Litter Boom Installed As Effort Continues To Clean Up Chattanooga Creek

City and county officials inaugurated a floating litter boom across Chattanooga Creek Tuesday that will catch trash before it enters the Tennessee River.

Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly, City Council Chairwoman Raquetta Dotley and other dignitaries gathered at the creek off St. Elmo Avenue for a ribbon cutting and demonstration.

“You should be able to paddle on Chattanooga Creek,” said Mary Beth Sutton, executive director of WaterWays, a Chattanooga watershed stewardship nonprofit. “Let’s just get people outside again,” she said.

Mayor Kelly credited the first renewal of Chattanooga in the 1990s with the revitalization of the Tennessee River. “Now it’s time to turn our attention to the creeks and the waterways that feed the river,” he said.

The boom was built and installed by Mobile, Ala.,-based environmental contractor Osprey Initiative. This is Osprey’s first litter boom in Tennessee though it has other projects spread over 14 states and two other countries.

The boom will have a kayak and canoe “gate” that allows paddlers to pass across the boom without exiting the creek, which would cause damage to the shoreline and wildlife along the creek.

Chattanooga Parks and Outdoors is working to identify a second litter boom site by the end of June.

Osprey will maintain the boom for six months. After that it will be maintained by Wild Trails, a local trail-running and trail maintenance nonprofit that has spearheaded cleanup projects at Chattanooga Creek since 2017.

WaterWays and Wild Trails will work with Osprey and students from UTC’s hydrology and civil engineering departments to analyze the collected trash and find out where it comes from.

“That really drives who we need to bring to the table to solve the problem long-term,” said Osprey business development leader Grace Forster.

Ms. Forster said that data will only become more valuable as companies like Coca-Cola bottling, for example, begin to pursue net zero goals. Finding and recycling their own trash offsets their emissions.

It’s estimated that 30 to 40 percent of the trash gathered in the litter boom will be recycled.

The water in Chattanooga Creek is not potable, but it’s perfectly suitable for recreation, Ms. Sutton said.

UTC assistant professor of hydrology Stephanie DeVries said Chattanooga Creek is “showing signs of lasting improvement” after being placed on the EPA superfund list almost 30 years ago.

A major remediation project along Chattanooga Creek was completed in 2008 by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and cleanup crews have targeted the area since 2017.

Ms. DeVries said that routine testing in 2019 at last concluded that the creek no longer poses a threat to residents who live or work near the creek.

The Osprey litter boom was bought with an Urban Waters 5 Star Restoration Grant through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.