2013 COUNTY-BY-COUNTY WATERSHED HIGHLIGHTS:
CHEROKEE COUNTY, N.C. – Volume 3
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition
Murphy, N.C., Dec. 29, 2013 – The Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River Casino and Resort construction on 85 acres of Palmer trust land east of Murphy during the next couple of years will include the next mountaintop removal here in the Hiwassee River watershed.
At this writing, the estimate is that from 600,000 to 900,000 cubic yards will be pushed off the mountain you see from U.S. 19-129 at Snap-On Road. That all will go into a bowl and the casino and resort will be built atop it. The tribe vows to take every step necessary to protect water quality.
From that point at 1,760 feet above sea level down to the four-lane highway, there’s “one wet stream,” said Erik Sneed, project manager for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, in October.
“There are three,” said Barbara Palmer Vicknair the next day. She’s former five-time chairperson of the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners and grew up at the casino site.
On Jan. 2, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued the Tribal Casino Gaming Enterprise a general permit for “a 116-acre tract (casino site).” This authorizes loss of .089 acres of wetlands and 263 feet of linear streams. Mitigation is required and is to be done somewhere else in the Hiwassee River basin in North Carolina at some future date, a N.C. Dept. of Transportation official said.
What’s the current state of the Valley River, a prime Hiwassee River tributary that’s soon to be a U.S. travel-destination landmark?
The 7.7 miles that include the reach along the casino site flunk requirements of Section 303(d) of the U.S. Clean Water Act. That’s according to the 2012-17 Basinwide Water Quality Plan of the N.C. Dept. of Natural Resources. Flunking, too, are 5.2 miles of the Peachtree Creek tributary Slow Creek near Murphy Medical Center. These waterways have too much turbidity or fecal coliform bacteria or they are poor communities of fish or macro-invertebrates.
Slowly getting started is Cherokee County Health Dept. repair or replacement of 39 malfunctioning septic systems in the Valley River watershed. They were identified in 2004 flyovers using color infra-red aerial photography. To help pay some cleanup costs, the county Environmental Health section has a tiny $175,000 grant from the gutted N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund; and
Convicted Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph’s autobiography, “Memoir of a Militant,” turned up on the Internet this year. He wrote it from his cell in a federal Supermax prison in Colorado, where he’s serving two life terms. On page 207, Rudolph is establishing one of his hideaway mountain camps, this time on the north slope of Will Scott Mountain overlooking Murphy High School. He makes himself a note: “With landfill upstream, Valley River too toxic to drink.”
HAVING SAID all that, once the casino is in place, in my opinion the Eastern Band with its emphasis on environmental protection will bring Cherokee County and its two incorporated towns out of their infancies in this work.
The Eastern Band’s 9,228-word environmental ordinance makes it “unlawful for any person to place, deposit or permit to be deposited in an unsanitary manner upon public or private property… any human or animal excrement, garbage or other objectionable wastes.” There’s nothing like that on the Internet for Cherokee County, Murphy or Andrews.
Hiwassee Dam Volunteer Fire Dept. protection has been extended northwest into No-Man’s Land. Joe Brown Highway was the Snowbird Cherokee’s 1837-38 Trail of Tears west from the shameful log palisade of Fort Butler in Murphy. Joe Brown Highway turns to dirt and tracks over ridges without guardrails, bound for Unicoi Gap. Courageous volunteers have a chance to drive it and reduce the likelihood a great fire can spread in the Nantahala National Forest.
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.