KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — More than half a million dollars is being allocated to a project in northwest Knox County to stabilize a creek bank and remove an old dam. Beaver Creek covers 86 square miles of the county.
Now, Knox County is working right now to clear the creek, starting near Clayton Park in Halls and stretching 44 miles all the way to Melton Hill Lake at the Clinch River. It’s an ongoing project and in the latest step, the county is focused on the Coward Mill Dam.
“I actually played in Beaver Creek at two years old,” Charlie Austin said about the water he grew up splashing in.
Then in 2016, Austin came back with friends.
“We came out here, got on our kayaks and we floated about 20 ft downstream and ran into our first debris jam,” Austin remembered. “A tree had fallen across the stream, everything had piled up behind it. So we grabbed our kayaks, climbed up over the jam, floated about 20 more feet, ran into another debris jam.”
That didn’t stop Austin from making a plan to fix the issue. He’s now president of the Beaver Creek Kayak Club.
“We've got a slogan: clear, clean and care for Beaver Creek,” Austin said. “And I mean, that's the key. We want to clean it up, clear it out and then care for it long term so that it is truly an asset to everyone.”
Now, with support from the Knox County government, Beaver Creek has 12 miles that Austin said are clear and floatable right now. The newest project aims to remove the Coward Mill Dam to not only help with recreation but also improve water quality and minimize flood risk.
“Beaver Creek is…the largest river system in Knox County and it's the only one that's not managed for flood control,” Cathy Olsen, Knox County Engineering and Public Works Operations Director said. “When you've got this really old structure that's holding back a lot of water, we've obviously learned from, you know, experiences up in East Tennessee, Nolichucky up in North Carolina that that water pressure can be really, really strong and it can destroy structures that aren't built to withstand that level of water pressure. So it would be better for us now to go in and remove the structure so that in the event of a really heavy storm, it doesn't fail and then flood people further downstream.”
To help, the Knox County Commission approved a grant contract. The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) is providing $546,800 for the project. Knox County will match $136,700.
Olsen said this is part of a mandate by TDEC and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to make the water "fishable and swimmable."
"It's this broad goal that everybody in the nation who manages stormwater systems are part of," Olsen explained. "So we have a desire to get out into our streams and restore them back to the way they were where they were fishable and swimmable."
Austin said it’s one step closer to connecting the entire water trail.
“That eventual goal of 44 miles, it's going to take a little while to get that done,” Austin said. “It's a lot of hard work clearing out these debris jams, but work is well underway and, and we're so happy to have the support of Knox County government.”
At this moment, Olsen said Knox County has a bid out for consults. She said the design drawings will be done in five to six months and then they’ll start pulling apart the dam late next year.
