InSites is a quarterly newsletter that highlights the personalities and projects of the Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI) of The University of Tennessee. WMREI is an affiliate of the EERC.

WMREI was created in 1985 as a state-funded Center of Excellence. Research areas include solid-, hazardous-, and nuclear-waste management; waste minimization; and pollution prevention.

Biotechnology is the focal point of the institute's technical research, while issues involving public attitudes and federal/state policies related to waste-management issues are the primary concerns of the institute's policy research.

For additional information about InSites, or to be added to our mailing list, please write InSites, WMREI, The University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, call 865-974-1156, or fax 865-974-1838. Or, if you prefer, e-mail Constance Griffith cbgriffith@utk.edu.

CEB Named Research Center of Excellence

The designation of UT’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology as one of nine research centers of excellence may help bump UT into the top tier of U.S. research universities.

By Kris Christen

The track record of the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB) in attracting federal funding is well established, as is its focus on technologies the White House Office of Science Technology Policy considers “critical.”

These factors made CEB a prime candidate for designation as one of UT’s new research centers of excellence (RCE). As such, CEB is expected to play a central role in UT’s quest to rise to the nation’s top tier of public research universities.

In December, UT named nine research centers of excellence as part of an initiative that would more than double the federal research monies currently flowing annually into university coffers from $70 million to $150 million by 2007.

“We decided that the best way to accomplish that is to focus on some high-priority research areas,” says UT President J. Wade Gilley.

These strategic investment areas were identified following panel meetings and presentations by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other organizations concerning the long-term federal agenda for research. The university also took a hard look at its own research strengths, according to Gilley.

In all, the centers will receive $11.2 million in state and university funds this year and are expected to match this funding on a four-to-one basis, the bulk of which is expected to come through federal research grants.

Priming the Pump

The money earmarked for CEB—$7 million over the next five years—is nowhere near the amount CEB needs to achieve its ambitious research goals, admits Gary Sayler, CEB’s director, but Sayler is confident that the seed money can be leveraged “to really capture the level of resources we need to do the things we think we can do, and that’s partly why the university invested in us.”

Another reason, according to John Sanseverino, research assistant professor and CEB’s assistant director, is that CEB had already been pursuing the same research avenues that UT chose to stress in its plan for the future, which mirrors what the federal government is promoting.

“We’re positioned very well to capitalize on federal research opportunities that are coming up, and we fit President Gilley’s vision of what UT should be,” Sanseverino says.

In line with the national environmental technology strategy, one of CEB’s primary goals is to integrate modern microelectronics, information technology, and the tools of nanotechnology and molecular biology to accomplish real-time information extraction and processing from complex biological and environmental systems.

CEB’s current capabilities range from advanced sensor technology to isotope-rationing techniques in groundwater movement and recharge, according to Sayler. Likewise, new chemical and engineering capabilities are allowing CEB researchers to combine microorganisms and other living cells directly using silicon chip technology, which could offer broad applications in a variety of areas ranging from defense to human health to the environment.  

Critters on a Chip

One of CEB’s highest profile projects of this nature uses bioluminescent bioreporter integrated circuits (BBICs)—engineered microorganisms integrated with computer chips. (See “Critters on a Chip” in the Winter 1997 edition of InSites.)

“With all the bells and whistles you can put on an integrated circuit, as used in wireless communications and global positioning satellites, the BBICs can be deployed remotely to detect changes in the environment, saving a lot of money in field analytical costs,” Sanseverino says.

For example, BBICs can be deployed to detect toluene leaking from an underground gasoline storage tank and trace its movement through the groundwater system. The chips can be programmed to transmit a signal, allowing data to be collected remotely. Typically, technicians are sent out to a site to collect samples, and the samples go back to a lab where they’re processed. This procedure engenders considerable costs, both in time and money, before the data are available.

“With the BBICs, you get an almost instant snapshot of what’s going on in the environment with very little cost,” Sanseverino says.

