2012 COUNTY-BY-COUNTY WATERSHED HIGHLIGHTS:
CHEROKEE COUNTY, N.C. – Volume 2
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition
Murphy, N.C., Feb. 10, 2013 – Shackled prisoners trudged through the front door right through the madding crowd on court day, so had to be guarded by a small army of deputies.
Only thin people were guaranteed a fair trial. The obese might not be able to reach the second-floor courtroom, since there were no elevators. In rare cases, the judge came through the people to hear testimony. Chair lifts were bolted to the main staircase handrails in recent years, but these had posted weight limits and a lot of starchy food is eaten here.
Cherokee County remained in a stultifying status-quo rut with confounding government aspects like those for 116 years.
In such a setting, the two-member majority on the board of commissioners could just laugh at talk of environmental reform.
Then in December 2010, the board expanded to five members. This coincided with remodeling of the courthouse, as it added among other things a secure sally port at the rear and elevators.
Modern government happened. In the improved edifice on Peachtree Street, it’s no longer possible for 2 out of 27,000 to stop progressive reform.
The current commissioners are Cal Stiles, chairman; C. B. McKinnon, Lorraine Meltz and David Wood.
AS A NEWCOMER to politics taking his turn as chair, Wood wasn’t prepared in June 2011 to smoothly preside in a five-meeting month of demagoguery. (Who could have been?)
I’m not making this up: Some citizens programmed by radio talk show stopped a dazed commission from ever resolving support for a United Nations initiative to make all nations sustainable.
(As if its fate here was being anxiously watched at the UN on the East River in New York.)
Wood successfully defended the county’s ties to the respected Southwestern Commission in Sylva, conduit for federal dollars. In addition, he’s the only commissioner I know of in county history ever to say at any of the meetings the words, “water quality.”
Brasstown Creek and the Valley River are locales for Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition stream restoration.
Green-box trash dumpsters that once teetered on a precipice over Hiwassee Lake were moved back from the lake’s edge.
General Assembly budget-slashing threatened a five-year Hiwassee River Basinwide Water Quality Plan. Yet the latest was published on time and authoritatively in 2012. It documents the myriad water-quality challenges.
PAUL WIESNER is the personable director of work in western N.C. of the Ecosystem Enhancement Program. Its first Cherokee County project was in Martins Creek. Absentee landlords in Connecticut and Tennessee made conservation easements and this state restored some stream banks and a wetlands.
Wiesner is a former 800- and 1,500-meter runner at UNC Wilmington. So he’s trudged long distances that took a lot of time. This makes him well suited to be the person starting clean-up of environmental horrors left behind by bad farming and land development.
Wiesner supervised as the Trac-hoes, skidders and dump trucks of River Works Inc. of Raleigh scurried about on Martins Creek tributaries and wetlands.
A best management practice is to remove invasive plants such as multiflora rose and Chinese privet. The easements halted at the Berlin Wall-like brick structure guarding the driveway of the Wildcat subdivision. But when I last talked with Wiesner, he had a meeting set up with the board of the homeowners association to ask permission to cut down a Chinese privet at the brick wall.
The Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition’s work is a long-distance run, too.
To the newcomers wrestling with what your progressive cause is going to be now that you’re here, I say this effort by Callie Moore, her board and staff is the cause for you to support.
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.