Fix Cook’s Trail
I really enjoyed the article on trails, parks, etc., in the Nov. 20 issue of Flagpole. I would like to respond to some of the items in the article.
Many years ago, when I was active and known by the city council [before city-county unification in 1991], I would attend their meetings and plead for more trails, parks, etc. This resulted in the Sandy Creek Nature Center, which is a great addition to the education of our citizens and has many miles of popular foot trails. One is, or was, the south end of Cook’s Trail, now closed. The north end begins in Sandy Creek Park and goes south along Sandy Creek to the oxbow, going around it, then returning. Unfortunately, a hiker can no longer begin at the south end and hike all the way to Sandy Creek Park. It is four miles total, but now diminished to two miles, because the trail became impassable after a storm south of the oxbow.
When the original trail was dedicated in 1991, several important leaders in Athens-Clarke County were there and spoke very highly of the trail, at which time the sheet was removed, unveiling a large sign proclaiming the opening of Cook’s Trail. That was the first time my name was used in naming the trail; it had been the Sandy Creek Trail. I was invited to speak at this event and expressed surprise with the name. I added that since my name had been made known to the public, I pleaded that the trail needed to be maintained properly. I didn’t want to be associated with a poor trail. I had a good reputation for building good trails in many places in Athens-Clarke County and elsewhere, including several trails built on public school property for the benefit of schools and teachers.
Until reading your article, I was not aware of Barry-Dunn’s survey of 7,000 households, and of 2,000 people with individual interviews. Were the consultants aware of the closure of the south half of Cook’s Trail, and of the park and trail project pending on the 300-acre tract on Tallassee Road and waiting for the funds promised by SPLOST? I worked on the protection of that tract as a member of the Oconee River Land Trust, which put a conservation easement on the property before or at the time the city acquired the title. As I remember, the portion between Tallassee Road and a group of four utility easements that run parallel from east to west from the Middle Oconee River to the populated area east of the city tract was to be a park with picnic area and walking trails. The large portion of the property beyond the four utility easements—one of which carries city water from Bear Creek Reservoir, two oil pipelines and a major power line—was to be kept wild and natural, with foot trails. This portion, all woods with nice stands of holly, is bordered on one side by the utility easements and on the other by the Middle Oconee River. There is an old farm road that runs from Tallassee Road over private property, crossing the utilities lines and continuing down to the river.
Regarding the closure of the south part of Cook’s Trail in March 2016, the trails manager with the Leisure Services Department teamed up with me to locate and flag an appropriate reroute of the south half of Cook’s Trail. She had a map showing the city-owned property, as well as the mostly wet and impenetrable forest that needed to be crossed to get to the existing 60-foot steel foot bridge that crosses Sandy Creek. We flagged a route on dry land, on city-owned property. We started at the point where the current trail leaves dry land by the deep swamp and flagged to the edge of the Noketchee Creek swamp that borders Sandy Creek. When we got to Noketchee Creek, we stopped. A boardwalk and a few short bridges of hundred feet or less will be needed to connect with the 60-foot bridge across Sandy Creek. The trail manager agreed that this proposed reroute will be much less expensive and will be easier to maintain than the alternative of rebuilding the current trail close to Sandy Creek.
I am 93 and unable to do any work in the woods at either one of the two areas I described. Perhaps the mayor and commission will be encouraged to act on these recommendations.
Walt Cook
Athens
A Republic, If We Can Keep It
More than two hundred years ago, Americans defeated the mightiest empire in the world to become an independent nation. A constitutional convention convened to determine how the new nation would be governed. Would we have a king? Would we, like the ancient Greeks, have a democracy? After extended debate, a consensus was reached: We would have a republic.
The constitutional convention rejected one-man rule. There would be no king, dictator, tyrant, supreme leader, czar or ayatollah. No one person could levy taxes, determine the use of public funds, inflict punishment or penalties, dictate governmental policies, capriciously hire or fire public servants, or use the powers of government in pursuit of a personal agenda. No one could rule by decree, edict or executive order.
The authors of the Constitution anticipated that individuals would attempt to exercise total power to govern and created three separate but equal branches of government—Congress, the executive and the judiciary—to prevent abuses of power and the usurpation of power by any individual. The rules of governance in the Constitution are so fundamental that each elected official must take a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
President Trump has issued more than 200 executive orders in an overt attempt to subvert the powers of Congress and to assume personal control over our nation.
We call upon every member of Congress, including our congressman Mike Collins, to fulfill their oaths of office and to oppose and prevent the effort by President Donald Trump to rule by executive order.
Bruce Menke, Suzanne Sperling, Joan Spencer and Gail Cowie, Clarke County; Shelbey Alexander, Barrow County; James Beall, Elbert County; Dianna Tooney Pearce, Franklin County; Valerie Johnson, Greene County; Margaret O’Neal, Hart County; Jim Belcher, Jasper County; David Ramsey, Madison County; Jeanne Dufort, Morgan County; Ken and Pam Davis, Oconee County; Tyson Jackson, Walton County; Patricia Morgan, Hancock County; Jane Kidd, Oglethorpe County
Save the Broad River
As a senior honor-roll student of Madison County High School, I am deeply concerned about the city of Franklin Springs entertaining plans to allow a business to dump waste into the Broad River.
I believe that I speak for everyone in the surrounding counties when I say that the Broad River is my way of life. My family’s well draws from an aquifer fed by the Broad River water basin, and our tap water is the most pure, sweet water I have ever tasted in my life. I have grown up on the river camping, canoeing, tubing, swimming, fishing and appreciating its natural beauty. The Broad is so untouched that on a hot day, when the water is cool, I never hesitate to cup my hand and drink directly from the river.
Forty years ago, my grandfather ended his search for the perfect home and bought 10 acres on the Broad River in Madison County. When he first got here my grandfather, a blue-collar carpenter, was in the process of building his house. During that process my mother’s family had no running water. After long days of work, my grandfather would load up the children and everyone would bathe in the river. Now my family and my uncle’s family live on a parcel from the land my grandfather bought years ago. Our lives all revolve around the river.
If the river’s cleanliness were to be in jeopardy, our way of life, the lives of so many rural Georgians, will be ruined. Allowing the evils of pollution to run rampant and decimate the land we call home is the antithesis of the United States and the fundamentals it was built upon. Teddy Roosevelt put it best when he said, “The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation, increased and not impaired in value. Conservation means development as much as it does protection.” To allow anyone—whether it be a lone, inconsiderate citizen or a multi-million dollar business—to dump into Georgia’s last untouched waterway would be a despicable crime, certain to bring shame upon elected officials for years to come.
To allow any dumping in the Broad is to abandon all life that calls it home: endangered bald eagles, dozens of species of fish, beaver, otters, bobcat, foxes, a variety of foliage, the rocky shoals spider lily that grows exclusively in the Broad and so many more thriving inhabitants which I have no time to name. The Broad River Basin is an intricate web of interdependence that has a sole basis in the river’s immaculate water quality. Despite the dishonesty of transplant urban developers who come from afar and care nothing of the communities they affect, I beg you, as an earnest country boy, to say no to a Pilgrim’s rendering plant, waste management facility or any other traffickers of industrial waste. If not for me, for the children and their children’s children and all the future generations, keep the Broad River as pure and clean as the day God created it.
Turley Carraway Best Jr.
Danielsville
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