11 Sustainable Cities and Communities (162)
Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
Its importance punctuated by the pandemic, Knox Food Policy Council celebrates 40 years
Written by Ben Pounds
Knoxville city public information specialist Paige Travis; senior Knoxville-Knox County planner Jessie Hillman; Nourish Knoxville Executive Director Charlotte Tolley; and Food Policy Council advisor Vivian Williams (from left) share a laugh during a celebration of the FPC’s 40th anniversary. Ben Pounds/Hellbender Press
Beardsley Farm and others provided vital food essentials during the pandemic and are better prepared for the future
KNOXVILLE — Disparate groups banded together as one during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure all Knox County citizens had reliable sources of food in the midst of disaster.
They told their stories at the Knoxville-Knox County Food Policy Council 40th Anniversary Celebration on Sept. 21 at the Community Action Committee (CAC) Beardsley Community Farm.
University of Tennessee students formed the Food Policy Advisory Council in 1982.
The oldest municipal food policy council in the United States
The anniversary program included remarks and proclamations from Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon, Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs, and state officials. Individual achievements on food-related issues were also honored.
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- beardsley community farm
- glenn jacobs
- indya kincannon
- feeding the hungry
- feeding refugees in knoxville
- centro hispano
- bridge refugee services
- knoxville community development corporation
- kcdc food
- ut graduate school of planning
- kimberly pettigrew
- adam caraco
- robert l williams
- feeding the hungry in knoxville
That ain’t country: Activists protest proposed downtown tree removal in Knoxville
Written by Thomas FraserKNOXVILLE — People assembled at 6 p.m. Aug. 19 to speak for the trees threatened by development of an art installment at the half-acre Cradle of Country Music Park at the corner of Gay Street and Summit Hill Drive downtown.
The Harvey Broome Chapter of the Sierra Club organized the protest against the removal of five mature oak trees to make way for the sculpture and its base, which was originally commissioned to a New York City artist in 2018 and will cost the city $600,000, according to reporting from Compass. The online news outlet also reported Friday that Councilwoman Seema Singh has requested a pause in the project to determine whether there are alternatives to removing the trees.
Cumberland wildlands grow in popularity and boost area economies
Written by Thomas Fraser
2021 economic numbers prove small parks have big impacts
ONEIDA — Both the Obed National Wild and Scenic River and Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area offer wilderness options free of the hassles associated with Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most visited national park in the country.
The Cumberland Plateau-area destinations continue to grow in popularity as more tourists seek solace in nature, a trend that began during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Those tourists also spend millions of dollars in nearby rural communities, some of which face chronic economic challenges.
Initial Advance Knox growth studies available for review
KNOXVILLE — The Advance Knox State of the County Report outlining the conditions and trends that are currently impacting the lives, work, and travel of Knox County residents has been completed and is available on the project website.
The report provides a detailed overview of the county’s geography, demographics, economic well being, and infrastructure. The result is a thorough summary of population, land utilization, development potential, economic growth, employment, housing, and infrastructure data.
“This report is a baseline, a starting point, the first step in creating a new comprehensive land use and transportation plan for Knox County,” said Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs. “It shows us where we are and will help us determine the most responsible ways to manage future development and infrastructure.”
City of Knoxville
Recycling rates are at a high, but challenges remain
This article was provided by city of Knoxville Deputy Communications Director Eric Vreeland.
KNOXVILLE — How do city residents do recycling? Successfully, enthusiastically and smartly, according to two measurements:
— Nearly 55 percent of eligible households are now signed up for curbside recycling, which is an all-time high representing about 33,000 families.
— A Feb. 11, 2022 analysis found that non-recyclable materials make up only 16.8 percent of what goes into Knoxville curbside recycling carts. That’s better than the national average of 25 percent.
Updated: Your — once in 20 years — opportunity to influence the livability of Knox County
Written by Wolf Naegeli
You can still share your own ideas to improve and protect our community Advance Knox
Updated again on May 4: Hundreds of ideas, complaints and comments, many of them with map locations, have been posted on the Advance Knox website.
As announced in Hellbender Press earlier, Advance Knox held a series of public input events across Knox County during its Ideas Week at the end of March.
If you missed those in-person gatherings and could not attend the virtual session, we hope you recorded your preferences and opinions online at the Advance Knox website.
You can now see what others had to say about your neighborhood and your favorite places.
And, even if you already participated, you may have had new ideas or important thoughts not recorded yet. Please let us know,
— what you treasure in Knox County
— what you miss
— what you think is most important to consider as the county keeps growing.
The interactive facility to submit ideas will remain open online through May 10, as suggested at the last Advisory Committee meeting.