Ultimately, CEB hopes to tap into the $500-billion global environmental technology market by commercializing some of these technologies, which is just what UT had in mind when it named CEB as one of the new RCEs. A primary objective of the center will be to speed the movement of research results into commercial applications important for environmental protection and restoration.

CEB, One of Nine

Each of the nine new RCEs is slated to receive between $5 million and $10 million over the next five years. Five of the centers are in Knoxville and include CEB, the Food Safety Center, the Advanced Materials Center, the Information Technology Research Center, and the Structural Biology Center. The four centers designated in Memphis include the Genomics and Bioinformatics Center, the Neurology and Imaging of Brain Disease Center, the Connective Tissues Diseases Center, and the Vascular Biology Center.

The centers were chosen from a pool of more than 100 proposals submitted to UT’s Office of Research and Information Technology, says Arlene Garrison, the office’s assistant vice president. Calls for full proposals were extended on 22 of the ideas. A subsequent review by a 10-person committee made up of UT and outside personnel evaluated the proposals based on benefits to the state, the importance of the technology, and synergies of the technology area with current federal funding initiatives.

“The bottom line is that individuals who have the greatest potential for success based on their track record of attracting external funds and carrying out major research initiatives were the ones that rated highest in this process and got funded,” Gilley says.

According to Sayler, the new designation will broaden CEB’s emphasis to include more research using the advanced bioanalytical technologies that CEB historically has been developing, but it won’t change the center’s focus.

“You might want to say that the university has finally caught up with CEB,” Sanseverino says. • 

* * *

For more information Contact John Sanseverino, CEB, The University of Tennessee, 676 Dabney Hall, Knoxville, TN 37996-1605, or call 865-974-8080.

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WMREI Key in CEB’s New Designation

The University of Tennessee’s (UT) Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI), one of Tennessee’s oldest state centers of excellence, played a crucial role in the selection of the Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB) as one of the university’s new research centers of excellence (RCE).

Without WMREI support to CEB’s Environmental Science and Biotechnology Division on such projects as the remediation and fate of hydrophobic organics, the subsurface fate and transport of chlorinated solvents, molecular diagnostics in advancing biological wastewater treatment, and bioprocessing technologies, it is doubtful that CEB would have gained RCE status, according to Gary Sayler, director of both WMREI and CEB.

WMREI was established as a state center of excellence at its launch in 1985. The state Center of Excellence program, begun in 1984, was designed to expand the state’s research base and increase its national and international stature and economic competitiveness, according to Tennessee’s Higher Education Commission (THEC), which administers the program.

In all, 26 centers have since been established with programs ranging from Appalachian studies, popular music, and Egyptology to livestock diseases, pediatric pharmacokinetics, and laser applications. The current $17.8 million annual budget is used by the centers as seed money to attract outside funding, and for every million dollars the state has invested in them, the centers have raised more than $1.7 million from outside sources, representing a more than 170-percent return on the state’s investment, according to THEC.

Since its inception, WMREI’s emphasis has shifted to reflect new realities in the environmental field, according to Kim Davis, the institute’s assistant director.

"We set out in 1985 to develop new solutions to waste-management problems in cooperation with state and regional institutions like the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory," she says.

Currently, the institute is looking to de-emphasize the waste-management element of environmental studies and evolve more in the direction of environmental sustainability and pollution prevention.

—Kris Christen

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Money (and Energy) Laundering

A new washing machine will save consumers money, reduce consumption of water and energy, and minimize environmental impacts. 

By Lisa Byerley Gary

Neptune, the new Maytag washer with the funny name, looks and sounds futuristic. Its rounded top, touch-screen keypad, and front-loading design make it stand out in an appliance aisle lined with more traditional white boxes.

