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The Island of Turkey Creek
A rare wetland habitat feels the impact of development
by Paige M. Travis
Before the name was synonymous and indistinguishable from a 410-acre commercial development, Turkey Creek referred to a stream that flowed parallel to Lovell Road in an overgrown Farragut pasture. Its name—along with the area’s wildlife and peculiar natural habits—may have mostly been familiar to residents of nearby neighborhoods and those who spied the small green sign on Kingston Pike near Concord. But in 1995, the name of Turkey Creek entered the lexicon of local citizens as the most ambitious and expensive commercial development ever undertaken in Knox County.
A development company known as Turkey Creek Land Partners (TCLP) had procured for $7 million a parcel of property west of Lovell Road, bound by Kingston Pike, I-40/75 and Campbell Station Road. Their plan was to develop restaurants, stores, hotels, a hospital and more. But what they needed was a 2.5-mile extension of Parkside Drive through the property to connect with Campbell Station Road. When approached with the plan, the City of Knoxville, which in the mid-’80s had annexed Parkside Drive and the stretch of land that would be its logical continuation, approved the allocation of $4.1 million to build the road, sewers, storm drains and other necessary infrastructure.
The developers asked Knox County and the Town of Farragut to contribute an additional $1.45 million. The property’s owners were “donating” the right of way, buffer zone and design work equal to $4.5 million. In return, property taxes generated by the development—estimated at the time to be more than $8 million a year—would return to the local governments in time. Local governments make these kinds of investments all the time, but not usually on such a large scale.
Not long after the Metropolitan Planning Commission and the city approved the plan (with City Council members Carlene Malone and Ivan Harmon voting against), a formidable roadblock came into view. The Parkside extension would need to transverse 22 acres of wetland, a sensitive ecosystem that’s rare in East Tennessee and increasingly rare in the entire country. Vocal and active protests by local environmentalists started almost immediately, gelling into a group called the Turkey Creek Wetland Alliance. Representatives of the Foundation of Global Sustainability [FGS], including Dr. John Nolt, a philosophy professor at UT, championed for the sensitive nature of the wetland habitat and its residents, particularly a small fish called the flame chubb.
“The wetland itself wasn’t a huge, pristine wetland,” says Mark Campen of the Izaak Walton League, the wetland’s current manager. But, at 22 acres, it was large for East Tennessee. It also wasn’t a long-standing wetland, which pro-developing entities used as a defense for their plans, and environmentalists pointed out as a sign of the area’s ever-changing status. Campen explains that the property was a functioning farm up until the 1970s. About eight to 10 years ago, beavers started damming the creek, which flooded and created the wetland, allowing plants and animals that didn’t previously find the area habitable to move in. Environmentalists argued that although only 3.2 of the 22 acres would be paved, the entire wetland would be damaged.
Because wetlands are protected by county, state and national laws, the land’s developers were required to pass inspection by the state’s Department of Environment and Conservation, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Army Corps of Engineers. Since law dictates that lost wetland must be recreated through mitigation, TCLP allotted 53 acres for additional wetland, a rerouted Turkey Creek and a buffer zone. Activists respond that mitigation isn’t enough, that 85 percent of mitigation projects fail. The developers’ environmental engineering consultant Mike Dennis counters that they’re improving the wetland and the creek.
Through 1996 and 1997, the land partners continued to negotiate financial assistance from Farragut and Knox County and to rebuff environmental protests. With the help of a Council that seemed desperate for the development to proceed as smoothly and quickly as possible, TCLP even won a zoning change that gives the Council and planning commission less control over how the developers carry out lighting and landscape design.
Michelle Neal Conlon, spokeswoman for FGS, at the time described the rezoning as “one more example of the utter disregard by City Council for the Metropolitan Planning Commission’s attempts at moderating the excesses of runaway strip development in the Knoxville area (and) a slap in the face to the MPC, the town of Farragut, neighbors and concerned citizens.”
In addition, the city easily obtained a change in the wetland permit to divert the creek via culvert into a dry creekbed. Environmentalists—whose suggestions for a bridge to overpass the wetland had already been shot down as expensive and unnecessary—said the plan was worse than the previous one.
Now six years later, the wetland is a 53-acre blip in the massive consumer mecca of Turkey Creek Shopping Center. Awareness of its existence splits shoppers and employees into camps of mixed feelings. Earth Fare, the organic supermarket chain, hosts meetings of the wetland’s advisory board and participates as a corporate sponsor of the Izaak Walton League’s plans for a walking trail and educational facility. But there is an inherent irony in how plastic signs announcing Earth Fare’s sales edge the shoulder of the wetland as you approach the store from the east.
