Voice Your Concerns at a
Public Hearing or Letter to TDEC
PUBLIC HEARINGS:
Nashville: November
26, 2001 7 p.m. Ruth Neff Conf. Room 17th floor L&C Tower at 4th
Ave, & Church Street
Knoxville: December 6, 2001 7 p.m. (CST)
Goins Auditorium, Pellissippi State Community College 10915 Hardin
Valley Rd.
Jackson: December 13, 2001 7 p.m. (CST)
Large Conference Room of Environmental Assistance Center 362 Carriage House
Drive
End of Draft Permit Comment Period: December
5, 2001
Join with families, concerned
communities and businesses in Tennessee as we urge TDEC to
provide the bold leadership necessary to prevent
pollution from unchecked clear
cutting
cutting.
TDEC can include these reasonable safeguards that
will begin to address the effects of large-scale clear cutting
on Tennessee streams and wetlands!
TDEC can include these
reasonable
safeguards in chip mill storm water permits:
|
Require public participation! In
light of the intense public concern surrounding the chip mills and the
remote clear
cutting
to supply the mills, TDEC has the statutory authority and an obligation to
require public participation.
|
Require the reporting of
logging sites that supply the chip mill.
The state
should know where the large-scale cutting will occur. Knowledge
will aid the prevention of stream pollution, streamline state
monitoring and save money for the state!
| |
Send to: 1)
Governor Don Sundquist, State Capitol Bldg., Nashville, TN
37243-9711 and,
Important Copies!!
2) TDEC Commissioner Milton Hamilton, and 3) Water
Pollution Control Director, Paul Davis
TDEC, L&C Building, 401
Church St, Nashville, TN 37243-1534
RE: A Proposal to Strengthen
Chip Mill Storm Water Permits within the Tennessee Multi-Sector Permit for
Industrial Storm Water Discharges.
Dear Governor Sundquist,
I am writing to urge you to provide
bold leadership for our state by strengthening the storm water permit for
chip mills. Forestry is a water issue! We deserve clean water
to drink, fish, swim and for outdoor recreation. Our forested watersheds are
among North America's most biologically diverse regions and deserve
protection. Today, Tennessee's forested
watersheds are threatened by the expansion of industrial forestry chip mills
. Forestry experts predict that hardwood harvest rates in
Tennessee will increase almost 100 percent in during the next twenty
years. (Robert Abt, 1993)
Current laws fail to protect
Tennessee's water quality and supplies from the effect of the rapid sweep of
industrial scale logging to supply the pulp and paper and chipboard
industries. Clear cutting -- the harvest method used by
chip mills -- is legal! Some cuts are thousands of acres
in size. A pre-harvest notification is not required, leaving the state
unaware of thousands of remote logging operations across the state
annually. The state only monitors 8 percent of the total number
of logging operations statewide each year to ensure that the voluntary
Best Management Practices are implemented to protect streams and wetlands. In
addition, less than 50 percent of any given watershed in Tennessee is
assessed by the state -- all but excluding the remote headwater streams
where most industrial logging occurs.
Who
is keeping a protective eye on Tennessee's valuable forested watersheds?
"How we manage our forests has a profound effect on the quality
of our drinking water and the ability of our watersheds to perform their
most basic functions.” (Former Chief of the USFS, Mike Dombeck,
speech to American Forest and Paper Industry, 2000)
We urge you to support
strengthening chip mill storm water permits by 1) including
public participation. In light of the intense public concern surrounding
the chip mills and the remote clear
cutting to
supply the mills, we believe TDEC has the statutory authority and an
obligation to require public participation
; and, 2) requiring a report of logging locations that supply the chip
mill.
The state should know where the large-scale cutting will
occur. This will aid the prevention of stream pollution, streamline state
monitoring and save money for the state. These
reasonable safeguards will begin to address the new pressures created by modern
timber practices, particularly the effects of large-scale clear
cutting
on Tennessee streams and wetlands.
Sincerely,
~~