But the front-loading Neptune, and other horizontal-axis machines like it, may soon be washing in a laundry room near you, says David Durfee, a research associate with Systems Development Institute (SDI), an affiliate of the University of Tennessee’s Energy, Environment and Resources Center. That’s because the Neptune could save the average family $100 a year in energy and water costs, use less detergent, do a better cleaning job than old-style washers, and, to top it off, significantly reduce environmental impacts. As project manager of the Boston Washer Study, which tested the Neptune and a companion drier in a 50-unit apartment building, Durfee has the data to prove the benefits a futuristic washer can offer both a household and the environment.

The laundry room may not be where you’d expect to find the next high-tech phenomenon, Durfee says, but the laundry room is where a household consumes a significant amount of water, and energy to heat it. So the U.S. Department of Energy, through Oak Ridge National Laboratory, contracted with Durfee and SDI to run a controlled test of the Neptune washer to substantiate claims by the washer’s manufacturer.

Wash This Way

The researchers installed Neptune washers in the Boston-area apartment building, first testing the homeowners’ existing equipment and washing habits, then comparing those with the new washer. Project participants, who received a new washer-and-drier set free, were not asked to change their washing habits in any way but were required to fill out a data sheet for each load.

Durfee did all the technical work involved with the project. “I designed instruments for the experiment, had them built, oversaw installation and data gathering, analyzed the data, and wrote the report,” which will be final this spring. He also worked with all project participants, fielding questions.

“We found a 50-percent energy savings for the washers alone, and a 22-percent savings for the driers,” Durfee says. “The key [to the energy savings] is in the amount of water used. With average savings of 13 to 15 gallons of water per load, participants used less energy for heating water. We saw a total of 41 percent water savings.” And less water means less detergent is needed. In monetary terms, using less water saves money—on detergent, water, and energy—while reducing environmental burdens.

The coordinating drier had less work to do, too, because the Neptune washer uses a super-fast spin cycle to get clothes drier. A moisture sensor causes the drier to stop when the clothes are dry, which not only cuts down on wrinkles and shrinkage, but also saves additional energy.

The washer, with a front-loading design and no agitator, is easier on clothes, too, allowing them to last longer. The back-and-forth-rotating action of the washer drum dips clothes gently in and out of a water pool at the bottom.

Clean, Green Investment

All in all, Durfee explains, a washer-drier pair like the Neptune could save a typical family at least $100 a year. That’s important to note because a horizontal-axis machine costs more than an old-fashioned vertical unit.

“Consumers need to realize that they will recoup their investment in a few short years and will save money every year after that,” Durfee says.

Since 1997, about a million of the new washers have been sold, representing only about 1 percent of all American washers. Even so, water saved by those consumers would fill a large arena—like Boston’s Fleet Center, home of the Celtics—to the top more than 50 times.

“Imagine the impact,” Durfee says, “if even 50 percent of American homes made that investment. It’s good for the consumer, good for the environment, even good for their cities because water treatment plants won’t have to expand as fast.”

To get the word out to consumers, Maytag is sponsoring a six-city country music tour, featuring Kenny Chesney, Sara Evans, and Jennifer Day to announce the results of the Boston Washer Study and promote energy efficiency and environmental awareness. •

***

For more information contact David Durfee, SDI, The University of Tennessee, 2360 Cherahala Blvd., Knoxville, TN 37932, or call 865-946-1471.

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Water Works

A hard rain’s gonna fall, but if a WMREI graduate student has his way, Knoxville’s occasional deluges won’t prevent the city from meeting its water-quality goals.

By Lisa Byerley Gary

Jake Chandler steps into waders and sloshes through rain-swollen creeks as part of his internship for the city of Knoxville. A graduate student in civil and environmental engineering, Chandler conducts field work and planning to help the city meet its water-quality goals through a cooperative venture funded by the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI).

Chandler’s position came about through the efforts of Kim Davis, an environmental engineer and WMREI assistant director, and David Hagerman, the city of Knoxville’s stormwater-quality manager. The two met through the Knoxville chapter of the Tennessee

Society of Professional Engineers.

