Report shows no environmental harm from TVA land swap
But the developer, John “Thunder” Thornton, will pay for the report, and critics complain it’s biased.
“That’s TVA saying there is not going to be any environmental problem,” said John Johnson, an activist with the Knoxville-based Katuah Earth First environmental group. “They’ve got a vested interest. We can’t afford to lose more land. We need forestland. We need wetlands.”
TVA made its environmental assessment of the Nickajack proposal available Thursday. A public meeting on the report is set for Tuesday at South Pittsburg.
Some American Indian groups say the project about 30 miles west of Chattanooga would destroy land that is sacred to them and historically valuable next to Little Cedar Mountain. Also, some families forced by TVA to sell their farms decades ago say it is wrong for the utility to deal the land away to a wealthy developer.
Thornton has proposed giving TVA about 1,100 acres in return for the TVA waterfront land to build Nickajack Shores, a development with hundreds of homes, a golf course and marina.
A separate cultural survey showed the land Thornton has proposed swapping to TVA — 615-acre Cedar Mountain, a 260-acre farm and a 220-acre island — is more archaeologically and environmentally valuable than the TVA land.
Thornton’s Thunder Enterprises also offered to fund an interpretive trail on the adjacent Little Cedar Mountain.
The Tennessee Wildlife Federation has given its support to Thornton’s proposal. Director Mike Butler has said it represents a net gain of “acreage, conservation values and a better situation in terms of public benefits.”
The development proposal includes reducing a 100-foot wide shoreline buffer zone set in 1996 to 50 feet.
“Reduction of the buffer zone may have some minor, localized effect on aquatic bed wetlands due to nutrient enrichment,” the report said. “This impact is expected to be insignificant overall.”
The report also shows the development would “eliminate some of the visual and ecological buffer adjacent to Little Cedar Mountain…and the adjacent Guntersville Reservoir State Mussel Sanctuary and would indirectly threaten the integrity of these natural areas over the long-term.”
The report describes those indirect threats as reduced “surrounding scenic quality, encroachment of invasive, exotic species, and potential overuse of the Little Cedar Mountain Habitat Protection Area/Small Wild area.” The report concludes that with protective measures the overall impact would be “insignificant.”
Wastewater from the development would be treated at the treatment plant in Jasper, the report shows.
The report predicts the development would boost property and sales taxes and create jobs in Marion County and the surrounding area, “but it is unlikely that many of the jobs created would be high paying.”
“Increased tax revenues would be accompanied by increased demands on public infrastructure such as roads, water and sewer.”
Thornton has said he was “absolutely comfortable” that TVA’s largely undisturbed land adjacent to Little Cedar Mountain would benefit from his proposed private development.
Thornton has said he was hopeful the TVA board would make a decision on the proposed deal in July. TVA spokesman John Moulton said a decision was possible by “late summer.”
TVA decided against a private development at the same site in southeastern Tennessee in 1999.
TVA is primarily in the electricity business, but it controls about 230,000 shoreline acres along the Tennessee River system — much of it acquired through eminent domain powers.
Billy Minser, a University of Tennessee conservationist and wildlife management expert, said TVA has made no provisions to protect lands it receives in a swap for the public.
“If the government is now going to go back on its word and sell former farmland for private profit, then the landowners or their descendants deserve part of those profits,” Minser said.
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On the Net:
www.tva.com/environment/reports