The Environmental Journal of Southern Appalachia

Displaying items by tag: tdot

Tuesday, 28 November 2023 23:52

TDEC releases money to help rubber meet the road

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KNOXVILLE — The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation granted $350,197 to the University of Tennessee from the Tire Environmental Act Program

UTK will provide matching funds of $512,793 and use the grant toward a research and development project that will develop multiple sustainable technologies for the application of tire rubber in road construction. The project costs $862,990 and has the potential to create a vast market for waste tires unrivaled in size by any other use of scrap rubber.

 

“We are seeing great advances in repurposing tires for environmental benefits,” said TDEC Deputy Commissioner Greg Young. ”Programs like this not only help clean up sites of used tires, they involve innovative new uses for them. We congratulate UT-Knoxville on this project.”

UTK is partnering with the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) to install a series of pavement test sections using the technologies developed from this project. Benefits of including rubber in asphalt pavement mixes include improved skid resistance, cracking resistance, and noise reduction.

The purpose of the Tire Environmental Act Program is to select and fund projects that best result in beneficial uses for waste tires. Projects must qualify for one of three categories: tire processing/recycling, tire-derived material use, or research and development. The program provides grant funding to eligible entities, including local governments, non-profit organizations, higher education institutions, K-12 schools and for-profit businesses.

Tennessee established the Tire Environmental Fund in 2015. Upon the first retail sale of a new motor vehicle to be titled and registered in Tennessee, a flat fee based on the number of a vehicle’s wheels is assessed. The fee goes into the fund, which is used for projects creating or supporting beneficial end uses for waste tires.

Since 2015, grantees have been awarded almost $6.8 million, and approximately 5.5 million tires or nearly 58,000 tons of scrap tires have been diverted from landfills. The tires are repurposed for use in rubberized asphalt, tire-derived aggregate, tire-derived fuel, granulated rubber porous flexible pavement, and other beneficial end uses that result in tires being diverted from landfills for a higher and better use. 

— Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation

Published in Feedbag

download 2Monarch butterfly feeding off milkweed. TDOT launched a program to promote milkweed production, a common source of food for butterflies, birds and other insects. cc zero 2

Free milkweed seed will help citizens restore landscapes and preserve habitat; orders commence again in June for popular TDOT project

NASHVILLE — Amid unprecedented citizen demand, the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) halted online orders for free milkweed seed, offered as part of its Project Milkweed. Launched in June 2023, this mail-order resource was aimed at restoring landscapes and preserving habitats for monarch butterflies and other pollinator species. Since June, TDOT has taken nearly 131,000 individual orders from Tennesseans for milkweed seed. In total, 779,601 red and common milkweed seed packets were requested. The program will return in June 2024.

“TDOT is happy to offer such a popular program to the public, and to empower Tennesseans to do their part in saving pollinators as they are vital to life, growing food, and the economy of Tennessee,” said TDOT Commissioner Butch Eley in a release.

Orders exhausted a stock of 300,000 milkweed seed packets by Sept. 30. Additional seed material has been ordered and is expected to arrive in October. All remaining orders will be fulfilled then, according to TDOT. 

Published in News

1650898862011Proposed electric-vehicle infrastructure corridors in Tennessee. TDOT

Inside of Knoxville: State seeks input on charging stations, EV corridors

(Update: The survey has now ended.) The Tennessee Department of Transportation’s traveling and electrifying road show made an appearance in Knoxville this week. The intent of the meeting, as others scheduled around the state, was to collect public feedback on proposed charging station networks and other components of EV infrastructure.

Tennessee will receive a significant chunk of change toward developing its own share of National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, provided as part of the infrastructure bill passed by Congress last year. The state will receive $88 million over five years, and has begun drafting some options.

Published in Feedbag

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$20 million per mile: TDOT opens virtual-only comment on highly controversial roadway

The Tennessee Department of Transportation has opened a virtual-only public comment period for the controversial Pellissippi Parkway extension, which would slice through the remaining rural areas of Blount County and move urban expansion and increased traffic flow ever closer to the Great Smoky Mountains, one of the most biologically diverse areas on Earth.

