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Heavy equipment
scrambles on steep slopes to keep soil runoff out of the Hiwassee River
In far western
North Carolina, a $50 million, five-year river road relocation project
continues on 4.9 miles of U.S. 64.
First responders will need to be trained to
activate a spill basin in case there ever is an accident involving
hazardous waste 50 feet up on the longest steel-span bridge in
state history.
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition,
Inc.
Murphy, N.C., Nov. 3, 2006 -- The
project superintendent for the $50 million relocation of a stretch of
U.S. Highway 64 here says he and his employees and subcontractors are
doing “everything possible” to keep from harming the scenic Hiwassee
River.
Now in its 16th month, this project has not
rated much coverage in the local newspapers here. It hasn’t scored even
a mention on the otherwise deep, comprehensive web site of the
non-profit organization that bears the river’s name, the Hiwassee River
Watershed Coalition. The latter has explained that what’s happening now
was approved years ago, before HRWC’s incorporation. HRWC views the
work as a foregone conclusion it can do little about.
Here in the Blue Ridge, large engineering
projects may seem commonplace. Rivers are spanned, and the spaces
between mountains are sealed up with concrete, creating dams. Yet the
current U.S. 64 work is impressive in its size and scope.
That is clear from interviews I had today
with Jamie Wilson, division construction engineer for the North Carolina
Dept. of Transportation Division 14 in Sylva, and Daniel “Dink” Jones,
the U.S. 64 project superintendent for Wright Brothers Construction Co.
of Charleston, Tenn., who works out of an office in a house trailer on
Harshaw Road in Murphy.
The $50 million cost of this 4.9-mile-long
project puts it at about $10 million per mile. Work began in June 2005.
The scheduled completion date is September 2009.
A main bridge now under construction in east
Murphy will be “the largest single steel span bridge in the history of
the state of North Carolina, three hundred and thirty-one feet,” said
Wilson, the division construction engineer. Up until now, the largest
such bridge of this type in the state has been one in the Outer Banks,
he said.
This Murphy project now has on site two large
cranes, one with the lifting capacity of 250 tons and the other a
lifting capacity of 150 tons. These will be used to swing into place the
large steel parts for the bridge roadway that will be 50-55 feet above
the water. At the center of the span, they will weigh 2000 pounds per
foot of beam. In just one web splice of a single bridge beam, there will
be 300 bolts.
I asked: “So it will be strong enough to support
even, say, a lumber truck with 17 white oak-tree logs?”
“Yes,” Wilson said.
In recent weeks, passers-by have watched with
rapt interest the work being done high up by two large machines, a D-6
Caterpillar driven by a man from California named Javier Lopez and an
excavator driven by a man from Alaska named Eric Snyder. They and their
tractors have scurried busily up and down two steep slopes, sometimes
appearing to go almost straight up or straight down. These elevations
on which they have been working rise 248 feet, according to Jones. They
directly overlook U.S. 64 and the Hiwassee River.
As these daring men complete their dizzying
work, other machines spray a custom mix of rye and millet. Then a
compound is spewed out and it forms a mat. The purpose is to keep the
soil in place, and not see it slide down on the roadway and in the
river. So far, this process appears to be succeeding. Eventually, the
matting will disintegrate and mix in with the soil. In all, this
project is moving three million cubic yards of dirt, Wilson said, and
the hourly pay is modest.
Fifty-five acres are involved in the project
in which NCDOT received a permanent easement from the Tennessee Valley
Authority, according to the TVA’s February 2005 supplemental
environmental assessment. There are 21 stream crossings including two
bridges across the Hiwassee River and for crossings of Martins and
Hampton creeks. The remaining 17 stream crossings involve pipe or box
culvert installations. On the Martins Creek side, the TVA also is
relocating its Murphy-Blairsville transmission line to make way for the
new roadway.
“No designated wild and scenic rivers, or
streams on the Nationwide Rivers inventory or their tributaries, or
unique or important aquatic habitats occur at or adjacent to the project
area,” TVA wrote.
“The commitment in the 1994 Federal Highway
Administration environmental assessment to relocate the town of Murphy’s
raw drinking water intake has been completed.”
I asked the NCDOT’s Wilson: What is the
purpose of all this work and expense?
“As you drive the old U.S. 64, you can see just
how antiquated and unsafe it is,” Wilson said.
It also could speed tourists faster and more
safely on their way to Highlands, Cashiers and other mountain getaways.
The hundreds of real estate salespersons working the Murphy area will
watch closely to see how the road relocation affects sales and
homebuilding.
Golfers bound for Cherokee Hills County Club
and dependent on winding Harshaw Road will enjoy in the new U.S. 64 a
direct route to their recreation. Harshaw has hairpin turns and sharp
slices to the left and right, and these will be eased. If only the
golfers could imitate NCDOT and achieve the same kind of straightening
out as they take their shots with their number one wood clubs off the
course’s tee boxes.
