About a mile and a half of the South Chickamauga Creek Greenway will be closed between Camp Jordan and Brainerd beginning Nov. 18 for the construction of stormwater storage facilities.
The closure from the Camp Jordan Access point to the Brainerd Road trail head at Greenway View Drive will be in place until the summer of 2027, according to a news release from the city of East Ridge.
Camp Jordan lies within the city’s limits, but one of the construction sites is on East Ridge’s side of Interstate 75. The greenway will be closed to the public to allow the contractor to have safe access to the site to construct two above-ground storage tanks and an equalization station, part of a larger, $153 million Chattanooga-Hamilton County wastewater project. During the work, Chattanooga officials said, the remaining 11 miles of the greenway connecting Brainerd to the Tennessee River will stay open.
The project includes similar work at another site adjacent to Interstate 75, off of Lee Highway between the HomeServe company and Keller Williams Realty near Standifer Gap Road, according to officials.
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Greenway link between Brainerd Road and Camp Jordan to close for Chattanooga wastewater project
The work is part of the city’s consent decree agreement – reached in April 2013 in response to hundreds of thousands of gallons of raw waste overflowing into the Tennessee River each year – with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Tennessee Clean Water Network. The project is a joint effort of the city and Hamilton County Wastewater Treatment Authority and is managed by the city’s industrial development board, officials said. The goal is to significantly reduce and eliminate, where possible, sewer overflows and improve the overall operation of Chattanooga’s sewer system.
“As part of the city’s consent decree agreement, the city is constructing an equalization station at this location,” Justin Steinmann, the wastewater department’s director of administration, said in an email. “Equalization stations create capacity, prevent overflows and help equalize the flow through the system. The stations will temporarily store the excess wastewater and stormwater until the system has the capacity to handle it.
“There will be two 15 million gallon storage basins at the West Chickamauga site and one 10 million gallon basin at the Lee Highway site,” Steinmann said.
Under the 2013 consent decree agreement, the ongoing, two-decade project consists of two phases, with the first completed between 2013 and 2020 on a budget of $277 million. The $513 million second phase contains the current work beginning Nov. 18 with the greenway closure. The boost in storage capacity and the new equalization stations answer longtime problems in the area with stormwater.
“There is currently not enough capacity in the regional wastewater system to handle the increase in volume during heavy rain events,” Steinmann said. “These stations will provide the city and the Hamilton County Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority with the system capacity needed to approve future developments, promote economic growth throughout the region and comply with the requirements of the environmental protection agency’s consent decree.”
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Meanwhile, no detour is possible due to the physical constraints imposed by the interstate overpass and South Chickamauga Creek, Steinmann said. A small parking lot at Brainerd Road and Greenway View Drive is the Brainerd trailhead where users can head north on the greenway.
East Ridge officials apologized to users who have accessed the greenway from Camp Jordan and promised regular progress updates going forward.
Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569.
City of Chattanooga / This map shows the 1.5-mile temporary closure of the South Chickamauga Creek Greenway between Camp Jordan in East Ridge and the Brainerd Road trail head at Greenway View Drive. The remaining 11 miles of the greenway going north will remain open.