‘Everything is possible,’ TDOT says as it prepares to write a new draft environmental impact study for Corridor K, which could adversely affect the Hiwassee River
A poll of businesses is done ‘in the blind’ as a consultant asserts that 85 of them support the $2.3 billion highway construction project that somehow would traverse the rugged Ocoee River region
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition
Murphy, N.C., Nov. 29, 2007 – Some big things can come from a very small place. The providers of electric power to this town of 1,562 in far western North Carolina make up 27 percent of the board of directors of the Southeast Industrial Development Association, a program of the Southeast Tennessee Development District of Chattanooga, Tenn. The latter is completing an economic development and transportation study for the Appalachian Regional Commission’s Corridor K highway project, projected by one estimate to cost $2.3 billion. This four-lane divided road that Tennesseans say is needed to move goods faster to eastern seaports would expand the existing U.S. 64 to Murphy through the scenic, precipitous Ocoee River gorge. If placed there, it would wind around many curves via a series of bridges and tunnels. Or if some Polk County, Tennesseans get their way, the construction project, if approved, would go a bit north of the gorge and through the U.S. Forest Service’s pristine Little Frog Wilderness. This is one thing that concerns the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition: The north slopes of the wilderness drain into the last wild stretch of the Hiwassee River.
John Carringer is manager of the Murphy Electric Power Board. I asked him if the board supports Corridor K.
“Why the hell not?” he boomed. “Why the hell not?” he said, repeating himself. “We’re in a bowl here. We have to go over a mountain or through a gorge to get out here. There are emergency vehicles leaving here every day to go to Erlanger (Hospital in Chattanooga), and they have to go through the gorge to get there.”
His office is in a brick building that the power board shares with Murphy City Hall, next to the Cherokee County History Museum and the Murphy police station. There are shotguns in two of the four corners of John Carringer’s office.
“Have you got any shells in here?” I asked. “Yes, I’ve got a box of them right here,” he replied, leaning forward to point to an area on the floor beside his desk. I was standing on the other side of the desk, and didn’t walk around to see if he was right. I just took his word for it.
Joe Satterfield is general manager of the Blue Ridge Mountain Electric Membership Cooperative. Its headquarters building is just over the state line in Young Harris, Georgia. We talked in the office of Erik Brinke, the Cooperative’s economic development director. I didn’t see a shotgun anywhere, just a lot of evidence of work to electrify and bring a better way of life to the mountain region.
I asked: Does BRMEMC support Corridor K?
“Yes, in a broad sense,” Joe Satterfield replied. “We need a transportation system to move commerce. We support the broad concept of economic development, because it’s good for the area. But it needs to be done correctly.” He added: “I have not ever heard of an alternative route for Corridor K than through the gorge.”
Jim Allen is a spokesman for the Tennessee Valley Authority in Knoxville. I reached him by phone and asked: Does IT support Corridor K?
“As an agency, TVA does not have an opinion whether the corridor should be continued or not,” Allen said. “In places where it crosses TVA streams, we are required by the TVA Act to review and issue a permit 26A. And we would cooperate with Tennessee and North Carolina authorities in environmental reviews. Any contract would be issued on an individual basis in each step of the project.”
Bill Hughes is mayor of the Town of Murphy. “Yes, we support Corridor K,” he told me. “It will open this area to east-west traffic It will mean more commercial development. We should seize this opportunity while it is here.”
THE OTHER board members of SEIDA, according to its website, are: Chickamauga Utilities of Chickamauga, Tenn.; Cleveland Utilities of Cleveland, Tenn.; Dayton Electric Department of Dayton, Tenn.; Electric Power Board of Chattanooga; Etowah Utilities Department of Etowah, Tenn.; North Georgia Electric Membership Corporation of Dalton, Ga.; Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative of South Pittsburg, Tenn.; and Tri-State Electric Membership Corporation of McCaysville, Tenn.
These hometowns, like Murphy, are not exactly place names jumping off the tips of the tongues of most Americans. Yet through their association (whose logo depicts a river), these co-ops are trying to jump-start a highway construction project that would cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars; make travel through the gorge safer; speed goods in and out of the region faster; and, since tractor-trailer trucks weighing many tons change an environment through which they are moving, potentially harm the Hiwassee River.
