State regulators don’t like to deny effluent discharge permit applications when all the technical requirements are met, but the owner of a proposed RV park on the Little Tennessee River in Macon County presents a unique situation. This stretch of river deserves protection from an onslaught of development, particularly the kind currently proposed. The application should be turned down.

Randy Russotti wants to build an RV and cabin development that would dump up to 26,760 gallons of treated waste per day into the lower stretch of the Little Tennessee River. Russotti’s package treatment plant will be expensive, and he has worked with engineers to ensure that it meets all state and federal requirements.

Although Russotti’s development and treatment plant meet all state requirements, it would change — and harm — the Little Tennessee River.

That part of the river is used by swimmers, anglers, boaters and even for baptisms. All of those uses would be changed by the dumping of up to 26,000 gallons of effluent each day into the river. Would you swim just downstream of all that? Would you want to fish, or eat fish, caught nearby where that much treated sewage will be dumped into the river?

There are also important endangered species along this stretch of the Little Tennessee. Fish and mussels are thriving in this biologically intact waterway.

Right now there are 14 point-source discharges on the Little Tennessee above Lake Emory in Franklin. They are all regulated, and they all negatively affect the river. Environmentalists want the stretch of river between Lake Emory and Fontana Lake designated as Outstanding Resource Waters, a designation that would preclude new discharge sources. Approving this permit could negatively affect the chances of keeping this stretch of the river pristine.

Regulators have a tough balancing act. Russotti’s proposal meets state requirements, but no one disputes the fact that surface water effluents negatively affect a waterway’s health. There are other more expensive systems, but those would not be cost-effective for an RV park. To put 175 RV sites and 24 two-bedroom cabins on 30 acres is simply the wrong use for land on this stretch of this river. The development is too dense.

And perhaps that is the root of the problem. No one wants to stop all development, but this kind of tightly-packed development along a pristine river is simply unwise land use. It will degrade the river both for those who might buy these RV sites and everyone else.

Roger Turner of the Western North Carolina Alliance says the state made a wise choice 11 years ago in Macon County when it denied a permit for a similar RV park discharge system into a tributary of the Cullasaja River. At that time, a draft permit had already been issued when the state decided the “impairment or elimination of the existing recreation use is a violation of the antidegradation provisions extant in federal law and rule.” The state offered to help the developer find an alternative means of treating sewage discharges.

That is exactly what should happen here. The ability to pay top dollar for riverfront land and then try to densely pack RV homesites onto it to recoup the investment could lead to package treatment systems up and down the Little Tennessee and every other pristine waterway in WNC that is not on federal land. It’s poor land use, and it once again points out the need for these counties to enact comprehensive land-use plans.

 

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The Smoky Mountain News