At the time, Knoxville was in the midst of meeting Phase I requirements for the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting program, a 1990 unfunded federal mandate for all urban areas with populations of 100,000 or more. Among other requirements, Knoxville had to develop ways to control rates of stormwater discharge, monitor water quality in the stormwater system, manage illegal dumping and illegal waste-system connections, develop an approach to minimize water pollution, and establish a 24-hour water-quality hotline.

A Perfect Match

The paperwork and fieldwork required to meet the provisions of the mandate would be massive, Hagerman realized, and the city had limited resources to work with, since the mandate came with no funding. Hagerman turned to the university for help. The relationship that resulted turned out to be a perfect match.

The city had opportunities for students to gain experience, and UT had an abundance of engineering expertise among its faculty and students. And the Water Resources Research Center, a subunit of UT’s Energy, Environment and Resources

Center, had logged more than a decade in conducting innovative research on a variety of environmental topics, including stream and urban watershed restoration.

Davis responded to Hagerman’s request by arranging for a WMREI stipend that would pay a UT student to conduct water-quality tasks with Hagerman and the city of Knoxville. Chandler, who completed much of his work in the fall of 2000, followed in the footsteps of other UT interns who had focused primarily on educating the public about water-quality issues.

“This internship position was an outgrowth of the education and training component of WMREI’s mission, which has been to offer fellowships, internships, and undergraduate scholarships to students majoring in waste-management fields,” Davis says. “WMREI began collaborating with the city’s stormwater division in the fall of 1998, co-funding a position that would allow a student to gain real-life experience in water-quality sampling and public education.”

Have Test Tube, Will Travel

Chandler’s assignment involved moving several of the city’s monitoring stations from their existing sites on the storm-drain system to locations on area creeks—a move necessary to meet future federal regulations. Those regulations, based on Total Maximum Daily Loads, or TMDLs, target problem contaminants for a specific creek as measured in parts per million. TMDLs, Hagerman explains, are designed to help a waterway meet the quality requirements for its designated use. Most Knoxville-area waterways are designated for recreation and must be monitored to ensure safe human contact. Chandler would help move existing monitors to locations where they could more accurately assess a stream’s health.

“It was important for us to get Jake on staff to get those monitors to where the problem really is,” Hagerman explains. “Instead of isolated locations, we needed to check an entire watershed. Now we know what’s going on in these streams at all times.”

Each monitoring station is linked via computer modem to a central computer in Hagerman’s office.

“When I go out to a monitoring site,” Chandler says, “I already know the volume of water I need to take from the sampling bottles.” The sampler intake, which is submerged in the stream, kicks on automatically when the water in a channel reaches a certain depth. It then pumps water directly into the sampling bottles.

Chandler then seals the samples and sends them to the Knoxville Utilities Board laboratory for analysis before resetting the devices for the next storm event.

The Prime Culprits

“Most of our water problems in the city are caused by bacteria and sediment,” Hagerman says. “In fact, we often fail bacteria standards. We’ve responded by establishing controls and working with industry and utilities to control bacteria sources.”

Sediment is harder to manage, says Hagerman, because it usually isn’t an industry problem, and it can be difficult to trace its source. The city spends money to stabilize creek banks and monitor construction sites to prevent erosion. Erosion control, says Hagerman, prevents the need for sediment control. Monitoring stations, like the ones Chandler operates, help pinpoint bacteria and erosion trouble spots.

In addition to his field work, Chandler is helping Knoxville develop a Best Management Practices (BMP) manual, which the city needed but lacked the resources to produce on its own. BMPs refer to guidelines that help manufacturers, contractors, producers, and others meet environmental goals in ways that cause minimal disruptions to the conduct of business.

“Our goal is to produce a how-to guide for a wide range of applications in the urban environment and to make those guidelines specific to Knoxville,” Hagerman says. “We’ll explain things like how to install silt fences and how to handle oil leaks.”                

