Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Our Troubled Waters

When we search for evidence of life on other planets, we look for the building blocks of life. We look for water. Without water life on Earth ceases to exist. But for some reason, we seem to overlook and take it for granted in much of America, including here in Tennessee. Our waterways provide Tennesseans with drinking water and places to boat, swim and fish.

They act as shipping lanes across our state and bring hikers, kayakers, and other adventurers to our area. Tourists and Tennesseans go down our rivers, fish in our lakes, and hike through our forests to see our waterfalls and the wildlife that surround them. Our waterways are the lifeblood of Tennessee, but there is something happening to them, and it’s not good.

For far too long we have treated our waterways as out of sight, out of mind dumping grounds, and they are becoming more contaminated each year. As of 2020, over half (55.4%) of the waterways in Tennessee were classified as impaired by the Tennessee Division of Water Resources. That is up from 32.4% only a decade earlier. Seeing those statistics and that rapid increase got me thinking. What does it mean for a waterway to be impaired, how does that affect Tennesseans, what factors contribute to impairment, and what can be done to preserve and restore our waterways?

First, let’s look at how the waterways in Tennessee are classified and what it means when one of our rivers, lakes, or streams gets designated as impaired by the state.

There are seven possible classifications for the designated uses of waterways in Tennessee:

Fish and Aquatic Life: meaning the body of water must be capable of sustaining aquatic life.
Recreation: Swim, wade, and fish
Irrigation: Ensures farmers access to water to irrigate crops
Livestock Watering and Wildlife: Drinking water source for livestock and wildlife
Drinking Water Supply: Currently or likely to be used for domestic water supply
Navigation: Used for commercial transport of goods by barges and large boats
Industrial Water Supply: Currently used for industrial purposes

Every waterway in Tennessee falls under the first two classifications, and these are the ones I’ll focus on because they are also the most common reason for a river, lake, or stream to become classified as impaired, which is when a waterway is no longer able to function for one of its designated uses.

The majority of impairment in our state is the result of a body of water either no longer being capable of sustaining aquatic life or no longer being safe to swim and/or fish in. Approximately 50% of the impaired waterways in Tennessee are the result of E.coli contamination. This holds true in Knox County where 39 of our waterways are impaired and 20 are due to E.coli contamination. This is what is happening to the water across our state.

Over half of our lakes, rivers, and streams either can’t support aquatic life or our citizens can no longer fish and/or swim in them because we have let them become so contaminated. To me, this is unacceptable, and I hope it is for you as well.

The three most common reasons for impairment in Knox County are E.coli, PCBs, and mercury. Tennessee doesn’t test for microplastics, but I will touch on them later. For now, let’s focus on E.coli since it is the most common contaminant in our water and is responsible for about 50% of the impairment classifications in Tennessee.

So, how does our water become contaminated by E.coli, and what factors may have led to the drastic increase in impairments? There are two major contributing factors to E.coli contamination, agricultural (animal waste) and sewage overflow (human waste).

I’ll start from the agricultural side and what changed between 2010 and 2020 that could help account for at least some of the increase in contamination of our water systems. Most of us have heard of E.coli and know it can be a major issue if someone becomes infected that can result in severe sickness and sometimes death.

The major cause of E.coli contamination is feces, so you would think our state would work to limit the amount of feces being introduced into our waterways.

However, instead of making moves to restrict the dumping of animal waste into our rivers, lakes, and streams, our legislature passed SB0899 which actually restricts cities and counties from enacting requirements for the disposal of animal waste at CAFOs (Commercial Agricultural Feed Operations) beyond the federal EPA requirements which don’t apply until an operation has at least 1000 animal units.

When I first saw this, I thought, 1000 animals, that’s a small operation for a farm, so this couldn’t have much effect, right? But wait, it doesn’t say 1000 animals, it’s animal units. It turns out that an animal unit is 1000 pounds of animal weight.

When you multiply that out, this means our legislature decided that they wouldn’t institute any restrictions and that our localities couldn’t institute any restrictions on CAFOs that had less than 1,000,000 pounds of animals.

To put this into perspective, a feed operation could have over 100,000 chickens or as many as 10,000 sheep or pigs and not be subject to regulations regarding how they dispose of the waste. When animal feces enters our waterways through dumping or runoff from agricultural operations, the E.coli contamination comes with it.

The other major source of E.coli contamination in our waterways is our sewage infrastructure. In the Knoxville area, we have seen rapid growth and are now seeing a shortage of housing and sky-high prices to purchase or rent.

Everyone recognizes the financial costs of rapid growth, but what many don’t realize is the strain on our sewage infrastructure from this increase in population and the effect it has on our waterways.

