U.S. Water News Online
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- As fast as polluted streams in Tennessee can be fixed, others are becoming too dirty for swimmers and so polluted that fish are killed.
About four dozen Tennessee rivers and streams are too polluted to support aquatic life or allow recreation, and that number has stayed the same for the past 15 years, according to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.
The state reported about four dozen rivers, basins and reservoirs with too much pollution in a draft report issued this month, which is prepared every two years.
Some are new additions, replacing a roughly equal number that have been fixed. Others are continually on the list.
"We have seen essentially the same types of problems statewide for more than a decade,'' said Garland Wiggins, deputy director of the DEC, which has done the EPA-mandated monitoring since the late 1980s.
"There may be a small percentage that get worse, a small percentage that get better. Overall, the number of streams meeting the standards has remained constant.''
Only 65 to 70 percent of the state's creeks, streams and rivers are considered clean enough to support desired uses, ranging from such things as irrigation or fishing.
Wiggins said it's easiest to monitor and control pollution that comes from industrial plants.
But there's a long list of pollutants that are much harder to control: chlorine, fertilizer, leaking septic tanks, heavy metals from abandoned mines or coal mining and runoff from cattle feed lots.
The most common source, though, continues to be runoff from construction projects, Wiggins said.
It's harder for the state to control pollution from such things as homeowners cutting down trees and shrubs on a stream -- potentially causing algae to take hold and choke a stream -- or construction projects overloading streams with silt, Wiggins said.
Will Callaway, director of Tennessee Environmental Council, said he's bothered that Mill Creek in Davidson County keeps appearing on the list because he said the road and house construction projects causing silt could be better managed.
"The state should be taking a position that permitting in the area should be given much more scrutiny,'' he said. "Yet the state is allowing development of substantial size along Mill Creek, destroying the bank and destroying the stream.''
Environmentalists say the monitoring program won't produce more clean streams until regulators actively force people to follow the standards.
"Basically it becomes an exercise in writing a recovery plan, and then the plan sits,'' said Renee Hoyos, executive director of the Tennessee Clean Water Network.
The Department of Conservation is taking its list of polluted streams to a series of public meeting across the state, before sending a report to the EPA on water quality in Tennessee later in the summer.
Wiggins said it's been harder to reduce the number of polluted streams on the list because the EPA has lowered the allowable level of certain pollutants. Streams once considered OK, now run afoul of the tougher requirements, he said.
Still, he believes the number of polluted streams will eventually start to shrink.
"More emphasis is being put on leaving the streams in their natural condition,'' Wiggins said. "I would like for the water quality to improve as a result of the work of industry, municipalities, down to individual landowners who might choose to not over-fertilize their lawns. I would like to see the list get smaller and smaller as the years go by.''
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