After years of conservationists sounding the alarm about the low water levels of the Duck River, the state has a plan for a new water pipeline.
Additional details were revealed Tuesday by Tennessee’s Finance and Administration Commissioner Jim Bryson during a budget presentation on Tennessee’s Capitol Hill. “There is a plan on the table to bring a water line from the Cumberland River down to the Columbia area to serve that entire region,” said Bryson.
How we got here
This past summer, the Duck River had double trouble. An extreme drought lowered water levels. At the same time, several water utility companies drew even more water out of the watershed as they tried to keep up with the demand of their growing communities.
The result — a shoreline usually teaming with life became a graveyard of dead organisms. “Picking up all the fresh dead animals, mussel shells,” Don Hubbs, a retired TWRA Malacologist, told us last summer. “They’re left high and dry. If they can’t move to the water or they can’t burrow down to it, then they get desiccated.”…