Welcome to Eagan Scout June 4 2005

All the pics below are from the same Quad (Topo Map). The quad is called the Eagan Quad. This is all just one of many of Tennessee's watersheds being decimated by mad, largely unregulated--strip mining destroying Tennessee's highland watersheds. It took three teams and two other organizations to take the more than 250 pictures from this one scout. Thanks to Southwings and Mountain Justice Summer (mountainjusticesummer.org) for assisting United Mountain Defense (unitedmountaindefense.org) conduct this day scout. All the devastation you are going to witness below is in the same watershed.

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pic 141 Shot from the air

First comes the sloppy logging that TDEC ignores.

pic 102 Sloppy Slash and Burn

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Pic 58 another player in the destruction

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Look in the middle of this slope--you see what may of once been a stream channel. We are running into stream samples with phosphate readings off the chart beneath mine sites. We think it MAY be a result of run off from the hydroseeding.

pic 46 hydroseeding

The week before this picture we came to this same area and there were no silt screens or hydroseeding. What the blue stuff is, is fertilizer and grass seed. It makes these eroding slopes seem nice and green, but they have to use a grass that has almost no nutritional value and is the eqivilent of a parking lot in terms of genetic diversity. Esp compared to the hardwood forest that was there before.

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Pic 38 whose doing it

This is the company responsible for all of what you are seeing on this page. TDEC and OSM are also responsible.

28 Wet weather convenyance

Look closely and you can see the water running down this channel. This photo illustrates two points. One look at the forest on the left that was destroyed, compare it with the "reclaimed" slope on the right. Grass verses a forest ecosystem.

Pic 27 "Reclaimed" wet weather convenyance

This is what a former stream channel looks like when then are done.

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PIc 19 Mountainside Coal Corp

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PIc 17 King Mountain Eagan Quad

PIc 15 Eagan Quad

Pic 13 Eagan Quad

pic 12 Eagan Quad

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The logging done in front of the strip mines is often the most sloppiest wasteful forms of logging you can imagine. Often marketable hardwoods are just driven into hollows to become a fire hazard.