2013 COUNTY-BY-COUNTY WATERSHED HIGHLIGHTS:
UNION COUNTY, GA. – Volume 3
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition
Blairsville, Ga., Dec. 17, 2013 – On a grade almost vertical, a few feet from burning brush piles, and constantly shifting positions to maintain their footing, men in t-shirts in 40-degree weather use shovels to guide last bits of rock and soil into a heavy-equipment grader’s scoop.
It’s winter in the Blue Ridge Mountains. On days when there’s been no recent snow or rain, a crew from Talley Construction Co. of Rossville, Ga. is proceeding with a $3.9 million contract from Georgia Dept. of Transportation. It’s to replace by next year the 1940 bridge over Ivy Log Creek. This is on U.S. 19/129, six miles north of Blairsville on the way to Murphy, N.C.
“That bridge over Ivy Log Creek has had one of the worst safety ratings and has been on the state’s list to be replaced for a long time,” said Lamar Paris, sole commissioner of Union County government, at his office here.
The new span will be .474 miles long. Silt fencing is the erosion stopper of choice for hundreds of feet at the water’s edge. To a journalist’s untrained eye, all appear to have worked well so far.
Union County is a place where environmental protection is stressed. It produced the first two recipients of the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition’s Holman Water Quality Stewardship Award. They were the late Jim Dobson, former superintendent of Blairsville’s Mountain Experiment Station, Holman recipient in 2010, and Commissioner Paris, honored with the award in 2011.
Ivy Log Creek is a major tributary of TVA’s 1942 Nottely Lake, which is 20 miles long and 61,588 acre feet, mostly within the Chattahoochee National Forest. The lake sprawls west and south from the 184-foot-high Nottely earthen dam on the Nottely River that’s a tributary of the Hiwassee River, which crosses three states.
(Quarrel with me over the tributary’s spelling if you wish, but it’s pointless. A Georgia road sign along the lakeshore names it “Nottely,” but a sign on the water intake at mid-lake and visible from that road sign favors the spelling “Nottley.” Meanwhile, I live nearby in Cherokee County, N.C., in the Notla voting township. It seems our white forebears were intent upon mangling the Cherokee words and never cooperating from one locale to the next to achieve standard translations.)
Upgrading of the Ivy Log Creek bridge, and another earlier at Nottely Marina closer to town, raise hopes for an overall widening by the state of Georgia for the two-lane U.S. 19-129 asphalt highway from Blairsville to the North Carolina line. This would mean faster, safer access for Floridians and Atlantans bent on gambling and headed from points south to the planned Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River Casino Hotel near Murphy, N.C. It is set to open in 2015. “I think Georgia is waiting to see if North Carolina will widen the highway to the state line, and North Carolina is waiting to see if Georgia will do it,” Commissioner Paris said.
He continued: “GDOT is also going to be buying right of way on Georgia 515 East towards (the town of) Young Harris for a widening project in 2015. I hope after that the next (GDOT road) project here will be U.S. 19-129, the Murphy Highway.”
During 2013, the Watershed Coalition began a new bacterial monitoring program in Union County certifying several new “Adopt-a-Stream” volunteers. HRWC also significantly rehabilitated the streamside area on the new piece of Farmers’ Market property on Butternut Creek.
The latter is a tributary of the Nottely River, which is part of the Hiwassee watershed. That’s part of the Mississippi River watershed. The water flows out past New Orleans into the gulf and thence to the Atlantic. Everything being done to enhance water quality helps all living in creation.
Tom Bennett of the Martins Creek community near Murphy, N.C., was a retired newsman, Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition member/volunteer/donor and recipient of the 2015 Holman Water Quality Stewardship Award. Tom died on December 28, 2020.