Quaff a recycled brew and check your waste line this weekend
Written by Paige M. Travis
The city of Knoxville has started a pilot composting project for residents and restaurants. Come meet cool people and learn more about limiting food waste and sip some beers April 9 at Crafty Bastard Brewery. City of Knoxville
Learn how to reduce food waste Saturday at Crafty Bastard Brewery
Paige Travis is a public information specialist for the city of Knoxville.
KNOXVILLE — The Waste and Resources Management Office invites the public to learn how to reduce food waste and drink a special brew Saturday, April 9 at the culmination of Tennessee Food Waste Awareness Week.
“The city of Knoxville is committed to reducing the amount of food waste that we put into our landfill,” said Waste and Resources Manager Patience Melnik, whose department recently launched the Knoxville Compost Pilot Project.
Hellbender Press previously reported on efforts to reduce food waste at the University of Tennessee.
Keeping energy inside: Grant to install 3-D printed walls at Knoxville’s oldest public housing complex
Written by S. Heather Duncan
This is a possible result of ORNL/KCDC energy efficiency improvements set for Knoxville public housing funded by a Department of Energy grant. The project will include the Boys & Girls Club. © 2016 urban design association
Energy-efficiency upgrades based on ORNL walls set for Knoxville public housing
KNOXVILLE — A city public housing project almost a century old is going to receive 3-D printed energy efficiency upgrades thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory will partner with Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation to retrofit eight to 12 buildings at Western Heights using 3-D printed exterior “overclad” panels equipped with heat pumps and heat recovery systems. The Boys & Girls Club building at Five Points in Morningside will receive the same treatment.
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- kcdc
- heather duncan
- western heights knoxville
- energy conservation
- energy efficiency
- innovative techology
- affordable housing
- low income
- costburdened renter
Knoxville Area Transit navigates length, depth and breadth
Written by Cittlali Onate
With their zero-emission drive, these quiet buses operate with 100% electric propulsion. Each electric bus helps prevent nearly 300,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions in our community annually. That’s like planting 2,283 trees. 
Knoxville Area Transit
Shut up and get on the bus
KNOXVILLE — Everyone needs to be everywhere at once: School, work, the grocery story, the mall and back home.
Locked into a society run by time, we tend to prefer methods of transportation that make for the quickest journey from place to place.
The modern car, usually powered by gasoline, provides individuals with quick transportation, which saves time. Private transportation embodies convenience.
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Loghaven in South Knoxville melds natural and human habitats to serve regional artists
Written by Tracy Haun Owens
Sanders Pace Architecture blended the collection of the decades-old cabins at Loghaven in South Knoxville with the existing natural environment. Photos by Anna Lawrence/Hellbender Press
Loghaven: An award-winning natural and built environment in South Knoxville intends to get minds moving
Five years after he first saw the property that would become Loghaven Artist Residency, architect Brandon Pace was in one of the renovated cabins, listening to a performance by now-late composer Harold Budd, in town to perform at the 2019 Big Ears music festival.
The experience brought home the full potential of a truly special place.
“That was wonderful,” Pace said of that moment. “You could see it being a place for a composer. You saw this could be something. You could see how our city comes alive in events like this.”
This spring, Knoxville-based Sanders Pace Architecture was awarded a 2021 AIA Architecture Award for the design and architectural rehabilitation work at the 90-acre Loghaven property, which is owned and managed by the Aslan Foundation.
“The role they play in supporting good design in our community cannot be overstated,” Pace said of the Aslan Foundation.
Team member Michael Davis was awarded the 2021 AIA Young Architects Award.
On June 1, Loghaven Artist Residency opened up the application process for its second class of in-person residents, artists who work in visual, performing, literary, and interdisciplinary artistic fields.
“Save Loghaven”
Loghaven is a uniquely quirky part of Knoxville history. It began as a collection of log cabins in a heavily wooded area along Candora Road in South Knoxville.
The cabins were built as rental properties by single mom and entrepreneur Myssie Thompson in 1935, in the middle of the Great Depression. Her cabins, as well as one built by neighbor John Hightower, are the heart of the property.
Generations of UTK students and professors, young professionals, and others rented the alluring cabins. But by the late 1990s, the area was sinking into disrepair, with kudzu, privet, and other invasive plants growing up around the cabins and previously cleared areas.
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Dollywood joins Tennessee Aquarium effort to limit the introduction of cigarette butts to our shared waterways.
“As all humans need access to clean water, it’s an incredibly important treasure to protect.” — Dr. Anna George, Tennessee Aquarium vice president of conservation science and education.
Cigarette butts are everywhere, and are perhaps so familiar they go unnoticed by the millions of people who pass them on our streets and roads.