Multipronged Partnership

Other UT-Knoxville partnerships also enhance the city’s water quality, Hagerman says. UT geology classes are encouraged to conduct public service projects, for instance, and students in mini-term classes often do clean-up work along area streams.

“UT students moved 40 tons of garbage from Williams Creek one Saturday,” Hagerman says. “And Mike McKinney, who directs UT’s environmental studies program, strongly emphasizes public service and internships among his students.”

Meanwhile, UT engineering classes are welcome to access city water-quality monitoring stations. The university provided an easement for one such monitoring station on Second Creek, where students gain first-hand experience in working with water-flow and water-level sensors and become familiar with the equipment and software that automatically pumps samples and sends data back to a central computer.

“College labs have traditionally been indoors, but this kind of field exposure helps students get jobs when they graduate,” Hagerman says. “We use industry-standard equipment so students can tell prospective employers they’ve had experience with that equipment. Plus, the city benefits when five different student groups calibrate flow. We can compare our data to theirs.”

WMREI’s Davis shares Hagerman’s enthusiasm for the collaborative projects. “There have been wonderful opportunities recently for collaboration with both the city and Knox County,” Davis says, “which allows faculty, staff, and students to share information, try out innovative methods, and get hands-on experience in public-service and educational campaigns. We’re always looking for new ways for WMREI to involve UT people in these types of projects, where all participants benefit.” •

***

For more information contact Kim Davis, WMREI, The University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, or call 865-974-1847or visit the Web at <http://www.ci.knoxville.tn.us/engineering/bmp_manual/>.

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Storm Front

The same steady, two-day rain that leaves water standing on the roadway also sends stormwater rushing into culverts and streams.With it goes all the accumulated grease, grime, and trash in its path. The result is water pollution.

Measuring, evaluating, and controlling that polluted runoff is the job of University of Tennessee (UT) alumnus and city stormwater quality manager, David Hagerman, who receives assistance from Jake Chandler, a UT graduate student whose position is funded by UT’s Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI).

Hagerman’s office in the Knoxville/Knox County City-County Building is command central on rainy days. Data from monitoring stations strategically placed in streams around the city pour into a central computer and create glowing lines of green and orange that chart overall rainfall and stream flow rates.

When the rain starts to fall—and while the rest of Knoxville is scrambling for cover—Hagerman, Chandler, and city stormwater technician Mark Johnson are on call. At certain times of the year, they slosh in waders through swollen streams to collect samples from each of five monitoring stations to get good data from the "first flush" of storm water—the first half-inch of rain that carries with it most of the trash, grime, and industrial waste that have accumulated since the last good rain.

That first flush tells quite a story, Hagerman says. His office sends samples to the Knoxville Utilities Board for analysis of some 13 parameters, including dissolved and suspended solids, bacteria, and certain chemicals. The results, Hagerman explains, confirm exactly which contaminants are in a stream. If a construction site has an erosion problem, Hagerman sees it. If a manufacturing plant is dumping too much of a chemical, it shows up. If a fast-food restaurant has leaky grease containers sitting around outside, the evidence is revealed by Hagerman’s tests.

What Hagerman and his staff find in stormwater isn’t always pretty. Restaurant debris, like boxes of discarded chicken parts, not only add bacteria to a stream, they also stink. A cracked pipe from a sanitary sewer does the same. Such contamination occasionally leads to postings along streams warning people not to swim or consume fish they’ve caught.

While the city does have the power to force polluters to clean up their act, that’s a last resort, Hagerman says. Detecting pollution early, before it becomes a major problem, is the idea. 

"A mom-and-pop quick-stop and gas station doesn’t have an engineer on staff to look at water-quality issues," he explains, "and it isn’t something they think about. People pump gas, come in and pay, and maybe buy a Twinkie on the way out. But those station owners are actually handling hazardous materials. They need to understand Best Management Practices." (BMPs are a set of guidelines that help industry meet environmental goals in ways that don’t disrupt the flow of business. See Knoxville’s BMP guide at <http://www.ci.knoxville.tn.us/engineering/bmp_manual/>.)