The public comment period began April 15 and will last until April 25. The project has generated controversy and lawsuits for at least two decades, but TDOT decided the comment period should be held virtually for only two weeks because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The project encompasses about four miles and will cost nearly $100 million. Opponents of the parkway say the extension is a waste of money and will destroy rural landscapes and wildlife habitat and pollute aquatic resources.

Here's a link to a story about the Pellissippi Parkway extension published in February by Hellbender Press.

According to The Daily Times,  which reported the public hearings on April 19:

“'The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the department to look for alternate ways to engage and interact with the public,' TDOT spokesman Mark Nagi said in a video introducing the presentation, framed as a somewhat awkward-to-navigate virtual reality room.

It includes a history of the project, a right of way acquisition process overview, a project design summary and a comments and questions section. A digitally generated flyover video of the planned extension shows intricate details of how the road may look once completed. 

According to the TDOT website:

The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) will host a Virtual Design public meeting from April 15, 2021, to April 29, 2021, to gather public input on the proposed project in Blount County on SR-162 Ext. (Pellissippi Parkway), from SR-33 to SR-73 (US-321).

The virtual meeting was opened to the public at 8:00 am EST on April 15, 2021 and will close at 10:00 pm EST on April 29, 2021. The website link is:

https://gather.cdmsmith.com/v/v8jkyAVO149.



The proposed highway would require the acquisition of private property and extend through the Wildwood and Sam Houston areas to an abrupt terminus with East Lamar Alexander Parkway to the west of Walland, which is host to an increasing number of high-dollar hospitality attractions such as Blackberry Farm.

Right-of-way acquisitions could start by the end of the year, according to The Daily Times.

To the east of the proposed parkway's end is Townsend, which bills itself as the Peaceful Side of the Smokies.

Published in News

img 2460State and local officials want to expand another ‘road to nowhere’ by way of the controversial $200 million Pellissippi Parkway extension in Blount County.   Lesli Bales-Sherrod/Hellbender Press

The newest road to nowhere

The former “missing link” of the Foothills Parkway. The “road to nowhere” in Bryson City, North Carolina. Blount County, Tennessee, has its own unfinished road project, without the catchy nickname: the Pellissippi Parkway Extension.This proposed 4.4-mile stretch of four-lane highway would lengthen State Route 162, known as Pellissippi Parkway, from where it ends at Old Knoxville Highway (State Route 33) to East Lamar Alexander Highway (State Route 73/U.S. 321) in Maryville.

The project, which would impact 56 properties and cost at least $60 million, is not without controversy. Citizens Against the Pellissippi Parkway Extension, “believe(s) this interstate highway is not needed, wastes state resources and will have negative impacts on the area along the route and on the quality of life in Blount County as a whole,” according to the group’s website, saveitdontpaveit.org. Besides loss of farmland, residences and businesses, CAPPE’s concerns include sprawl, traffic, water and air quality, noise, economic impact and the destruction of wildlife habitat and increased rates of roadkill.

State and local government officials, however, maintain the Pellissippi Parkway Extension will address needs such as “limited mobility options in Blount County and Maryville, poor local road network with substandard cross sections (with narrow lanes, sharp curves, and insufficient shoulders), lack of a northwest/east connection east of Alcoa and Maryville, safety issues on roadways in the area, and traffic congestion and poor levels of traffic operation on major arterial roads and intersections,” according to the Record of Decision signed by the Federal Highway Administration on Aug. 31, 2017.

The Pellissippi Parkway Extension has been part of the Knoxville regional transportation planning vision since 1977, according to a 2010 Draft Environmental Impact Statement, and has a long, storied history -- complete with a 2002 lawsuit from CAPPE, seeking to stop it. Nothing has happened publicly, however, since the Record of Decision selected a preferred route for the new stretch of road, which would cross Old Knoxville Highway, Wildwood Road, Brown School Road, Sevierville Road and Davis Ford Road before terminating near Morning Star Baptist Church in Maryville.  
Published in News