2011 COUNTY-BY-COUNTY WATERSHED HIGHLIGHTS:
TOWNS COUNTY, GA. – Volume 1
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition
HIAWASSEE, GA., March 3, 2012 – The Hiwassee is born here as a bright and sparkling trickle that confidently grows into a river and playfully crosses a valley. However, in a fateful passage to link up with the Ocoee at Benton, Tenn., stopping briefly in four Tennessee Valley Authority reservoirs, the Hiwassee will get what a “Rolling Stone” song refers to as a fair share of abuse.
So it’s a good thing the Towns County commissioner is 72-year-old Bill Kendall. At his office on River Street, the former coach and school superintendent makes water quality his game plan. His county government is squarely in support of the 2007 Lake Chatuge Watershed Action Plan of the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition.
“The HRWC study recommended 50-foot setbacks around lakes,” Kendall said. “I adopted an ordinance complying with the recommendation. I don’t think any other city or county government in the Coalition has done so. Tom, you may want to consider bringing this issue back to the forefront of discussion.” I hereby do so. How about it, other local governments in the watershed?
The current phase of the HRWC’s guide for Lake Chatuge cleanup is to make careful use of a modest $170,000 reimbursable grant, including hiring a watershed coordinator. “He’s always asking me, ‘Have you gotten any money yet?’ said Callie Moore of HRWC. “I remind him it’s a reimbursable grant. We have to do the work, then turn in the bills, and get the money.”
Kendall is the only public official I know of in the watershed opposing a proposed federal interstate highway from Augusta, Ga., to Knoxville, Tenn. (“I-3” is solely the name given this classic congressional earmark by its anonymous lobbyists, and not the Federal Highway Administration.) “It would devastate our mountains,” Kendall told me.
The Georgia Dept. of Transportation is conducting an environmental study of extending four-lane Ga. 515/U.S. 76 east from Union County, Ga., to near Hiawassee. In its path: the City of Young Harris. “I support it, and feel it is best left up to the people of Young Harris to decide where the route goes,” Kendall said.
THE BELEAGUERED FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY has a nationwide drive on to identify all lots and homes in floodplains. Towns County’s Geographic Information Systems office suspected flaws in FEMA maps. It got a grant and did Light Imaging and Ranging (LiDAR) flyovers. “The FEMA data was riddled with errors,” Kendall said. “Macedonia Baptist Church is up on a hill and they had it down in the floodplain. We were able to identify hundreds of homes just in the town of Hiawassee that were shown there, and whose owners now do not have to buy flood insurance.”
Predecessors let homebuilders line the ridge-tops here. Kendall has adopted a mountaintop protection ordinance. In the 2011 civil case, Towns County v. City of Hiawassee and City of Young Harris, the Superior Court upheld Kendall’s 35-foot height building restriction.
FOR THE FEATURE most symbolizing abuse of this watershed, I nominate Bell Mountain. You can see it from many vantage points here. A pit at its sad crest marks where an attempt was made at a commercial silica mine. The owner died and left it to Young Harris College. Now Kendall and the college are in negotiations to turn it into a park. “If the college would deed it to the county, we would put in that it can never be developed,” Kendall said. “And I would put $50,000 of the county funds into the college scholarship fund for students from Towns County.”
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.