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Options that would
swing well to the north and south are "gone" from
Corridor K planning in east Tennessee
TDOT and URS Corporation, along with Quantum the
computer and lots of citizens' advice, are down to
six possible routes upon the topography of the Ocoee
River gorge
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition
Copperhill, Tenn., March 28, 2011 – Jeff
Koontz isn’t saying how many tunnels and bridges he
and his fellow engineers are likely to recommend in
the next environmental impact study for the
construction someday of four lanes of traffic
through or around the Ocoee River gorge.
“We’re starting to whittle it down and narrow our
focus,” Koontz told me at tonight’s Tennessee Dept. of
Transportation Corridor K public meeting at Copper Basin
High School.
Koontz is senior project manager for the Nashville,
Tenn., office of URS Corporation. It’s an engineering design
firm based in San Francisco that goes after big government
contracts. The examples of them in the field of surface
transportation, according to the URS web site, include the
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Central Texas Turnpike and
Pennsylvania Turnpike Reconstruction.
Now URS Corp. is at work here in the mountainous
southeast corner of the Volunteer State. If you ask the
dispatchers for the nation’s trucking companies, it’s a big
headache. They would prefer to see a big fat red line
dissecting it on their maps. And who’s on the other side of
the issue? It’s the Americans who consider the scenic Ocoee
River gorge and surrounding National Forest a premiere
recreation and tourism destination.
Jeff Koontz is a likable engineer who stands about
6-feet-4. He is a native West Virginian and the son of a
professor at Marshall University. For his own education,
Jeff went to North Carolina State University, the starting
point for many an engineer working these mountain ranges,
and he received his degree in roadway design engineering in
1988.
Tennessee Dept. of Transportation’s latest attempt to
write an EIS for the remaining 14 miles in Tennessee of
Appalachian Regional Commission’s Corridor K is, as far as I
can tell, painstaking, laborious and transparent.
Options for the path of the four-lane that would have
taken wide loops to the north and south of the gorge until
reaching Tennessee 68 here in Copperhill are missing from
the ubiquitous Foamcore charts that TDOT public relations
lives by.
A northern option that somehow would have clung to the
north slope of Little Frog Mountain “would have needed to be
a road on stilts, one like the last segment that was built
on the Blue Ridge Parkway at Grandfather Mountain in North
Carolina,” I said to Jeff Koontz.
“The Linn Cove Viaduct,” he said, finishing my
sentence. “My buddies and I used to go to the Linn Cove
Viaduct visitor center and hike from there to the point at
which you get a good view of it,” he said.
So mountains and appending roads to them are something
he’s studied from up close. He’ll be on the hot seat as more
details emerge about how to get concrete and mortar to stay
on rock that has a penchant for moving.
The north side of the Ocoee River gorge tumbled down
onto U.S. 64 and the river at mile 17.6 in November 2009.
This closed the road for five months. The work-up afterwards
put in a barrier that looks like the Berlin Wall, did some
widening and took off a sheer wall or two, but this is still
no place to be driving at night. In 2003, at a time when a
big revision of the existing path in the gorge was the
focus, an environmental impact study envisioned four
four-lane tunnels and 30 bridges. It’s been taken off the
Internet.
At each public meeting, the engineers are careful to
point out that it’s the Quantum software for planning
highways that has come up with paths for this one so far,
and there is a Citizens Resource Team that gets to have its
say.
The six East Tennessee Corridor K “alternatives
recommended for further analysis” that are in tonight’s
meeting handout, with their assigned numbers surviving from
earlier iterations when there was a total of 11 of them,
are:
-
Option 1, don’t build anything at all and
worth considering in my opinion;
-
Option 2, significant improvements to the
entire length of existing U.S. 64 through the project
limits;
-
Option 4, build “north of the section of
existing U.S. 64” through the Ocoee gorge;
-
Option 5, build on the north side of the gorge
along a route similar to option four but nearer Parksville
Lake;
-
Option 8, improve existing U.S. 64 and also
build on the north side “a roadway in a new location toward
the Little Frog Wilderness area” and tie back into U.S. 64
west of Whitewater Rafting Center; and
-
Option 8A, like option five build nearer
Parksville Lake, and then like option eight, build on the
north side toward Little Frog Wilderness” and link up with
existing U.S. 64 at the Whitewater Center.
Corridor K options that would have taken a new
four-lane highway in expensive and sweeping loops around the
gorge “have been grayed out,” I said to TDOT’s, Chester
Sutherland. I had not met him before at the public meetings
here at Copper Basin High School, and I was trying to win
his confidence by quoting the PowerPoint show and talking
the approved language.
“They’re gone,” Sutherland said.
Chester Sutherland is a plain-speaking man with a
homespun touch. He now officially has the title of TDOT
project manager for Corridor K (while his colleague Wesley
Hughen remains on scene, knowledgeable and a good source for
information about the project).
How far in miles above existing U.S. 64 lies the common
path on the north side where options four through eight A
are drawn? “From the centerline of the 2,000-foot shared
corridor of options 4, 5, 8, and 8A down to existing U.S. 64
along the Ocoee River and Lake varies from 0.96 miles
maximum down to 0 and averages 0.71 miles," said Chester
Sutherland.
HOW UNSTABLE is the Blue Ridge here, as proven at mile
17.6 two years ago? What is the steepness and extent of
grade? What are the Federal Highway Administration and
environmental standards that this road scheme must hurdle
(that is, were Congress ever to approve, and the President
sign a law permitting a federal highway through the Cherokee
National Forest)?
For a state or federal engineer like Chester
Sutherland, you can take up the balance of your career on a
project of this nature, which already dates to the Kennedy
years in the White House.
“The Episcopal liturgy on the third Sunday of Lent this
week was from Romans chapter five in the Bible,” I said. “It
talks about how tribulations bring patience and patience
brings experience and experience brings hope.” He smiled
and, after one of those moments when searching for what to
say, he replied, “It’s a great book.”
* * *
Tom Bennett of the Martins Creek
community near Murphy, N.C., is a retired newsman and
Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition member/volunteer.
E-mail him at
farblumtn@gmail.com
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