About 50 people interested in a clean and healthy Nolichucky River attended a public meeting on Monday sponsored by the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation (TDEC).

The Middle Nolichucky Watershed Alliance (MNWA), a nonprofit water preservation group focused on promoting clean water in the part of the river and its tributaries that flow through Greene County, hosted the meeting, along with the Upper Nolichucky Watershed Alliance.

The meeting attracted people interested in clean water from Tennessee and North Carolina. Those attending placed a small round orange sticker on a map to show where they live.

"This is a good time for networking between groups and people" from different parts of Tennessee and North Carolina interested in preserving the Nolichucky River's watershed, David Duhl, TDEC's watershed coordinator, told a reporter.

The meeting began with a brief PowerPoint overview of the so-called "Watershed Approach" that TDEC has pursued since 1996 to analyze and monitor the Nolichucky River and other streams and rivers in Tennessee.

"We all live in a watershed," an announcer stated in the overview. He continued, "No matter where you live, you're downstream from someone."

Tennessee has 55 watersheds of all different sizes, including some that cross into neighboring states, the presentation explained.

Ridges define the area of a watershed. A watershed collects rain and other precipitation that run downhill and into streams and rivers at a lower altitude.

The Watershed Approach uses a five-year repeating cycle, it was explained.

The approach includes planning, analysis of the current status of rivers and streams in a watershed, monitoring, assessment, public meetings and finally, in the fifth year, a Watershed Water Quality Management Plan.

The Nolichucky River watershed plan is currently in its fifth year. At Monday's meeting, held at the Limestone Ruritan Club in Washington, a copy of TDEC's Nolichucky River Watershed Water Quality Management Plan was available for review.

The Management Plan is also an inventory of pollution sources that affect a river.

After brief comments by Duhl, a question-and-answer period followed, where he was asked if the current drought has adversely affected the Nolichucky River and if the state's monitoring of the waterway was being adversely affected by the current economic "financial crisis."

Duhl said of the financial crisis, that, for TDEC, "It changes every day," but explained how, often working with volunteers and other organizations in the community, TDEC has conducted 1,999 samples from the Nolichucky River watershed since the Watershed Approach five years ago.

TDEC's Johnson City field office is "very focused" in its monitoring of the Nolichucky River watershed, Duhl said.

Jonesborough resident Frances Lamberts asked if the Nolichucky River had suffered "degradation" because of the drought and climate change.

Beverly Brown, who works with TDEC's water pollution control division in Johnson City, said, "Drought does impact the health of the stream."

Later, she told a reporter, "We've been in a really severe drought in Northeast Tennessee in the last two years. You see its impact on insects (in the river), and to the fish, as well, I'm sure."

Brown also said that a drought in 2000 may have contributed to some of the rivers and tributaries being placed on the state's impaired-river list that year. She said it was difficult to conclude whether or how climate change affected the river.
Wilhemina Williams, chairman of the MNWA, said schoolchildren she addresses are often amazed to learn how the Nolichucky River is formed in North Carolina before it reaches Tennessee. "Water comes from the eastern face of Mount Mitchell in North Carolina. It is the tallest mountain between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean," Williams said.

She added, "The Toe and Cane rivers come together (in North Carolina) to form the Nolichucky River."

On Monday evening, representatives the Tennessee Department of Agriculture, Nolichucky Watershed Partnership and Smallmouth Unlimited and other organizations had "stations" around the Limestone Ruritan Club's meeting room to discuss various aspects of water quality in the region.