BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. – A recent environmental review has cleared the former Davis Pipe Co. property for redevelopment, but the site’s potential is very limited.
County officials learned Tuesday, the 24-acre site is location in a flood plain, which greatly restricts its future possibilities.
Such restrictions are exactly what people living around the site have wanted.
"We aren’t against adding to the county’s tax base," said Debbie Houser, who lives just up from the property on Oak Street in Blountville. "We just know that we’re going to get additional traffic at the site no matter what you put in there."
Once Blountville’s largest employer, Davis Pipe Co. manufactured stainless steel and alloy pipe fittings at its Birch Street factory before closing in the late 1990s.
Sullivan County and the First Tennessee Development District received a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields Program for the site in September 2006.
The money is to help study a potentially polluted site’s environmental contamination levels, remove the threats and make it suitable for redevelopment.
"There are very few problems to deal with out here," said Bruce Hickman, an engineer hired by the First Tennessee Development District to study the site for environmental contamination.
He said the site’s only environmental issue was the presence of manganese in the groundwater. He said it was a minor finding because manganese causes water to taste differently while posing no significant health risks.
While Hickman was conducting his environmental assessment of the property, the state was busy updating its floodplain maps and classified the Davis Pipe property as being a part of a flood plain.
Jeanette Scalf, who is with the county’s economic development partnership NETWORKS, said county planning officials learned of the classification Tuesday afternoon while reviewing the results of Hickman’s assessment.
She said the new classification minimizes its potential redevelopment possibilities.
Residential development is not an option because the county has a policy prohibiting any new subdivision streets from being built in a flood plain.
Commercial and industrial developers will have to specifically engineer any new buildings or parking lots built on the site so they did not interfere with the property’s drainage patterns.
"There’s possibilities [for development]," Scalf said, adding any new property owners would also have to purchase flood insurance. "But it goes back to that age-old debate over what is possible and what is probable."
Houser and other nearby residents were thrilled when they learned about the site’s lack of prospects for future development.
Many would like to see the property converted into a park or reverted back to its natural condition.
The residents have long been frustrated by the amount of traffic that passes through their neighborhood at high rates of speed.
"It’s continually gotten worse," said Houser. "They’re in such a big hurry."
gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518
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