Not only are they unsightly, they contaminate our water resources — the puddles after a sudden rainstorm, the streams that flow through our landscapes, and the stormwater drains that ultimately lead to the Tennessee River. The butts quickly break down, polluting water with “tiny plastic fibers and a devil’s cocktail of chemical compounds,” according to the Tennessee Aquarium.
Natural 911: Knoxville Native Plant Rescue Squad whisks threatened plants to safety
Written by Thomas Fraser
Joy Grissom (left) and Gerry Moll pose for a photograph with their collection of rescued native plants at Knoxville Botanical Gardens. Photos by Anna Lawrence/Hellbender Press
Joy Grissom and Gerry Moll: Preserving East Tennessee’s natural heritage with shovels and wheelbarrows
If there’s a massive ecological disturbance in your neighborhood, who you gonna call?
The Knoxville Native Plant Rescue Squad, of course.
Joy Grissom and Gerry Moll spent the past six years identifying, digging, hauling and muscling native East Tennessee plants to salvation from construction, grading and logging sites.
The duo has saved thousands of plants and their communities from certain demise. They have plucked plants to safety from areas ranging from a 170-acre logging operation in Cocke County to relatively small commercial developments in Knox County.
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- planting
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- knox county
- developer
- land owner
- contractor
- forever home
- farmers market
- salvage
- eastern band of cherokee indians
- knox county schools
Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon’s budget calls for $30m in environmental-improvement measures
Written by Thomas Fraser
Mayor wants green for green; some otherwise supportive city residents already aren’t pleased with some initiatives.
KNOXVILLE — Mayor Indya Kincannon’s proposed Knoxville 2020-2021 budget commits some $30 million to reduce city climate impacts, expand its use of renewable energy, invest in urban forest preservation and outdoor recreation assets and improve bus and bicycle travel in communities across the city. The budget also provides money for revitalization of the Burlington District, a historic pedestrian center of Black commerce in East Knoxville.
The city’s net budget is $384 million, which includes a $253 million operating fund.
The budget is just a recommendation to City Council at this point.
This photo was included in a TDEC report compiled March 11. It shows an excavated stream channel amid extensive grading work at 2306 Maryville Pike.
Developer of Maryville Pike property in South Knox County faces multiple state, county citations over alleged sediment pollution
The rapid growth of South Knox County has expanded far from the perimeters of the center city and extended into more development-rich areas.
One case in point: Significant development is taking place along a once-sleepy section of Maryville Pike between Vestal and Rockford.
There is a new entrance to the expanded I.C. King Park and its dog park and playground. Just south, one of the country’s largest home builders is finishing its Sevier Meadows subdivision.
There is another development that illustrates the growing pains and legacy costs that have prompted the county and Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation to issue a stop-work order and levy multiple fines and citations against the current developer of the old Mayo seed warehouse site.
There are lessons to be learned from a small waterway called Flenniken Branch about the potential impacts of development on aquatic habitats and other public resources — and the ability of the government to protect those resources.
A troubled legacy
Decades of heavy industrial activity left a troubled environmental legacy near the Mount Olive community. Now a new 30-acre construction site is alleged by the state and county to be a significant source of sediment and debris that ultimately end up in the Tennessee River and its tributaries. The state also alleges the contractor buried a stream, and destroyed wetlands at another nearby property.
The Knoxville-based contractor, Kenn Davin, said he is working to correct the violations, but contends the alleged erosion violations are largely the result of runoff from nearby properties, and that the removal of trees from utility rights of way worsened the problem.
To make matters worse, one of those nearby sources of runoff, Davin said, is the so-called Witherspoon property, which was so contaminated by industrial waste the Environmental Protection Agency capped and sealed the site a decade ago.
The property in question is a 28.5-acre parcel at 2306 Maryville Pike, which abuts the Mount Olive Cemetery near Berry Road and was once the site of the D.R. Mayo Seed Co. warehouse.
Mayo sold the property in August 2019 to Florida-based CW Trust. Davin, principal at Knoxville-based contractor Design One, was designated as the site developer.
Over the course of the last 13 months, TDEC’s Department of Water Resources has issued three notices of violation for land disturbances and other impermissible activity at the Maryville Pike property.
The last notice was issued Nov. 20, 2020. Subsequent inspections in January and March noted that Davin was still out of compliance with action steps that had been required by the state.
Davin has not secured the permits required for the significant grading operations on the property, according to the county.
“They have not secured their necessary permits through our department for land disturbance,” said Knox County Stormwater Program Manager Natalie Landry.
Knox County Stormwater Management served a notice of violation for the 2306 Maryville Pike property on Feb. 9, 2021. The developer did not appeal, and a $500 civil penalty was levied.