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'Everything
is possible,' TDOT says as it prepares to write a new draft
environmental impact study for Corridor K, which could
adversely affect the Hiwassee River
A poll of
businesses is done 'in the blind' as a consultant asserts
that 85 of them support the $2.3 billion highway
construction project that somehow would traverse the rugged
Ocoee River region
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition
Murphy, N.C., Nov. 29, 2007
– Some big things can come from a very small place. The
providers of electric power to this town of 1,562 in far
western North Carolina make up 27 percent of the board of
directors of the Southeast Industrial Development
Association, a program of the Southeast Tennessee
Development District of Chattanooga, Tenn. The latter is
completing an economic development and transportation study
for the Appalachian Regional Commission’s Corridor K highway
project, projected by one estimate to cost $2.3 billion.
This four-lane divided road that Tennesseans say is needed
to move goods faster to eastern seaports would expand the
existing U.S. 64 to Murphy through the scenic, precipitous
Ocoee River gorge. If placed there, it would wind around
many curves via a series of bridges and tunnels. Or if some
Polk County, Tennesseans get their way, the construction
project, if approved, would go a bit north of the gorge and
through the U.S. Forest Service’s pristine Little Frog
Wilderness. This is one thing that concerns the Hiwassee
River Watershed Coalition: The north slopes of the
wilderness drain into the last wild stretch of the Hiwassee
River.
John Carringer is manager of the Murphy Electric Power
Board. I asked him if the board supports Corridor K.
“Why the hell not?” he boomed. “Why the hell not?” he
said, repeating himself. “We’re in a bowl here. We have to
go over a mountain or through a gorge to get out here.
There are emergency vehicles leaving here every day to go to
Erlanger (Hospital in Chattanooga), and they have to go
through the gorge to get there.”
His office is in a brick building that the power board
shares with Murphy City Hall, next to the Cherokee County
History
Museum and the Murphy police station. There are shotguns in
two of the four corners of John Carringer’s office.
“Have you got any shells in here?” I asked. “Yes, I’ve
got a box of them right here,” he replied, leaning forward
to point to an area on the floor beside his desk. I was
standing on the other side of the desk, and didn’t walk
around to see if he was right. I just took his word for it.
Joe Satterfield is general manager of the Blue Ridge
Mountain Electric Membership Cooperative. Its headquarters
building is just over the state line in Young Harris,
Georgia. We talked in the office of Erik Brinke, the
Cooperative’s economic development director. I didn’t see a
shotgun anywhere, just a lot of evidence of work to
electrify and bring a better way of life to the mountain
region.
I asked: Does BRMEMC support Corridor K?
“Yes, in a broad sense,” Joe Satterfield replied. “We
need a transportation system to move commerce. We support
the broad concept of economic development, because it’s good
for the area. But it needs to be done correctly.” He added:
“I have not ever heard of an alternative route for Corridor
K than through the gorge.”
Jim Allen is a spokesman for the Tennessee Valley
Authority in Knoxville. I reached him by phone and asked:
Does IT support Corridor K?
“As an agency, TVA does not have an opinion whether the
corridor should be continued or not,” Allen said. “In
places where it crosses TVA streams, we are required by the
TVA Act to review and issue a permit 26A. And we would
cooperate with Tennessee and North Carolina authorities in
environmental reviews. Any contract would be issued on an
individual basis in each step of the project.”
Bill Hughes is mayor of the Town of Murphy. “Yes, we
support Corridor K,” he told me. “It will open this area to
east-west traffic. It will mean more commercial
development. We should seize this opportunity while it is
here.”
THE OTHER board members of SEIDA, according to
its website, are: Chickamauga Utilities of Chickamauga,
Tenn.; Cleveland Utilities of Cleveland, Tenn.; Dayton
Electric Department of Dayton, Tenn.; Electric Power Board
of Chattanooga; Etowah Utilities Department of Etowah,
Tenn.; North Georgia Electric Membership Corporation of
Dalton, Ga.; Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative of South
Pittsburg, Tenn.; and Tri-State Electric Membership
Corporation of McCaysville, Tenn.
These hometowns, like Murphy, are not exactly place
names jumping off the tips of the tongues of most Americans.
Yet through their association (whose logo depicts a river),
these co-ops are trying to jump-start a highway construction
project that would cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars;
make travel through the gorge safer; speed goods in and out
of the region faster; and, since tractor-trailer trucks
weighing many tons change an environment through which they
are moving, potentially harm the Hiwassee River.
THE DOZEN HURDLES FACED BY CORRIDOR K’S PROPONENTS
Because I want the Hiwassee to stay the same color and
as free of pollution as possible, I am a volunteer paying
out of my own pocket for phone calls and travel. (Regular
gasoline is $3.09 a gallon today at Fatback’s Citgo here.)
