards for the stream’s intended use, Lick Creek is listed as having “high” priority.

Tolley said that, on the 303(d) list, high indicates “working order” for TDEC, rather than high levels of pollution.

Frances Lamberts, of Jonesborough, a member of the League of Women Voters, said that baseline testing needs to be done in areas that are designated for growth, such as the recently mandated urban growth areas in each Tennessee county.