December 2000 - January 2001

Energy, Environment and Resources Center

Jack Barkenbus, Executive Director

Center For Clean Products and Clean Technologies

Gary A. Davis, Director

Office of Communications and Publications

David Brill, Director

Center for Geography and Environmental Education

Rosalyn McKeown-Ice, Director

Oak Ridge Technology Research and Development Program

Sheila Webster, Director

Systems Development Institute

Donald Alvic, Director

Pro-Dialogue

Mary R. English and David L. Feldman, Directors

Water Resources Research Center

Tim Gangaware, Associate Director

For more information call Gail Farris at 865-974-4251 or write to EERC, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134.

Visit our Web site at: http://eerc.ra.utk.edu/

CONFERENCES Senior Research Scientist David Feldman, who is a UT adjunct professor (political science) and graduate program instructor in environmental policy, presented findings of the Southern Water Supply Roundtable to governors and state legisla-tors at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Southern States Energy Board (SSEB) in Little Rock, Arkansas. The meeting was held in conjunction with the Southern Governors’ Association (SGA). The roundtable, which took place in November 1999 in Peachtree City, Georgia, was sponsored by EERC and SSEB. Feldman recently discussed the ori-gins, development, and significance of Tennessee’s new inter-basin water transfer law in "Tennessee’s Inter-basin Water Transfer Act: Policy Agenda Change Through Partnership," at the American Water Resources Association’s Annual Water Resources Conference held in Miami, Florida. Feldman also published "Southeastern Water Conflicts: Can a Stakeholder Forum Enhance Long-term Planning?" in Rivers Vol 7, No 3. Feldman’s article details the results and policy significance of the stakeholder forum that culminated in the Southeast Water Resources: Management and Supply Symposium and the Southeast Water Supply Roundtable.

A ARDS The Knox County Soil Conservation District recently presented awards to Senior Research Assistant Ruth Anne Hanahan and Tim Gangaware, associate director of EERC’s Water Resources Research Center. The researchers were commended for their "outstanding support of water quality and conservation measures."

Senior Research Associate Catherine Wilt recently received the Tennessee Recycling Coalition’s Individual Recycler of the Year award. This award, given annually, recognizes outstanding programs and individuals who promote recycling throughout the state. Wilt, a former president of the National Recycling Coalition, was recognized for her efforts to promote waste reduction and recycling at the local, state, and national levels through more than 10 years of professional research and community-based volunteer work.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS The Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development invited Research Leader Mary English to address the Forum on Stakeholder Confidence held recently in Paris. In "Who Are the Stakeholders in

Environmental Risk Decisions?" English holds that, especially on decisions concerning long-term risks, the interests of today’s stakeholders should not dominate; instead, collective deliberations should decide the best ways of achieving the long-term common good.

The Essence of COLLEGE Life

Each Highlights and Initiatives page presents an in-depth look at one of EERC’s projects or activities. This edition focuses on an essay by local historian and MetroPulse columnist Jack Neely, which explores UT’s board of trustees’ decision to locate the campus on the Hill back in 1826. Neely’s article first appeared in EERC’s social newsletter, The Energizer. 

The trustees’ decision to locate East Tennessee College, later the University of Tennessee, on the Hill overlooking Knoxville involved a thirst, not for knowledge, but clean water.  BY JACK NEELY

TODAY IT’S EASY to miss Second Creek, which forms the eastern boundary of UT’s campus. Underground for much of its progress through the old World’s Fair site, Second Creek emerges into the dappled sunlight beneath tall trees at the eastern foot of the Hill. Though the mouth of the creek, a few hundred yards downstream, is foamy with detritus and floating garbage, at the foot of the Hill, Second Creek appears clear. The brick creek-side walk beneath the trees is a pleasant place to spend a summer afternoon. It’s a perfect place to picnic, but few do. Many don’t even know it’s there. But if Second Creek weren’t here, UT might not be here, either. 

Blount College, later East Tennessee College (ETC), later UT, began down-town. From its founding in 1794, classes met in a three-story house on Gay Street, near livery stables and taverns, not far from where, after 1796, the state legislature met. As Blount College struggled along downtown, eventually becoming East Tennessee College, this hallowed Hill west of town was still innocent of higher education, home only to a small untended grave-yard containing the remains of a few of Knoxville’s earliest citizens.

In an 1809 letter to the college’s trustees, outgoing President Thomas Jefferson, a prodigious correspondent, offered ETC some advice. Before establishing his own beloved University of Virginia, he recommended that this struggling college in Knoxville should get away from its one-big-building model, in favor of "a small and separate lodge for each professor-ship . . . arranged around an open square."

We don’t know if the trustees remembered Jefferson’s advice 17 years later, but they chose to move the college out of the cluttered, noisy, often-dirty town of Knoxville for a more open area in what was then the country. This was in the summer of 1826; the same summer, Jefferson died. What definitely influenced their decision to buy 40 acres on the west side of town was the small creek and its tributaries at the foot of the Hill. It was, according to the trustees, "a hill at once beautiful, elevated, and picturesque," adjacent to "two or three excellent springs."

Sometimes called Scuffletown Creek— around 1800, the army mustered down there, and soldiers were known to get into fights—Second Creek formed the western boundary of the hamlet of Knoxville. The new campus of East Tennessee College would be just beyond it.

The trustees raved about the College’s new environment: "The slopes of the Hill, the comely view from it and to it in every direction, the excellence of the water, its distance from the town, being near and yet secluded, its position between the river and the main western road...render it a scite [sic] as eligible, almost as the imagination can conceive."

Except, maybe, for one detail. Workmen digging the foundation of the original hilltop building were startled to turn up human bones, graves apparently forgotten after only 30 years. What became of the graves is unknown. 

Decades before Knoxville had a public water supply to offer the university, Second Creek was it. Besides sustaining the university, the creek would prove itself to be educational in itself. In the early 20th century, undergraduates in civil engineering would climb down to the creek to participate in an annual competition to build the best dam.

Today, ecology students study the creek, a typical urban creek, partly enclosed, partly open, with a lot of problems but also a lot of fish and other wildlife. Though less noticeable—and certainly less potable—than its waters were 174 years ago, Second Creek still has some influence on a university more than 100 times the size of the college that made a home on its banks.