Campaign '98     Opinion       Classifieds     Cityscape

   This story appeared in The Times on Friday, October 2, 1998.
   

Park on Bend backed in study

By Judy Walton
The Chattanooga Times

Apparently, it's a national park or nothing at Moccasin Bend.

Those are the alternatives contained in a draft management plan for the historic Tennessee River site that will be released next week by the National Park Service.

The Park Service has spent most of the year studying whether federal protection would be the best way to preserve and interpret the sites and the artifacts of thousands of years of human habitation at Moccasin Bend.

Park Service planners looked at a range of options that included joint local-federal management, an American Indian tribal park and other ideas worked out in a series of public hearings over the year.

They chose two: Leave it as it is, under a hodgepodge of state and local government ownership, or bring Moccasin Bend into the federal system as a full-fledged national park.

The draft report that will be distributed next week will lay out the details of how that might be accomplished, said Mike Spratt, an NPS planning team member in Denver. The draft report includes a timetable and at least a guesstimate of a budget.

"It'll give everybody an order of magnitude on what it's going to cost to make the changes and then run the park," Spratt said Thursday.

But there's no done deal here. The next step is another public hearing where people can respond to the proposal. That meeting will be 6:30 to 9 p.m. Oct. 20 in the auditorium of the Tennessee Aquarium. Actually turning the Bend into a park would take action by Congress.

The 956 acres at the southern end of the bend are currently owned by Chattanooga, Hamilton County and the state of Tennessee. Various groups trying over the years to preserve prehistoric and American Indian sites there have pressed for national park status as the "highest and best" protection.

But making the bend into a park would mean phasing out other existing uses, like a popular golf course, a model-airplane flying field and a police shooting range. That sits ill with some people.

There's also the question of what to do about Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute, which serves the whole southeast Tennessee region. The plan for a park calls the hospital an "incompatible use."

Rep. Zach Wamp says those questions will have to be dealt with.

Wamp, R-Chattanooga, secured the $200,000 that is paying for the NPS study and would write the legislation that Congress would consider early next year if it adopted Moccasin Bend as a national park.

He won't write anything until he's satisfied that the state has answers to questions about the community's mental health needs, Wamp said Thursday.

"We would have to see and feel good about a comprehensive plan from the state to adequately serve the needs of the mental health community for the future" before he would support a phaseout of the hospital, Wamp said, adding that he's spoken to Gov. Don Sundquist about the issue.

And, with a petition on his desk bearing 3,000 signatures opposing the closing of the golf course, Wamp believes there's wiggle room on that issue.

Perhaps the course should be left in place to buffer the wastewater treatment plant to the north, he said. Then if it ever ceases to be a golf course it could be added to the park.

"We should not be so dogmatic that that becomes the sticking point if that Bend addition goes forward," he said.

But Wamp and others believe the community consensus for a national park has a lot of momentum.

"I'm excited and I think the community is excited about the prospect of finally resolving what to do with Moccasin Bend," said Jay Mills, vice president of the advocacy group Friends of Moccasin Bend. "For a century there's been indecision on what to do with it. I think we're closer than we've ever been to having a comprehensive plan for how this community wants to best make use of that."

Campaign '98     Opinion       Classifieds     Cityscape

Home  News  Sports  Classifieds  Cityscape  Goodtimes  Opinion  Extra

Send your comments on this server to webmaster@chattimes.mindspring.com
URL: http://www.chattimes.com/news/today/Friday/October21998/CTStorya2mocyy.html