To write these articles and alert people to Hiwassee River
issues, I am going to see persons with shotguns and shells;
reading books I check out of three libraries; and saying a
prayer of thanks for the advent of an Internet coinciding
with my retirement from a newspaper.
I’ve been able to find at least 12 environmental
hurdles faced by groups and persons wanting Corridor K.
There probably are more in this 2007 world with its thicket
of regulations, but here are the ones I’ve been able to
identify:
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Gerald Nicely, Commissioner of TDOT, must decide to seek
money for a new DEIS in Tennessee’s 2008 budget,
according to Cliff Hightower’s Nov. 29 article in the
Chattanooga News-Free Press.
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The Tennessee General Assembly would have to approve the
request.
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Governor Phil Bredesen would have to sign the law making
it possible.
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The new DEIS would have to be written.
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The new DEIS must satisfy the National Environmental
Protection Act’s requirements to “make diligent efforts
to involve the public in preparing and implementing;
hold public hearings; and solicit public comment.”
That’s according to Rick Gehrke’s May 2007 thesis for
the master of science at the University of Tennessee and
entitled “Effectiveness of Citizen Participation in
Governmental Decisions: A Case Study of the Appalachian
Development Highway System Corridor K Project – Ocoee
Section.” I imagine TDOT will scrutinize a study plan
carefully after the U.S. Environmental Protection gave
poor marks to a 2003 Corridor K Draft Environmental
Impact Study. It rated it “Environmental Concerns 2,”
meaning it “does not contain sufficient information to
fully assess environmental impacts,” according to Gehrke.
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The Tennessee Valley Authority would have to issue a
Permit 26A. It provides that “No appurtenances or
structures that would affect waters of the Tennessee
River or any of its tributaries shall be constructed
along the Tennessee River until plans for such
construction, operation and maintenance have been
approved by TVA,” according to the little 74-page
fragment of the original Corridor K DEIS that you can
find on the Internet.
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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must issue a “Section
10 permit under the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899.”
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Congress must pass and the President of the United
States sign a law making land in a national forest
available for a highway, according to Denny E. Mobbs,
Polk County, Tenn., attorney and advocate of the Little
Frog Wilderness route.
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The U.S. Forest Service must make a land easement or
transfer to the State of Tennessee for any new
right-of-way required from within the Cherokee
National Forest.
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Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation
must issue a Water Quality Certification;
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For a fully widened Corridor K to go all the way from
Cleveland, Tenn., through Murphy and on to Interstate 40
at Asheville, N.C., the N.C. DOT has to acquire
right-of-way for sections of its $888 million Project A9
in Cherokee, Graham and Swain counties. You can read
about this 27.1-mile Corridor K US19-74-129 project on
the NCDOT website; and
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Tennessee and North Carolina would have to appropriate
the necessary matching funds for highway construction.
I TELEPHONED Wesley Hughen of the Project
Management Office of TDOT Region 2 today and asked him if
there still is a chance that the Corridor K project could be
relocated north to the Little Frog Wilderness, thereby
having an impact on the Hiwassee River.
“Everything’s a possibility,” Hughen replied. “We have
stopped the Draft EIS, and we’re going to have a new one.”
According to Rick Gehrke, the highway construction fund
“would be funded by an 80/20 split, respectively, between
federal (ARC) funds and Tennessee state funds. Estimates
for its completion, given at $1.5 billion in late 2003, have
been subsequently revised upwards to $2.3 billion (as of
2004).”
Melissa Zieglar is director of economic and community
development for Wilbur Smith Associates, the Columbia,
S.C.-based transportation and infrastructure consulting firm
that is being paid by SEIDA (with TDOT money) to bring the
public to events called either “strategic planning meetings”
or “stakeholder meetings.” I’ve attended three.
Zieglar said here Oct. 15 that 85 businesses support
Corridor K. I telephoned her later at her office in
Knoxville, Tenn., and asked her to name the businesses here
in Murphy that do so.
“We cannot do that because we did the survey in the
blind,” she replied. “They weren’t required to give their
names, but the organizations collecting them for us may know
who they are.”
My question to those businesses would be: Are you sure
that the environmental degradation and other impacts to our
rural quality of life (including increased traffic &
commercialization) that this road would inevitably bring are
worth the slightly lower transportation costs and more
timely deliveries?
If the system wasn’t set up to operate inside the
boundary drawn by ARC in 1965, would a road through the
primary Corridor K counties still be the best solution to
our economic development and transportation needs?
* * *
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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