The possible routes for Corridor K ‘look like lines of spaghetti,’ and as granite slides, so does incontrovertible fact despite TDOT workers’ best efforts
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition
Copper Hill, Tenn., Feb. 17, 2010 – “What’s there, a game or something?” asked the clerk behind the counter at the Chevron station at U.S. 64 and Tennessee Route 68.
Soon after at nearby Copper Basin High School, a couple in a late-model van moving at a good clip and looking for a parking place about the same time as me seemed to have pretty intense looks on their faces. I walked gingerly toward a doorway where a man was using a shovel to break up sidewalk ice. Suddenly, that same fast-moving van pulled into a handicapped parking space behind me and missed me by inches. Quickly alighting to the ground and slamming the vehicles’ doors, the couple hurried inside without saying a word.
The turnout for this latest Corridor K public meeting at the school was perhaps five times as large as one last year. “It’s added inconvenience (caused by landslides) that has brought out this crowd,” said Elizabeth Carter, the author of hiking guidebooks who is a resident of Cherokee County, N.C.
Wesley Hughen is Tennessee Dept. of Transportation’s project manager for its current work on a “Transportation Planning Report,” “Environmental Impact Statement” and “Context Sensitive Solution/Design.” These are steps to be taken by the state for a stretch of the federal highway called Corridor K through Polk County in southeast Tennessee.
Hughen was explaining to a rough-hewn man the highway’s possible routes. “I don’t want it through the (Ocoee River) gorge,” the rough-hewn man said. “Then I want you to say that,” Hughen replied. “I want you to write it down on your comment sheet. Or walk over there and see the lady at that table in the corner and tell her, and she’ll write it for you.”
There followed the 30-year TDOT employee Hughen’s long explanation, as objective as could be, about the virtues or shortcomings of various paths on a TDOT map that a Tennessee newspaper reporter described as looking “lines of spaghetti.” Hughen completed his earnest, detailed overview of the project. He looked anxiously into the man’s eyes for a response, one signaling that this citizen had weighed all options and chosen a Corridor K route he could support. “I used to drive that road every day going to a paper mill,” the man said, and one more try at nailing down facts slipped away.
Other Tennesseans were studying the TDOT posters on easels placed in a circle beneath the backboards of the Cooper Basin High School Cougars. “I understand they’re going to have the cleanup of these slides done in time for the river people,” a man said.
“Well, we don’t care about the river people,” said another. However, I’ll bet his Polk County financial officer cares about them and the dollars they spend here each summer. They travel from around the U.S. to raft the river on prescribed TVA water-release days.
Despite published assurances from politicians or stakeholders, a final choice is years away. The North Carolina office of the San Francisco engineering firm URS Corporation has these target dates: “Finalize a Draft Environmental Impact Statement by July 2012; an EIS by June 2013; and a Record of Decision by Nov. 2013.”
Will the improved four-lane federal highway hug the Ocoee River through the world-class whitewater gorge? Will it skirt north through the Little Frog Mountain Wilderness and drain auto grime into a last remaining wild reach of the Hiwassee River? Or will it track south of the gorge and skip along bridges spanning the Ocoee River and TVA’s Blue Ridge Lake? Whose ox, or whose watercourse, will be gored?
TDOT has quietly moved to get some safety work along treacherous U.S. 64 while its contractor also clears rubble from two landslides. The agency is “rebuilding shoulders and ditches; adding an emergency river rescue parking area and reinforced guardrails; removing loose overhanging rocks; and trimming vegetation.” The agency’s target dates are to complete cleanup of a slide just west of Madden Branch by March 26 and a larger slide near TVA’s Ocoee Dam No. 2 — the live scene of moving granite that was broadcast millions of times around the world by television, computer, and hand-held device — by March 31.
This latest work on the gorge has lost a key subcontractor. “The man who had the blasting contract died of a heart attack last Thursday,” Hughen told me. He added later in an e-mail that the man’s death occurred at a job elsewhere, and not as part of the landslide cleanup in the Ocoee gorge.
On the way out I asked a kindly TDOT staffer, “May I please have an extra copy of your handout? I want to give it to the clerk at the Chevron station.” She smiled and handed me three of them.
“Uh, oh, here comes trouble!” the clerk behind the counter said as I once again entered the Chevron station. “I brought you one of these fact sheets about the road,” I replied. “It’s coming right here to where you’re standing, to your station and to the Hardee’s across the road, and to the Dollar General Store. Whichever of the routes it takes from the Hiwassee River bridge on the other side of the gorge to here, all of them end up here.”
She studied the official state of Tennessee document for a moment and said, “Well, thank you, thank you very much.”
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.