Currently, many of our sewage systems across the state are constantly pushing the limits of their capabilities with just the load of the population. This means that when we have heavy rains, our sewage systems are pushed beyond their limits and the load is forced down overflows that dump our waste into our waterways.

In many areas of our state, every time there are heavy rains, and especially when there is flooding, there is sewage overflow that results in further contamination of our water systems, leading to more of those red signs by our rivers, lakes, and creeks marking them as unsafe for entry due to the potential for bacterial infection. We can work to solve this issue by using some of our infrastructure funds to upgrade our sewage and stormwater systems across the state.

Stormwater systems are another example of our legislature siding with profit over our waterways while taking away control from cities and counties. Our state legislature sided with developer lobbyists and passed SB1830 which blocked localities from creating and enforcing regulations beyond the basic EPA requirements regarding stormwater systems in their communities.

As a result, a county or city cannot require a developer to do anything beyond the state requirements when it comes to their stormwater runoff.

The effect of this is that, in many cases, developers can run their storm drains directly to the nearest water source. Though this is not on the level of E.coli contamination and some of the other issues I will discuss later, it is yet another compounding factor affecting our waterways.

Possibly the most significant problem from this is grass clippings and other vegetative matter. Most of us wouldn’t even think about it, but when we mow and trim, the clippings often end up going down the closest storm drain.

What this can do is create an increase in the biological oxygen demand (BOD) on a body of water due to an influx of algae and bacterial growth feeding on and breaking down the grass clippings, etc.

This can result in a waterway becoming impaired because there is no longer enough oxygen in the water for the fish and other aquatic life to survive.

The lobbyists who pushed for the bill claimed that it would save Tennesseans money on their homes. Based on housing costs, it doesn’t seem like it worked. What it has done is become another factor contributing to the further impairment of our waterways and limited our capability to address the issue at a local level.

Other than E.coli, PCBs and mercury are two of the most common contaminants in our impaired waterways in Knox County.

The source of this type of contamination is generally from industrial and commercial waste, like the paper mill on the Pigeon River just inside North Carolina that has been polluting downstream into Tennessee, including Douglas Lake, since 1906 and still is today with carcinogens that are known to harm wildlife and humans. Some contamination is the result of spills and accidents, like the Kingston Coal Ash Spill.

When it failed and released radioactive waste into our rivers, we could have required that it and all other coal ash ponds in Tennessee be lined to reduce the chances of another failure and prevent ground seepage to protect our waterways and the public.

Instead, it appears nothing was changed to mitigate or reduce the chances of it happening again or to mitigate the potential for seepage and contamination of our groundwater.

The result was a complete lack of action from our state, despite the fact that dozens of workers died as a result of the clean-up efforts and hundreds of acres of land and millions of gallons of water along miles of river were contaminated.

Contaminants like chemicals and heavy metals build up in the sediment and can make their way up the food chain from bottom feeders to humans who may unknowingly feed their family fish from a contaminated area. This holds true for microplastics, as well. Although they are not tested for by the state, an independent study swam the length of the Tennessee River and took readings along the way.

Among the other contaminants that were tested for, they found that the Tennessee is one of the most polluted rivers in the world when it comes to microplastics. To give you a sense of how contaminated the Tennessee River is compared to others, here’s a quick rundown from the study.

The Rhine (Europe) came in at 200 particles per cubic meter. The Yangtze (China) was measured at 9000, and at the top of the list, our very own Tennessee River was found to have an astronomical 16,000 particles of microplastics per cubic meter. These plastics can lead to fish kill and contaminate our food sources by climbing the food chain.

Unfortunately, no one has been able to develop an effective method of removing microplastics from our waterways. The best option is to mitigate the contamination, but even that will be difficult without some major changes because of the many potential sources of contamination, including plastic bags and bottles, potentially all the way down to washing clothing made from plastics.

Across Tennessee, our waterways have been neglected and pushed to the breaking point. The time is now to be proactive, to enact measures that give us the ability to preserve and restore our rivers, lakes, and streams before it is too late.

We must act before we leave a desolate state to the next generation. One that is devoid of the wonderful array of wildlife and fauna that Tennessee has to offer. We can all get involved and do our part, but we must hold our representatives accountable for their votes and pressure them to do the right thing, protect our natural resources, and ensure they are still around for future generations of Tennesseans.

If we continue our current trajectory, we soon may find ourselves without any swimmable or fishable waterways in Tennessee. As someone who moved to Knox County over 20 years ago, the mountains and rivers, the beauty of this area, is a big part of why people come here, and why many of us never leave. It’s time we take care of them.

Sources:

Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Our Troubled Waters

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