For business owners who won’t take the hint, the city can assess penalties of up to $5,000 a day and force the offending business to take specific steps. The city might, for instance, require a contractor to build better detention ponds or require a gas station to install treatment devices such as oil-water separators.

Hagerman’s office is also responsible for some emergency-response services when spills get into the stormwater system.

Not long ago, a gasoline customer drove off and let the pump hose fall to the ground on automatic fill. "There was no resistance, so the pump kept running and the gasoline ran down a hill and right into Second Creek," says Hagerman. "So we were out with the fire department after dark putting booms in the creek to contain the spill."

A good part of the office’s work is public education. Staff, including WMREI-funded UT students, help contractors and industrial representatives understand regulations so they can comply. In addition, the city contracts with Ijams Nature Center to provide water-pollution education to school children and the general public. Volunteers, including UT students, stencil blue paint messages next to street drains warning would-be dumpers that the storm drain eventually goes into a stream.

"Some people assume the stormwater system drains to a sewage treatment plant," Hagerman says. "The fact is, water in the storm drain system is not treated in any way. A toilet flush goes to the sanitary sewer, but stormwater goes right into the river."

—Lisa Byerley Gary

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Aquatic Bugs on the Front Lines

The National Park Service looks to aquatic insect populations to provide early warning of declining water quality.

By Kris Christen

Editor’s Note: Each issue of InSites will feature an article from Sightline, a semiannual publication that focuses on the environmental health of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Sightline is a collaborative effort among the University of Tennessee’s Energy, Environment and Resources Center; Great Smoky Mountains National Park; Friends of Great Smoky Mountains National Park; and Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association. The following article will appear in the summer edition of the publication. To receive a complimentary copy of Sightline, contact Constance Griffith at cbgriffith@utk.edu.

Some 2,000 miles of streams flowing in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and high amounts of annual rainfall support a highly diverse aquatic insect population—more than 500 species and counting—making these creatures excellent indicators for assessing water quality.

“These critters are there all the time, and they have to either survive or not survive the environmental conditions they’re faced with,” says Chuck Parker, a research aquatic biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey stationed in the park. “The idea is that the organisms respond to what’s there, and if they’re healthy, we can assume that the river’s healthy and not being strongly stressed.”

So far, the news is good. “At this point, we don’t have any strong evidence that there are serious problems with aquatic insect populations in general,” Parker says.

Much of the stream monitoring work began back in the late 1970s with the push to study the effects of acid deposition and has been ongoing since then, helping National Park Service (NPS) researchers identify and chart trends in the park’s aquatic insect populations that might be related to environmental factors.

“What we’re looking for are any signs of change in the park’s ecosystems, especially changes in the negative sense,” Parker says. In addition to aquatic macroinvertebrates, the monitoring program also looks at forest communities, plants, wildlife, and fisheries.

The water-quality end of the program involves the collection of samples every summer from a series of sites representative of the various areas in the park—such as different forest types and elevations. “We take a look at the abundance and diversity of what we collect from year to year and see how that changes,” says Becky Nichols, an NPS entomologist. And while the number of insects may not decline with decreasing water quality, the types of insects found will change.

Because researchers are looking for community-wide indications of health, the various species they encounter have to be evaluated in terms of their responsiveness to different types of stress. “Some species are very sensitive to certain types of pollution, whereas others are extremely tolerant, whether it’s chemical pollution, siltation, or other types of disturbance,” Parker says.

Of particular monitoring interest are the three primary aquatic orders—namely Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera, better known as mayflies, stoneflies, and caddisflies, respectively. These include some of the most intolerant bug groups. In addition, there are the aquatic midges, or flies, belonging to the Chironomidae family, which also includes many different species that as a whole exhibit the range of responses to virtually any type of pollutant.