The U.S. 64 project could mean shorter
delivery times for ambulances to reach Murphy Medical Center with
stricken patients from Murphy, Ranger, Bear Paw, Bellview and Martins
Creek, and possibly save lives. There will be easier travel to class
for students at Tri-County Community College than if they were to
continue to drive the old roadway that winds through hills and, at a
scenic farm valley with red barns, skirts the banks of the Hiwassee.
Yet how much of a tradeoff is being made, and what does this mean for
the future of the river?
‘THE AGENCIES SUGGESTED WE NOT GO IN THE WATER’
Jamie Wilson is a graduate of Andrews High
and he received his degree in civil engineering from North Carolina
State in 1986. He is one of the key managers keeping track of 60 NCDOT
projects that are in varying stages of conception, approval and
construction in 14 far western counties of North Carolina.
He is tall and a bit taciturn, but contacted
me within two days after my request for information about this project
went to the Communications office in Raleigh. Jamie Wilson is a person
in whom NCDOT has invested a lot of authority since he is tracking 60
projects in a state government department spending, at least in Murphy,
$10 million a mile. He responds in the atmosphere of openness that you
sense in using the department web site, and in a state that is one of
three in the South with open government in the state constitution, and
not just in statutes. (The other two with this distinction are Arkansas
and Florida.)
The thick plans for the U.S. 64 project in
Murphy are in drawers of a gray cabinet on a wall in Jamie Wilson’s
office. Each sheet is in metrics and he patiently uses a calculator to
convert the numbers to feet and yards for a reporter.
A dense overlay of approvals for the Murphy
project appears to be summed up in TVA’s 2005 supplemental environmental
assessment. You can read it in a portable document format on the TVA’s
web site. Wilson worked for TVA in Muscle Shoals, Ala., and helped
design the giant utility’s manufacturing facilities for fertilizer while
he was an N.C. State student. Yet he is not ready to affirm the 14-page
TVA document as the single guide for how he and his colleagues are
protecting the Hiwassee River, including staying out of it by erecting a
331-foot-long steel span, longest in state history.
“There have been a lot of studies,” he said. “The
agencies working on this suggested we not go in the water.”
One of the 10 “mitigation measures” that
jumps out at you from a 1994 NCDOT environmental assessment is that
“construction techniques will be used that do not allow wet concrete to
contact water in the rivers or streams.”
“We do that on all our jobs,” Wilson said in
today’s interview. “Wet concrete will kill just about everything in a
river.”
He talked about the mitigation measures used
up on the slopes such as seeding and matting to control erosion, and
revealed that these steps are busting NCDOT’s budget for this project.
“There’s no telling how much over budget we
are because of the soil erosion matting, but we’re doing it,” Wilson
said. “You don’t spare any money when it’s erosion or safety.”
“Here it is,” he added, as he turned to a
page in one of the documents on his desk. “We’re one million dollars
over budget on soil erosion for this project.’
SOME HOT BUTTONS have to be pushed to move a
project through the federal and state governments, and in this one,
there also were “hot rocks.”
“A hot-rock issue moved us to the other side
of the river,” Wilson said.
Twenty years ago, preliminary design studies
showed “the significant potential of exposed ‘hot rock’,” according to
the 2005 TVA supplemental environmental assessment. “The underlying
geological formation was known to contain hot rock that when exposed to
the elements could produce acidic runoff that could cause adverse
impacts to aquatic ecology. NCDOT proposed to relocate this portion of
U.S. 64.”
Federal roadways 74 and 64 are asphalt paths
important for North Carolina tourism. They make an abrupt right angle
in Murphy. Now the need to take the relocated portion of 64 from the
east to the west bank of the Hiwassee River is going to create a hairpin
curve in a federal highway. This is to be mitigated, and safer
approaches to the intersection are to be ensured, by not only relocating
old 64 but also rebuilding a 1000-yard stretch of it. This will take it
up over one of those 248-foot slopes. Those are the elevations just
excavated and dressed by heavy-equipment workers from California and
Alaska.
On both the relocated new U.S. 64 and the old
rebuilt 64, there will be only two lanes. However, the bridges on the
new stretch are to be wide enough for four lanes, should these be deemed
necessary in the future.
As you can see, this is a project that has
been defined in studies over the past two decades. Another standard
that the relocated road will meet is that of the American Association of
State Highway and Transportation Engineers for 60 mile-an-hour travel,
according to Wilson.
“Sixty-four is one of our strategic highways,
and we’re meeting the design standards for it,” he said.
The best management practices that NCDOT is
using include putting in silt fencing and doing seeding and mulching.
“We have a policy governing our design and installation of devices so
that they’re being done properly,” Wilson said.
The latest document in what must be a library
shelf of them governing this project is the ’05 TVA supplemental
environmental assessment. It identifies in table two what the TVA says
are the one crayfish, six mussel, one snail, and two fish species in the
vicinity of this work. That’s far short of the 72 plant and animal
species that are “endangered, threatened, of special concern or
considered rare by the N.C. Natural Heritage program,” as cited in the
first five-year update of the Hiwassee River Basinwide Water Quality
Management Plan approved by the NC Environmental Management Commission
in May 1997, and coming up for an update next year.
