River Fellows Summer experience- Day 5

Our group was skeptical about our tour of the wastewater treatment plant, but it turned out to be one of the favorite activities of the week. This was due, in a large part, to Matthew Snyder, who gave a fantastic, fun and informative tour.

We started our tour in a classroom where we learned that the treatment plant is regional and takes wastewater from several counties, including among others, Hamilton, Dade, Walker, and Catoosa.

We also learned that EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) sued the city of Chattanooga for Sanitary Sewer overflows. This is forcing the city to fix and replace pipes and to do engineering studies. This will cost $250 million over 15 years.

We learned some really interesting engineering techniques that can be used to fix pipes without digging them all up as well as about microbes that help breakdown and clean waste in the plant itself. We also learned that the biosolids created in the wastewater treatment process are used on farms as fertilizer. This not only helps farmers, but saves millions of dollars because these solids are not going to a landfill.

Next, we got to see the treatment process first-hand as we toured the wastewater treatment plant.

We learned that people often flush items that are not “flushable” and some items wash into storm drains downtown. These items are separated early in the process and sometimes even money is found.

(Searching for treasure) 

Fats, oils, and grease (FOG) also has to be removed from the wastewater before it can be released into the river.

We then saw the area where microbes breakdown waste and where chlorine is added to the water before it is returned to the river.

Here is the pile of biosolids ready to head out to a farm.

After a lunch on the road, we travelled to the Cherokee Removal Memorial site in Birchwood, TN where we met with TVA archeologist, Michealyn Harle where she gave us a very interesting history of archeology along the Tennessee river and she brought some artifacts for us to examine.

Fascinatingly, there were a large number of women during the depression heading up archeology prior to the instillation of the Chickamauga dam. Archeology was also not segregated like several other professions and work groups during this time.

As far as the archeological sites themselves, there are artifacts from Paleo-Indian (10,000+ to 8,000 BC), Archaic (8,000-1,000 BC), Mississippian (1,000 BC-1,600 AD) and the Historic period (1600 AD-Present).

We viewed Hiwassee Island mounds which was occupied during the Mississipian and is one over 11,000 archeological sites on TVA land.

These sites are protected by the National Historical Preservation Act and it is not only illegal to take anything from these sites, but it makes it difficult for archeologists to learn about the past. 

There is also a Native American Repatriation act that allows some artifacts to be returned to specific tribes. Which tribes artifacts are associated with is often hard to determine using oral history and archeological data.

We learned that TN has a state artifact that is from the Mississippian period.

(TN state artifact is on the left)