The Environmental Journal of Southern Appalachia
11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

11 Sustainable Cities and Communities (42)

Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

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IMG 6003Katie Fleenor of Mattalyn Rogers Dressage rides training horse Asa at Dressage by the River 2023 at River Glen.  Courtesy Mattalyn Rogers Dressage

Nonprofit’s plan to purchase equestrian property faced opposition but raised important future farmland issues

UPDATE: The Jefferson County Regional Planning Commission rejected the proposal for a KARM facility citing zoning restrictions. Knoxville Area Rescue Ministries may still bring the proposal to the Jefferson County Board of Zoning Appeals.

NEW MARKET — Knoxville Area Rescue Ministries plans to purchase River Glen, a storied equestrian facility in Jefferson County, to eventually help disadvantaged clients overcome substance-abuse issues and societal disparities.

The proposal has detractors, but proponents cast it as a way to also ensure the continued operation of an established working horse farm and long-term site of equestrian events, especially dressage. The horses could even provide therapy.

The New Market debate also raises questions about aging U.S. farmers and ultimate disposition of their agricultural lands.

President and Chief Executive Officer of KARM Danita McCartney said her group plans to purchase 185 acres. In addition to its show-worthy horse facilities, the property borders the Holston River and retains a significant amount of forest along the river and sharp ridge lines.

The property’s owner, Bill Graves, spoke highly of the potential new owners and said he was selling the land largely because he wanted to retire from running the business.

The Jefferson County Planning Commission planned to discuss the nonprofit’s plan for the site at a meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 23 at the Courthouse at 202 W. Main St. in Dandridge.

KUB and SACE provide a guide to a home efficiency uplift

KNOXVILLE — Are you looking to take control of your utility bills to not only save money but also breathe easier knowing your home is healthier and more comfortable? Join us this Wednesday, May 17, from 6-8 PM for a free workshop to learn about newly available, once-in-a-generation funding, resources, and rebates that everyone can benefit from, regardless of if you own or rent your home, or if you have high or low income, through local and federal funds.  

KUB is providing free (yes, free) home energy improvements for income-eligible customers through the Home Uplift program. New or repaired HVAC units, attic and wall insulation, appliances, and electric water heaters are just a few of the home energy upgrades that you may receive. Plus, professional crews are ready and waiting to do the work so you don’t have to. 

— Southern Alliance for Clean Energy

Knoxville trees need a canopy of support

KNOXVILLE Trees Knoxville wants to hear from residents to help develop an Urban Forest Master Plan that considers the city’s unique challenges, priorities, and opportunities. A successful plan will help Knoxville preserve, grow and care for trees, which play a significant role in public health and environmental health.

Upcoming opportunities to learn more and provide feedback:

May 4, 6-7:30 p.m.

Urban Trees Virtual Open House

Zoom

If you haven’t attended an in-person event, this virtual option may fit your schedule. Learn about the urban tree canopy and provide your thoughts and perspective on what Knoxville needs. Participants will need to preregister online to receive the link to the virtual workshop.

May 11, 4-7 p.m.

Urban Trees Open House

Cansler YMCA
616 Jessamine Street

Trees in cities are vital to human health, especially as the climate warms. What does Knoxville need? Come to this open-house-style event to learn more and add your two cents. Trees Knoxville will give 15-minute presentations at 5 and 6 p.m. Attendees will learn more about the Urban Forest Master Plan process and how to engage neighbors, friends and other residents who value trees in this important process.

Other options:

Invite Trees Knoxville to your meeting! Go to KnoxvilleTreePlan.org to schedule a presentation.

Online Survey.  If none of these engagement options work, fill out the online survey at Knoxville Tree Plan to make sure your voice is heard. 

Learn more at Knoxville Tree Plan, and find additional community event listings at Knoxville Tree Plan Get Involved.

Trees Knoxville was formed in 2016 and grew out of the community’s deep appreciation for trees and their many benefits. Its mission is to expand the urban canopy on both public and private land throughout Knox County. Trees Knoxville is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to planting trees, educating people, and promoting the health and well-being of our community and our environment in Knoxville and Knox County.

