2011 COUNTY-BY-COUNTY REPORTS WATERSHED HIGHLIGHTS:
CHEROKEE COUNTY, N.C. – Volume 1
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition
Murphy, N.C., Jan. 27, 2012 – There are thousands of named streams in this watershed and the water quality of all is a fragile thing at best. Are you beginning to grasp the scope of work of the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition?
Two streams that, if they could talk, would say the Coalition is their best friend are the Valley River and Brasstown Creek. The Valley River is the “Rocky” of North Carolina waterways. It crosses a high valley and at various times has been the locus of a major doleful phase of the forced removal of the Cherokee; a tannery that turned the water black as coal; an 1890 railroad; a four-lane highway; two landfills; the sheriff’s honor farm; and a private-plane strip recently given the hopeful name Western North Carolina Regional Airport.
The Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition has grants from two North Carolina agencies – Clean Water Management Trust Fund and Section 319 Nonpoint Source Pollution Program – to improve riparian buffers; reduce pollution from land-based sources; define the rich variety of fish and insect species; and make a watershed action plan for years of work still to be done.
Another stream strongly befriended by the Coalition is Brasstown Creek. It is the waterway seen by visitors to the John C. Campbell Folk School. Just before its confluence with the Hiwassee River, the creek hurries past a rude porch where an opossum in a cage is slowly dropped each New Year’s Eve. In 2011, the Coalition’s good idea was to bring here Alternative Spring Break college students and lead them in work on stream restoration.
A FLURRY of county political events April 28-May 4, 2011 doomed the latest attempt to establish recycling in the western part of the county, where there’s been serial pollution of Hiwassee Lake for 72 years.
The chairman of the Cherokee County Board of Health hand-delivered to the Board of Commissioners a letter reporting the Board of Health had voted opposing a convenience center to replace 24-hour unsupervised green-box dumpsters on Persimmon Creek. The commissioners rebuffed this bizarre move. However, two nights later, two of them and the county manager went to a meeting with citizens and announced the green-box dumpsters would remain in place.
HERE IN THE Carolinas’ westernmost county, two historic steps in 2012 will significantly improve water quality over time. A July completion is talked about for completion of the renovation and expansion of the 1926 Cherokee County courthouse. This could lead to further aspects of modern government. And Nov. 2 is the date for the election of two at-large members of the board of commissioners, bringing it to five members. No longer will two persons out of three decide for 27,000.
David Wood is an outdoorsman who was pictured on the front page of a newspaper fly-casting for trout in the Nantahala River. This was the same week he took his seat on the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners.
Wood is also a volunteer board member of the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition and ardently desires good water quality here. A lot is riding on his ability after Nov. 2 to secure votes from at least two more board members who feel that way, too.
The Murphy River Walk is a master work of Johnny Strawn, a naturalist, hiker, soil conservationist and builder (and Wood’s fellow board member of HRWC). The River Walk is along the McColl Branch of the Valley River. When I am on that footbridge I am a part of that branch, that river and this watershed. As I take it all in, I wonder what will become of it.
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.