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Copyright© Coal
Creek Watershed Foundation, Inc. 2000 through 2021
CELEBRATING OUR 21st YEAR!!
I am an engineer just like you. I go to work and spend a good deal of my time dealing with stuff that has nothing to do with engineering. Most of my work is regulatory driven so many of my clients look at my services as part of the cost of doing business like paper clips and fax machines. I go home and read my engineering magazines and newsletters each month and find out that other engineers are just like me. The headlines read AEngineering is becoming a commodity@ or AEngineers don=t command the respect in society that they once did@ or AThe brightest students are picking careers other than engineering@.
I don=t know about you, but I didn=t select engineering as a career to become a commodity. When I was young, I remember reading about building the transcontinental railroad, the Panama Canal, Hoover Dam and putting a man on the moon: that is why I became an engineer. I still like to read about the accomplishments of my engineering ancestors and dream of adventure. I recently read a book entitled AHistory of Briceville, Tennessee@. The first paragraph of the book says:
AIn 1835, two young Civil Engineers by the names of Henry H. Wiley and William S. McEwen formed a partnership and entered, surveyed, and secured grants on about all the mountain lands in Anderson County, as well as many acres in Campbell and Morgan counties. Their work was completed with their grants all secured by about 1848.@ Later, three corporations were formed to take over their holdings: the Coal Creek Mining and Manufacturing Company, the Poplar Creek Coal and Iron Company, and the Tennessee Mining and Manufacturing Company@.
I bet that the peers of Wiley and McEwen thought they were crazy to go off into the wilderness of Tennessee in 1835 in search of adventure. Crazy or not, I still thirst for adventure and I am looking for other engineers as crazy as me to join an effort called the Coal Creek Clean Stream Initiative. CCCSI has a single goal: Make Coal Creek and its tributaries suitable habitat for spawning trout. To accomplish this goal, we will have to re-engineer the way engineering is done.
Let me explain. I=m a trout fisherman. My favorite place to fish is the Clinch River below Norris Dam. This 14-mile stretch of tailwater is the most popular trout fishery in Tennessee. The problem? Spawning habitat is limited. I don=t want to catch stocked trout all my life, I want to catch wild trout, the wilder the better. Many others I have talked with share my feelings. The biggest stream that enters the Clinch River along this 14-mile stretch of tailwater is Coal Creek which has a watershed area of 36 square miles. I see Coal Creek and its tributaries as about 40 miles of potential stream for spawning trout. You=ve probably driven through the Coal Creek watershed a thousand times on I-75 at Lake City. What would a spawning trout stream do for Lake City and the surrounding area? Look what it did for Gatlinburg. Think about the jobs that would be created and the increased need for engineers if Lake City and the surrounding area grows the way Gatlinburg has done.
The problem is that Coal Creek has been severely impacted by man. The companies that our Civil Engineering ancestors, AWiley and McEwen, helped form have mined coal for 150 years upstream of Lake City. Coal mine drainage (CMD) from these abandoned underground works that were mined prior to the enactment of current environmental regulations, impacts Coal Creek. Data from TDEC shows that sewage treatment in the watershed is inadequate. Trash has been dumped into Coal Creek at numerous locations. If you drive along the entire stretch of Highway 116, the idea of turning Coal Creek into a trout spawning stream will seem about as crazy as putting a man on the moon once did. When I first brought the idea up at a meeting of Trout Unlimited, everybody laughed until they realized that I was serious.
In looking for ways to attack the problems, I became frustrated to say the least. With the current state of affairs in Tennessee and the country, Coal Creek will never become anything more than it is now. Nobody has any money, so they say. County, state, federal governments say they have more pressing problems and they say that turning Coal Creek into trout spawning habitat is Aimpossible@, Anot in our lifetime@, Aa fairy tale@. The engineering profession in its current position as a commodity that is not respected by our community can never develop a solution. We engineers would rather spend our spare time bad mouthing our competitors and blaming somebody else for our loss of stature in society.
In my apparently hopeless position, I have decided to charge straight ahead. The Coal Creek Clean Stream Initiative is a non-profit organization looking for partners and members who are fed up with the current state of affairs. Our plan is simple. Nobody will spend money on the problems in Coal Creek until they know how to fix them, how much it will cost, and the potential return on that investment. We have enough engineering talent in this community to develop a plan to address this problem and we have the technology to make it happen. If we work together, share ideas, and communicate via the internet, we can develop a solution to the problem. We can use our technical society meetings to debate ideas and formulate an engineered solution for Coal Creek.
What=s in it for you? If you are tired of being called a commodity and dream of the adventure that goes with doing something that others say is impossible, join us. Let=s re-engineer the way engineering is done. Why waste time and money with marketing your services the conventional way which is trying to get a larger share of a smaller pie by bad mouthing your competitors and singing your own praises. Instead, let=s use that time to make that pie bigger for everyone to share. If we engineer a solution to the problems in Coal Creek, even if only conceptual, I bet we can find others as crazy as we are to implement the plan. Part of the implementation will require the hiring of engineers to perform detailed design. In the process, we can do something to regain the respect that engineers once commanded as leaders in society.
For more details on CCCSI, go to our web site at www.coalcreekaml.com. Our initial efforts will deal with the CMD problems, but there is no reason why we can=t explore options for the other problems concurrently. Pick an area that interests you, email me what you want to do and why, and get to work researching the topic. I suggest that we use our monthly technical meetings to develop a plan of attack that will be refined at our technical meetings each month.
East Tennessee has been the birthplace of other crazy ideas. Remember what past generations of engineers accomplished (i.e. Alcoa, TVA, Oak Ridge) when they had a common goal and were determined to succeed. Do we want to be remembered as the generation that allowed engineering to become a commodity service? Or, do we want to be remembered as the generation that re-engineered our profession and restored engineers to their previous status as leaders in society? There will be an article in the branch newsletter on CCCSI, but the information will be out-of-date by the time you read it there. Use www.coalcreekaml.com for updates and to communicate your ideas.