Counting Game 

Because responses are species specific, researchers calculate a so-called biotic index based on the species’ tolerance value, which in effect gives each species a score from zero to 10—zero meaning that everything affects them; 10 meaning that nothing affects them. Then, “by combining the relative abundance of species with their tolerance to different types of pollutants, we come up with a community-wide estimate of water quality,” Parker says.

Of course, all this information has to be calibrated, depending on the ecoregion, says Dave Lenat, an environmental biologist with North Carolina’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources, which has been the real leader with this approach.

“We might make adjustments if the stream is very small, and you would have fewer species, or if we sampled outside the summer time period,” he says. Likewise, years of high rainfall amounts or, conversely, drought years can affect bug populations and have to be taken into consideration as well.

“If you end up with a stream that’s only populated with very tolerant species, your biotic index will go down, and you know something’s up,” Nichols says.

High Water Marks

The numbers crunched for streams in the Smokies typically fall into the good to excellent range, meaning that the streams are relatively pristine. Some areas do raise cause for concern, however, particularly those endowed with Anakeesta rock formations, which leach sulphuric acid and heavy metals when exposed to weathering. This pyritic rock occurs throughout the park, the most dramatic example being Anakeesta Ridge located between Newfound Gap and Mount LeConte, where numerous landslide scars can be seen.

“Streams directly affected by Anakeesta runoff tend to be virtually devoid of all life,” Parker says. Most of the affected areas in the park are caused by natural events, but past roadbuilding activities and improperly disposed fill from debris slides contribute to the problem, he adds. Likewise, unwise logging activities in the park at the turn of the century followed by fires that eliminated all of the vegetative cover could still be affecting stream life.

“It takes many decades for exposed Anakeesta to eventually reach the point where it’s no longer contributing to downstream problems,” Parker says.

Other concerns involve the headwater streams found at higher elevations, which are known to have pH problems as a result of nitrate and sulphate deposition, in part from air pollution. But how that affects the insect populations is not yet known.

“We’re currently reviewing our study plan to perhaps focus more effort on higher elevation streams,” Nichols says.

Changes in the forest community as a result of the balsam wooly adelgids killing fir trees, particularly at higher elevations, also can affect aquatic bug populations. “This opens up the canopy, and we get a distinct change in the amount of sunlight that reaches the stream and the nature of vegetation that grows in the vicinity of streams,” Parker says.

Data gleaned from water-quality monitoring plays a major role in decisions relating to park construction projects, according to Bob Miller, park spokesperson. For example, the existing 15-mile stretch of the Foothills Parkway was built by the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) by making big cuts and fills into slope sides. The process involved a lot of earth moving, exposed a lot of pyritic rock, and resulted in significant siltation and acids released to the point where some streams suffered major damage, according to Miller.

TDOT’s contract was suspended as a result, and the Federal Highway Administration will build the last 1.5 mile segment using a series of 10 bridges that avoid the necessity of cutting into the hillside and filling up banks below the roadbed.

“The whole idea behind it [the new project] is minimizing impact on the ground and the amount of disturbance, which produces siltation and impacts streamsheds,” Miller says. “The downside is that it’ll cost $60 million to $70 million to finish the project using our method, whereas the traditional cut-and-fill method would be tens of millions of dollars cheaper.”

Similar considerations are influencing a project to reline and enlarge two tunnels along Newfound Gap road. Here, the park is choosing to conduct all the expansion by lowering the existing roadway. As different rock strata are uncovered, those containing acid-bearing rock will be trucked up to a disposal site further up the mountain where they’ll be graded out, neutralized with lime, and covered over. In this way, “water seepage will be minimized, and what seepage does occur will be neutralized,” Miller says.•

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For more information contact Bob Miller, GSMNP, 107 Park Headquarters Road, Gatlinburg, TN 37738, or call 865-436-1207.

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