PROGRESS 14

PROGRESS REPORT NO. 14
(JUNE 26, 2000)

[Home]
[SCHOLARSHIPS]
[RESTORING THE GREAT AMERICAN CHESNUTS]
[Master Plan] [Map] [Photo Gallery]
[Bank Stabilization Projects]
[Deadwood Removal Days] [Discovery Day 2000] [Scrape, Paint & Clean Day 2000]
[Historic Fraterville Mine Disaster Field Trip 2001] [Fraterville Mine Disaster 100th Anniversary]
[Coal Creek War and Mining Disasters] [Mine Reclamation Lessons]
[CMD] [Economic Benefits] [Motor Discovery Trail] [Historic Cemeteries]
[Partners] [Schools in Watershed] [Mark the Trail Day]
[Awards] [Coal Creek Health Days]
[Briceville School History Field Trips] [Ghost Stories]
[Trout Stuff] [Join Us] [Eastern Coal Region Roundtable]
[Articles in the News] [Dream Contest]

What a party we had on Coal Creek Deadwood Removal Day 2000. Thanks to many of you, we had the following wins:

	137 volunteers signed in and helped, including David Diamond and Mark Messenbaugh from the Gore 2000 staff in Nashville and State Representative William Baird (R). I got a photograph of them carrying a log out from under Drummond Bridge and announced "look we finally found something that Republicans and Democrats can work together on".
	Channel 8 News spent most of the day filming the effort.
	We got deadwood and debris removed from all 13 of the bridges as planned and Anderson County provided a chipper to turn the deadwood into mulch. Only about a third of the mulching got completed, but Anderson County Road Supt. Gary Long promised that the rest would be mulched on Monday.
	Trout Unlimited, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Boy Scouts, Anderson County, the Briceville Volunteer Fire Department, UT, and TVA were well represented at the event.
	We had about as many residents from Coal Creek participate as we did CCWF volunteers.
	We were served enough home-cooked food by the ladies from the local churches to feed us all for a month.
	The gospel singing after we ate was so good that we decided to have a Gospel Jamboree as part of our Watershed Day 2001 event next spring.
	We passed out copies of the Coal Creek Discovery Trail Guide and several people commented that "I have lived here my entire life and I never dreamed that all these historic events happened in Coal Creek".
	Nobody got hurt, which is significant considering the difficult access at many of the bridges.
	Inmates from the local jails who volunteered, asked for us to do this again and let them help.
	In addition to removing deadwood, we helped in an armed stand-off that developed in Beech Grove Fork. We provided the roadblock vehicles while the Sheriff's Department talked a man with a rifle, who had barricaded himself in his home, into giving up ....just another day in Coal Creek.
	Mark Messenbaugh and David Diamond from the Gore 2000 headquarters in Nashville couldn't believe what we are doing. When I took them to the first abandoned coal mine drainage site we are going to remediate in Beech Grove Fork, their jaws dropped. I showed them how runoff causes the iron precipitate to be stirred up and washed downstream. I asked them to invite Vice President Gore to go on our Motor Discovery Tour and to speak at a community meeting in Briceville before the election.