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Group Identifies Air, Water Quality, Land Use As Priorities

Posted on: Wednesday, 5 October 2005, 00:00 CDT

By Robert Wilson, The Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tenn.

Oct. 4--MARYVILLE -- A Blount County community organization has identified air quality, water quality and land use as the three priority areas on which to pursue action in coming months.

The Environmental Health Action Team held a public meeting Monday night and presented its preliminary findings to a group of about 50 people at the Blount County Public Library.

The team, concerned about environmental issues as they relate to public health, had divided into subgroups to examine the three issues. Each compiled a report delineating what the main points of contention are, quantified them where possible and proposed how to address them.

Though somewhat inconclusive, the reports were designed as a foundation on which to achieve improvement goals.

Following a presentation by each subgroup, a question-answer session turned to whether local officials can have much of an effect on one of the main issues -- air quality.

Land use and water quality are almost wholly under the purview of local government. But the region's air quality problems are to a great degree the result of power plant emissions from hundreds of miles away, raising the question of whether local officials, the intended beneficiaries of the EHAT research, can do anything about it.

Micky Roberts, director of the Blount and Sevier County Health Department, facilitated the air quality portion of the presentation and acknowledged the limited effect local officials can have on distant pollution.

He and Jim Renfro of the National Park Service, however, said there may be other actions they can take to mitigate the local part of the equation, for instance encouraging the use of mass transit or a reduction in the number of miles driven by area residents.

The water quality subgroup, led by Kristi Falco, head of Keep Blount Beautiful, examined drinking water, well contamination and surface water and presented statistics indicating that drinking water provided by both Alcoa and Maryville are of high quality. But concerns exist about how streams and lakes are affected by runoff, contaminating the aquatic life in them or the recreational aspects that surround them.

Land use has been a prime area of concern in two urban growth studies conducted in Blount County. Although public health links were a little more tenuous where sprawl was concerned, other aspects of land use, such as tree preservation and roads and traffic, are more easily identified as they pertain to ground-level ozone and auto emissions, according to John Lamb, county planning director.

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tenn.

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Source: The Knoxville News-Sentinel

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