2013 COUNTY-BY-COUNTY WATERSHED HIGHLIGHTS:
CLAY COUNTY, N.C. – Volume 3
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition
Hayesville, N.C., Jan. 2, 2014 – Recent developments cannot be good news for Cement Roadstone Holdings of Dublin, Ireland, owner of Hayesville Quarry on Shewbird Mountain.
Concern has recently been expressed about the possible transfer to other road-building projects the remaining federal funds for planned Corridor K NCDOT A-9 B&C, Robbinsville to Stecoah Gap. This project stalled when its planning came to include tunneling through the granite of Snowbird Mountain; and Tenn. Dept. of Transportation missed a 2013 target date for an environmental impact study of planned Corridor K TDOT’s U.S. 64 upgrade through the Ocoee Gorge with lane-widening, bridges and tunnels. There’s been no update from TDOT or its consultant URS Corp. of San Francisco, on this. Repeated granite landslides in the gorge since 2010 may have rendered the project untenable.
But what a consolation prize might loom for Cement Roadstone Holdings! I mean through its Knoxville, Tenn., subsidiary, a NCDOR vendor, prequalified bidder and prime contractor.
The subsidiary is Harrison Construction Company-Division of APAC Atlantic, and it operates the Hayesville Quarry. More of Shewbird Mountain could become roadstone were Harrison to land contracts for extensive NCDOT bridge and road work at the 2015 Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River Casino and Hotel east of Murphy, N.C. The contract let dates are set for Jan. 21 and April 15 of this year.
At this writing, Harrison seems a candidate for both. While its trucks would have to travel 61 miles one way to Stecoah Gap, the eastern terminus of the N.C. Corridor K leg, and 63 miles one way to the Tennessee Corridor K leg,, it’s only 17 miles one way to the Murphy casino site. Those Corridor K stretches are perennial barber-shop conversations. Meanwhile, the casino is provided for in N.C. state law.
SEEMINGLY HEADED FOR ITS FIRST FULL DECADE of fitful life is the Laurel Creek Property Owners Association’s 2008 application for an vehicular access easement through the Nantahala National Forest. This would be a road the seven citizens alone could drive on to a 50-acre inholding they own at the rim of the Valley River Mountains. The inholding once was a harvest area for hemlock branches to throw into vats to bust hair off cowhides at a tannery that made saddles. It escaped condemnation for the national forest early last century.
In November 2013, a U.S. Forest Service deciding officer in Atlanta concurred in a Florida reviewing officer’s finding. It is that Nantahala National Forest in N.C. was remiss in dismissing from thorough evaluation all alternative routes but one for the easement, including several on the western slope of the Valley River Mountains. In June 2013, N.C. Forest Supervisor Kristin Bail had found no significant impact on Phillips Ridge where easement work would have drained Outstanding Resource Waters of Fires Creek. HRWC joined in the successful appeal.
THE LAKE CHATUGE LEVEL PEAKED at 1,927 feet above sea level or just a foot from the top of the gates in July 2013. TVA was ready for heavy rains and had lowered reservoir levels beginning in the last week of June, according to The Chattanoogan web site. It’s skilled at flood control all right, but waves of change buffet TVA.
It has ceased support of River Partners including HRWC. President Gerald Ford’s 1976 Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) law expired Dec. 31st. This is going to dismay local governments, costing them tens of millions of dollars.
The Obama administration aired a 2013 White House proposed budget calling for privatization of TVA. Would for-profit utilities cooperate to create a multi-state Hiwassee River authority? Would they maintain environmental protections? Will clean energy alter the need to keep enough water in the Tennessee and Cumberland to float coal barges?
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.