— City of Knoxville

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IMG 4916A group of farmers representing the Tennessee Chapter of the National Young Farmers Coalition gathers on the steps of the Tennessee capitol before lobbying representatives during Ag Day on the Hill.  Élan Young/Hellbender Press

Got sprawl? It’s past time to help young farmers access land

I’m not a farmer, I’m a hiker. I live in a shady mountain gap and can’t grow a fully ripe tomato in the summer — not to mention that the half-acre parcel of land that I call home includes a significant portion of river bed. But as a 20-year resident of rural Blount County, a gateway to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I’ve watched the steady disappearance of farms over time, and I have wondered what can be done. 

This is why I rose at 4 a.m. for a trip to Nashville, planning to arrive before my alarm would normally sound. It will be my first time lobbying the state legislature and my first time meeting in person with the organizers of the Southeast Tennessee chapter of the National Young Farmers Coalition — known as “Young Farmers” — who I’ve been Zooming with for the better part of the year. We are all headed to Ag Day on the Hill to advocate for young and beginning farmers and the  preservation of farmland for future generations. 

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Southern Appalachians NASAThis photo of the Southern Appalachians was taken from 30,000 feet. “Notice how the clouds are parallel with the ridges below them. Wind near the surface blowing up the western slopes forms waves in the atmosphere. At the crest of the wave, over the ridge tops, the air has cooled sufficiently to condense into clouds. As this air descends toward the wave trough, it becomes slightly warmer and drier, inhibiting condensation.”  Seth Adams via NASA

Earth Day activities have cooled in Knoxville over the decades. The planet has not.

KNOXVILLE — It’s been 52 years since the modern environmental movement was born on what is now known around the world as Earth Day.

Now reckoned to be the world’s largest secular observance, Earth Day is the climax of Earth Week (April 16 to 22), which brings together an estimated billion people around the globe working to change human behavior and push for pro-environment economic and legislative action. This year’s theme is “Invest in the planet.”

Events marking Earth Day in Knoxville tend to vary in size and tone from year-to-year, with 2023 providing environmentally minded residents with a number of ways to celebrate Mother Earth. 

Perhaps the most memorable of those years was the very first one, when one of the most important voices in the burgeoning environmental movement spoke on the University of Tennessee campus.

Jane Jacobs, who is now recognized as “the godmother of the New Urbanism movement,” gave a lecture to a crowd of nearly 200 people on the topic of “Man and His Environment” at the Alumni Memorial Hall, according to Jack Neely, who heads the Knoxville History Project.

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Advance Knox landscape logo blue

If you care about growth and transportation in Knox County, attend one of these meetings to share your ideas and express your opinions.

This article was updated on March 27 with first impressions from the March 27 meeting.

KNOXVILLE — Based on previous public input and data analysis, the Advance Knox project team has developed a list of proposed transportation projects that will accompany a future land use plan.

Advance Knox is an effort to define a vision and create a plan that will guide growth, land use, transportation, economic prosperity and quality of life in Knox County for years to come.

This is the first time the County has created an integrated land use and transportation plan, that is billed as having “the potential to be transformative.”

“Bringing land use and transportation components together is what will set this plan up for success,” said Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs. “Our teams are eager to hear community feedback and move toward adopting a final plan.”

Will this plan result in the transformation that you hope for?

Now is the time for you to check that it meets your needs, expectations and wishes. Or, to argue for better solutions by participating in this process.

Priorities Week is the third and final round of Advance Knox community outreach! 

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Solar panels are easy to attach without roof penetration to properly prepared metal roof with standing seams.This view shows the main sanctuary from the side building that hosts Oak Ridge Faith Lutheran Church’s solar panels.  Ben Pounds/Hellbender Press

How two East Tennessee churches went solar, and can help your congregation do it, too

OAK RIDGE — On two church roofs on the same road in this small town that helped harvest the atom, panels catch the sun’s rays for electric power.

Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church at 1500 Oak Ridge Turnpike and Faith Lutheran Church at 1300 Oak Ridge Turnpike added solar energy at different times through different companies using different federal incentives. ORUUC added its panels in 2015; Faith Lutheran added them in March 2022. Members of both churches involved in the solar projects spoke to both the challenges involved and the benefits. They said their churches benefited both financially and spoke of the benefits to the planet.