While TVA named two fish in the area of the road
alignment, the water management plan stated that 68 fish species have
been collected from the Hiwassee River basin.
ANYONE WHO EVER HAS parked a vehicle in a
garage knows that despite your best efforts and regular trips to the
dealer for service, your engine’s crankcase oil and other pollutants can
leak out onto the floor.
“There is a collection system on the (U.S.
64) bridges,” Wilson said. “All the deck drains go into a pipe and are
carried to the bank and run to buffer areas. None of the water on our
bridges gets into the river.”
He agreed that a “worst-case scenario” might
be a collision up on the roadway, say between logging and gasoline
trucks.
“There will be a hazardous spill basin with a
sluice gate,” Wilson said. “If the emergency responders can get there
in time, they can close the gate and all the hazardous waste can come to
the spill basin.
“Before we turn the job over, the maintenance
people will be made aware of this. I’m sure there will be a
groundbreaking, and everyone will be there to be in the photo.”
‘I GO WHERE THE JOB GOES’
Daniel “Dink” Jones is a courteous, tanned
and thick man with the frame of a ‘dozer driver and the personnel and
management skills to be Wright Brothers Construction Company’s
superintendent for a $50 million project in Murphy.
He is from Loudon, Tenn., and he has a
high-school education. He is a tough man and outside his office is a
bulletin board and one of the memos there states that there will be no
“back talk” from employees.
This is a no-nonsense approach that the
nation’s taxpayers surely will appreciate, for they’re the ones paying
for all of this work.
I asked Dink Jones if he and his men and
women on the job are doing all they can to protect the river.
“Yes, we are,” he said. “We are doing
everything possible, because we like to drink water, too.”
He seems grateful that someone wants to put
on the record the names of the two heavy-equipment men who graded the
slopes above the road and river, and discounts the dangers involved.
“It’s something you get used to quick,” Jones
said. “It looks dangerous, but it’s really not. And they all wear seat
belts.”
Wright Brothers Construction, which makes
roads and not bicycles or airplanes, sends its superintendents to live
in the area of a project with a long life. “I go where the job goes,”
Dink Jones said. “I am a resident of Warne.”
That means he drives home each day on old
U.S. 64 along Brasstown Creek – and the following are my words, not his.
In this daily commute he sees up close how this road’s original
designers likely did not take as their first consideration the
protection of the Hiwassee River.
“Yes, that work was in 1923,” he says, and he
learned this from the dates carved into bridges. “There are places
where they put the road right up against the river.” That’s all he said
about it, and I didn’t press him to explain how the 2006 work is
learning from that of 83 years ago; the federal and state studies have
seen to that.
Brasstown Creek east of Clay’s Corner and in
the stretch near the Creamery and Ogden School is the site of the
Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition’s current cleanup. It received 2.1
million from the North Carolina Clean Water Management Trust Fund in
1999. Its purpose is to “restore more than five miles of stream, create
and protect 45 acres of riparian buffer, and re-vegetate 160 acres of
critically eroding bare areas,” according to the article “TVA watershed
teams” on TVA’s web site.
Section 303(d) of the federal Clean Water Act
requires states to list streams not meeting water quality standards.
These fouled-up streams are where “the effluent limitations… are not
stringent enough” and “controls of thermal discharges… are not stringent
enough to assure protection of and propagation of a balanced indigenous
population of shellfish and wildlife.” As of the writing of this
watershed’s management plan in 1997, Brasstown Creek east of Murphy was
the stream here receiving this rueful designation. It’s not good, but
at least the superintendent of the ’06 road relocation is seeing this
polluted tributary of the Hiwassee River each day as he drives to work.
Dink Jones said that the work has not yet
begun on the hazardous spill basins for two bridges, basins that must
work and be operated properly in time if toxic substances are never to
go over the sides and fall 50-55 feet into the Hiwassee River.
Meanwhile, the little 100 X 100
ryegrass-seeded bowl of earth on Harshaw Road near its intersection with
Martins Creek Road is a storm runoff catch basin.
There are piles of heavy stone in the water around
huge concrete abutments. It is on this rip-rap that the two big cranes
will crawl when they get ready to do the job of lifting into place the
heavy bridge beams. That day will be an important one for the ecology of
the river. Swimming in it are fish species numbering somewhere between
two and 68 and as the big cranes start work, the fish may be able to
sense that something big is going on up there.
About 35 persons work for Wright Brothers
here, and had best check the bulletin boards regularly. Counting
part-timers and consultants that come in and out to check on things,
there are about 50 persons working on this project.
Wright Brothers Contracting is the excavator
and prime contractor. Simpson Contracting of Cleveland, Tenn., is the
builder of five bridges in all. Carolina Landscapes of Hendersonville is
the landscaper. The overall project is being coordinated by NCDOT
Division 14’s Andrews Office, where Trent Anderson is resident
engineer. Four counties are served by the Andrews Office, according to
the NCDOT web site.
* * *
Tom Bennett of the Martins Creek community west
of Murphy is a board member and a volunteer for Hiwassee River
Watershed Coalition.
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