Kim Pilarski, a wetland biologist for TVA and a representative of Knox Land and Water Conservancy, acknowledges the land’s value on both counts.
“Because of its size and its importance in terms of biodiversity, that land was a unique piece of property,” she says. “But it was very valuable commercially and economically. It’s hard to balance all that.”
Knox Land and Water Conservancy is one of several agencies, along with the Izaak Walton League, the Clean Water Network, and other local and state organizations, that monitor water quality issues in Tennessee.
The Knoxville-based Tennessee chapter of the Izaak Walton League (IWL) manages the conservation easement, which is owned by Knox County. Although the name of Ijams Nature Center was continually dropped as a potential caretaker of the wetland (and the Ijams center was illegally deeded the easement by TCLP without the non-profit’s knowledge), the IWL agreed to manage the property in 2001. By law, a conservator must be chosen to take care of a wetland property, but TCLP never set aside or allowed for the collection of funds for that conservator to do so. Pilarksi says that in similar developments across the country, a small percentage of funds raised from the area’s property sales pays for managing the environmentally sensitive property. In this case, the IWL applies for grants and finds other means to pay for its projects in Turkey Creek.
“We are responsible for making sure impacts to the wetlands do not occur or are minimized,” says Campen, whose responsibility also stretches to the surrounding area. Within minutes of talking to Campen and his fellow IWL colleagues, it becomes clear that wetlands like the one at Turkey Creek are just one part of the area’s watershed; creeks, streams, rivers and lakes are all affected by development. And there’s a lot of development happening on either side of Parkside Drive. From a watershed perspective, the land west of Lovell Road toward Pellissippi Parkway is upland; pollutants that get into the water system there can end up in surrounding creeks and wetlands. What Campen and crew are most concerned about is sediment and silt runoff. When trees and grass are removed from the ground of cleared construction sites, rainwater washes dirt (and trash and whatever else) into the storm drains, which can get clogged. The resulting flooding can affect wildlife in a creek or wetland—or create dangerous situations on roadways or parking lots. Monitoring and doing as much as they can to control that chain of events is IWL’s mission in Turkey Creek. Doug White and his volunteers pick up a lot of trash—as much as two big garbage bags three times a week—that blows out of the parking lots and either ends up in the storm drain or is caught in the wetland’s foliage. Their efforts are upkeep as well as preparation for the education center that the Knox County Parks & Recreation department plans for the wetland. A paved path curves behind Baptist Hospital for Women on the Turkey Creek site, and there are plans for development of a woodchip trail with signage to be developed in the spring.
“One of my main goals is to make people more aware of what are the impacts on water quality and how can you make a difference,” says Campen, who is as enthusiastic as he is knowledgeable about wildlife and water quality issues. Just as the IWL reports suspicious and polluting behavior to Knox County, or up the chain of command to state officials, public citizens can do the same.
Nelson Ross, who founded the IWL’s Tennessee chapter in 1977, says that the individual contractors at Turkey Creek sites—as well as the utility companies involved in West Knoxville and Farragut—have been “responsive” to the erosion or drainage problems they’ve seen. Ross echoes Pilarski’s equanimity in regards to the parallel lives of nature and commercialism.
“Development is going to come to us,” he says without remorse or consternation. As managers of the easement, the IWL also holds mitigation credits, which developers must buy if their work impacts certain bodies of water. The sale of these credits will generate money to sustain the wetland. “Right now we’re in the catbird seat,” Ross says.
The health of the Turkey Creek wetland is currently difficult to measure. Campen says the flame chubb still lives in the creek, although a full assessment of the fish will probably wait until next year. Beavers continue to inhabit the area, and migrating songbirds have been spotted flying—although not nesting—in the wetland’s trees. The league has plenty of work on its plate; land-clearing and construction continues full steam ahead in Phase II of the commercial development, and the results of what change has already been wrought remain to play out.
“I don’t want to say the wetland is hanging in the balance,” says Campen. “The potential is there for the county to get developers to do their job properly. Whether to say it’s worse or better—I think it’s either one. I think there are impacts coming from areas that could be better.... We see a lot of problems, and we have reported potential problems. I think time will tell. The wetland is at a point where it could go either way.”
The wetland, estimates Pilarski, “is still in relatively OK shape,” although, she adds, it’s an island in the middle of a huge development. Its destiny is changed. “There’s been an overall general degradation of the watershed,” she says. “Long term it will be difficult to keep the integrity of wetland the way it is.”
December 2, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 49
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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