A meeting was held Tuesday evening at Tusculum College to discuss a grant that is being sought to clean up Frank Creek, which is also called College Creek, downstream from the school.

The meeting was conducted by Soil Conservationist Paul Hayden, who is with the Greene County Soil Conservation District.

Also hosting the meeting was Dana Ball of the Middle Nolichucky Watershed Alliance.

Hayden told the group of 15 people, which included about 10 property owners, that the conservation district has been in communication with the Ingles supermarket chain at the corporate level.

He said the stormwater detention pond next to the Ingles supermarket next to U.S. Highway 11-E is not holding water as it should.

He said an Asheville, N.C., engineering firm that the Soil Conservation district is working with is already working with Ingles at the corporate level to develop a company-wide stormwater plan.

Hayden said he believes changes can be made to the detention pond to make it function as it should.

He also said he believes that businesses along U.S. 11-E contribute significantly to periodic flooding of the creek.

In most cases, not enough land was left to allow for stormwater to be detained or retained as businesses were developed.

Applying For Grant

Hayden is involved in discussions with the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) about possible improvements that state agency can make.

The Soil Conservation District is in the process of applying for a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant. If received, the grant would provide funds over a five-year period that would be available to landowners in the creek’s 3,000-acre watershed on a voluntary basis.

Hayden “guess-timated” that the application will be for about $500,000, providing roughly $100,000 per year, if approved.

Currently, Frank/College Creek is included on a list compiled by the EPA and the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation (TDEC) as “impaired” to the point that the creek “doesn’t function at the level that it should” for recreational uses such as fishing.

“There should be aquatic life in the creek, and there’s very little,” Hayden said.

According to the EPA and TDEC, the creek’s primary problem is that of siltation.

The creek has too many suspended particles of dirt or other solid matter, and shows contamination by high levels of E. coli, a bacteria that indicates that fecal material is getting into the creek, most likely from cattle or failing septic systems.

“The water is not particularly clean,” Hayden said.

Flooding Is Key Problem

However, Hayden also said that the main problem with Frank Creek is flooding, and this must be dealt with before other, secondary concerns are addressed.

Periodic flooding “overloads the creek” whenever there is significant rainfall, Hayden said. The force of this water causes erosion and washes contaminants into the creek.

Hayden showed photos he had taken in September, when more than five inches, and perhaps as much as seven inches, of rain fell in a morning.

One picture showed flooding of a street leading into The Meadows subdivision near the college. Another showed water flowing across a lawn near Viking Place. Another showed severe erosion of the creek bank along Rufe Taylor Road, threatening a business.

Yet another showed a cow standing in the creek, downstream from the college.

He urged one resident of The Meadows to see if there is anything that property owners can do to influence the developer to try to improve stormwater runoff there.

“We’ve got to get flooding under control,” he said.

He said it would be unrealistic to talk to farmers about cows that drink from the creek as long as flooding occurs regularly.

Ball, president of the Watershed Alliance, said that as long as periodic heavy flooding occurs, other measures to improve stream banks would not last, because they would be subject to being washed away several times each year.

Voluntary Participation

Hayden stressed that participation in the program would be voluntary.

The grant would make funds available for improvements available on a “cost-share” basis, with 75 percent of the cost of each project to come from the grant, and 25 percent from the landowner.

The grant calls for a cooperative effort involving the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and possibly the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in addition to the soil conservation district and the MNWA.

The goal of the grant would be to improve Frank/College Creek to the point that it can be removed from the list of “impaired” creeks.

Hayden has said that he intentionally targeted Frank Creek/College Creek not because it is especially contaminated, but in hopes of involving Tusculum’s educational community in the cleanup process.

50 Of 84 Creeks Impaired

He said Greene County has approximately 84 creeks, and of these, more than 50 are on the impaired list.

He said 104 parcels of land within the 3,000-acre (4.7 square mile) watershed of Frank/College Creek are considered “farms” by one agency or another.

However, he said only five or six of these farms actually produce beef cattle. There are no dairies in the creek’s watershed, Hayden said, and no facilities that produce chickens or hogs unless they are very small.

The creek’s watershed does not have any sources of pollution that could be considered “point sources,” Hayden said.

In general, he noted, a “point source” is considered a place, a paper mill, for example, where pollution is introduced into the creek through a pipe.

Landowner Participation

However, Hayden said, there are many “non-point sources” of pollution that the funding through the grant could address.

One property owner, Juanita Dobson, asked if low participation by landowners could potentially harm the program.

Hayden said it definitely could.

For example, if the five-year grant is approved, funding will only be allocated on an annual basis.

If most of the money allocated for the first year has not been spent on projects, he said, then it would be more difficult to ask for funding for the second year.

Hayden said he is interested in addressing the major elements that contribute to flooding first, in hopes of reducing the amount of water that regularly floods the creek, and decreasing its force.

But he said the funding can also be used to build smaller projects such as small wetlands in low areas that are hard to mow, “rain gardens” to store and slowly release excess stormwater, and even rain barrels.

He said the impact of such projects is probably impossible to measure individually, but if every landowner in the whole watershed were to do one such project, the overall effect would be hugely positive.

Hayden said he “probably” got Tommy Doughty, Tusculum College’s facilities manager, in trouble earlier this month by talking in public about possible projects before Doughty had time to discuss them with the college’s board.

Doughty was quoted in The Greeneville Sun as saying he is excited about the potential that several types of flood-reduction projects offer the college, especially in view of the fact that the grant could pay three-fourths of the overall cost.

One potential grant-funded project would store stormwater for later irrigation uses.

But Doughty told the Sun, and the article noted, that he had not made any commitments, and the article also said he had not yet approached the college’s board.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Hayden emphasized the preliminary nature of the talks he has had with Doughty, who was not present on Tuesday.