THE DOZEN HURDLES FACED BY CORRIDOR K’S PROPONENTS
Because I want the Hiwassee to stay the same color and as free of pollution as possible, I am a volunteer paying out of my own pocket for phone calls and travel. (Regular gasoline is $3.09 a gallon today at Fatback’s Citgo here.) To write these articles and alert people to Hiwassee River issues, I am going to see persons with shotguns and shells; reading books I check out of three libraries; and saying a prayer of thanks for the advent of an Internet coinciding with my retirement from a newspaper.
I’ve been able to find at least 12 environmental hurdles faced by groups and persons wanting Corridor K. There probably are more in this 2007 world with its thicket of regulations, but here are the ones I’ve been able to identify:
- Gerald Nicely, Commissioner of TDOT, must decide to seek money for a new DEIS in Tennessee’s 2008 budget, according to Cliff Hightower’s Nov. 29 article in the Chattanooga News-Free Press.
- The Tennessee General Assembly would have to approve the request.
- Governor Phil Bredesen would have to sign the law making it possible.
- The new DEIS would have to be written.
- The new DEIS must satisfy the National Environmental Protection Act’s requirements to “make diligent efforts to involve the public in preparing and implementing; hold public hearings; and solicit public comment.” That’s according to Rick Gehrke’s May 2007 thesis for the master of science at the University of Tennessee and entitled “Effectiveness of Citizen Participation in Governmental Decisions: A Case Study of the Appalachian Development Highway System Corridor K Project – Ocoee Section.” I imagine TDOT will scrutinize a study plan carefully after the U.S. Environmental Protection gave poor marks to a 2003 Corridor K Draft Environmental Impact Study. It rated it “Environmental Concerns 2,” meaning it “does not contain sufficient information to fully assess environmental impacts,” according to Gehrke.
- The Tennessee Valley Authority would have to issue a Permit 26A. It provides that “No appurtenances or structures that would affect waters of the Tennessee River or any of its tributaries shall be constructed along the Tennessee River until plans for such construction, operation and maintenance have been approved by TVA,” according to the little 74-page fragment of the original Corridor K DEIS that you can find on the Internet.
- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must issue a “Section 10 permit under the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899.”
- Congress must pass and the President of the United States sign a law making land in a national forest available for a highway, according to Denny E. Mobbs, Polk County, Tenn., attorney and advocate of the Little Frog Wilderness route.
- The U.S. Forest Service must make a land easement or transfer to the State of Tennessee for any new right-of-way required from within the Cherokee National Forest.
- Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation must issue a Water Quality Certification;
- For a fully widened Corridor K to go all the way from Cleveland, Tenn., through Murphy and on to Interstate 40 at Asheville, N.C., the N.C. DOT has to acquire right-of-way for sections of its $888 million Project A9 in Cherokee, Graham and Swain counties. You can read about this 27.1-mile Corridor K US19-74-129 project on the NCDOT website; and
- Tennessee and North Carolina would have to appropriate the necessary matching funds for highway construction.
I TELEPHONED Wesley Hughen of the Project Management Office of TDOT Region 2 today and asked him if there still is a chance that the Corridor K project could be relocated north to the Little Frog Wilderness, thereby having an impact on the Hiwassee River.
“Everything’s a possibility,” Hughen replied. “We have stopped the Draft EIS, and we’re going to have a new one.”
According to Rick Gehrke, the highway construction fund “would be funded by an 80/20 split, respectively, between federal (ARC) funds and Tennessee state funds. Estimates for its completion, given at $1.5 billion in late 2003, have been subsequently revised upwards to $2.3 billion (as of 2004).”
Melissa Zieglar is director of economic and community development for Wilbur Smith Associates, the Columbia, S.C.-based transportation and infrastructure consulting firm that is being paid by SEIDA (with TDOT money) to bring the public to events called either “strategic planning meetings” or “stakeholder meetings.” I’ve attended three.
Zieglar said here Oct. 15 that 85 businesses support Corridor K. I telephoned her later at her office in Knoxville, Tenn., and asked her to name the businesses here in Murphy that do so.
“We cannot do that because we did the survey in the blind,” she replied. “They weren’t required to give their names, but the organizations collecting them for us may know who they are.”
My question to those businesses would be: Are you sure that the environmental degradation and other impacts to our rural quality of life (including increased traffic & commercialization) that this road would inevitably bring are worth the slightly lower transportation costs and more timely deliveries?
If the system wasn’t set up to operate inside the boundary drawn by ARC in 1965, would a road through the primary Corridor K counties still be the best solution to our economic development and transportation needs?
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.