“I really hope it works well for us as well as for the environment,” said George Smith, associate pastor at Faith Lutheran. “I’m fond of thinking that we’re turning God’s gift of sunshine into a gift of cash for ministry.”

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330771440 909447010275924 2820745012447542942 nVirginia beauty (Claytonia virginica) blooming in the woods reminds us winter is spinning away.  Shelby Lyn Sanders

First probing plants and flowers are a sign that winter always ends

There are few who would count winter as their favored time of year, and it is true that one must look harder to find the beauty in a landscape that by all accounts appears forlorn and void of life. But with about a month until the calendar tells us that it is officially spring, winter’s grip is yielding to renewal. It is a time of year that quickens the heartbeat of every naturalist.

The calls of golden-crowned kinglets begin to intermingle with those of the spring peepers, a frog so tiny that it is hard to imagine them capable of such emphatic emissions of sound, and last year’s marcescent American beech leaves preside over persistent, unfurling green lives that would be missed were it not for a careful eye and a curious heart.

The wait has been long, but worth it. With the first sighting of a blooming Virginia spring beauty, the ephemeral wildflower season begins, marking the start of another growing season, another months-long love story spent in awe of nature until the last asters of fall have gone to seed. 

For every thing there is a season, and for lovers of the wild, that season is all of them.

 

332597594 520951556816787 3501020708829569872 n A bloodroot (Sangiuinaria canadensis) bloom is seen here in Norris Dam State Park on Feb. 19.  John Johnson

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IMG 9536A sign warns against entry to the Smokey Mountain Smelters Superfund site off Maryville Pike in the Vestal community of Knoxville.  Heather Duncan Nelson/Hellbender Press

EPA plans to contain toxic waste and restore waterways; community group will offer guidance

KNOXVILLE — A crowd gathered in the South Knoxville Community Center to hear the Environmental Protection Agency’s long-awaited remediation plan for Smoky Mountain Smelting and its hazardous waste. Others tuned in via the Internet.

The meeting called by Vestal Community Organization took place Feb. 13. The EPA’s presentation and many questions focused on the former Smoky Mountain Smelting site at 1508 Maryville Pike near Montgomery Village Apartments.

Heather Duncan Nelson reported last year for Hellbender Press on the initial cleanup plans.

But citizens this week raised concerns about other contaminated former industrial properties along the same road. Vestal Community Organization plans to hold another meeting at 6 p.m. Feb. 22 to discuss and decide its position on these Maryville Pike properties.

“I was just thrilled and enamored by the way people were listening to the questions and answers,” said Eric Johnson with Vestal Community Organization, adding that he was referring both to the EPA and the citizens.

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Pryor Brown 1 McClung 1024x730The Pryor Brown Transfer Company and garage is shown in 1936 on West Church Avenue in downtown Knoxville. Established in 1929, it is reputedly the first full-service parking garage in the U.S., and now faces demolition after years of neglect and disuse.  Thompson Photograph Collection, McClung Historical Collection

Wasted space or community asset? As urban space dwindles, debate gears up over utility of parking garages

This story was originally published by The ConversationKevin J. Krizek is professor of environmental design at University of Colorado Boulder. John Hersey is a teaching assistant professor of environmental design at University of Colorado Boulder.

For the past century, the public and private sectors appear to have agreed on one thing: the more parking, the better.

As a result, cities were built up in ways that devoted valuable space to storing cars, did little to accommodate people who don’t own cars and forced developers to build expensive parking structures that increased the cost of living.

Two assumptions undergird urban parking policy: Without convenient parking, car owners would be reluctant to patronize businesses; and absent a dedicated parking spot for their vehicle, they’d be less likely to rent and buy homes. Because parcels of urban land are usually small and pricey, developers will build multistory garages. And so today, a glut of these bulky concrete boxes clutter America’s densely populated cities.

We have been studying urban development and parking for decades. The car’s grip over city planning has been difficult to dislodge, despite a host of costs to the environment and to the quality of life for many city dwellers.

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