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Little Tennessee Watershed Association

The mission of the Little Tennessee Watershed Association is to protect and restore the water quality and habitat of the Little Tennessee River and its tributaries upstream of the Fontana Reservoir.

Support Our Supporters!

Which local businesses support the Little Tennessee Watershed association? See a list of small, often family-run businesses that support the Little Tennessee Watershed Association through reduced rates and donations here.

Have you heard?

Corn Field
photo by Ralph Preston
These days, Western North Carolina is growing at phenomenal rates. With this increased rate of development, we have seen excessive sedimentation in our streams and an overall changed mountain landscape. Unfortunately, the Little Tennessee River Valley is also feeling the effects of these changes. That's why the Little Tennessee Watershed Association is proud to support the Mountain Landscapes Initiative.

The Mountain Landscapes Initiative is a "bottoms-up approach to Regional Planning." This is a citizen-driven process designed to create a "tool box" with guidelines for responsible growth tailored for the 7 westernmost counties of North Carolina.

This effort, organized through a partnership with the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina and the Southwestern Commission, is organized into three major phases.

Phase one includes an extensive outreach effort to document community concerns regarding development and will begin in May 2008. Phase two is a public, multi-day workshop called a "charrette," lead by a team of consultants. Together, citizens and their leaders will sort through ideas at the charrette and choose among alternative solutions for the final phase, the creation of a "Tool Box" which will be published this summer.

Beginning in April, a series of meetings will be held to encourage citizen participation, comments and suggestions. Please take a look at the schedule below to find a community forum in your area and consider participating!

And don't forget to save the dates for the regional workshop - the "charrette" - at western North Carolina University, May 13th-20th.

To learn more about the Mountain Landscapes Initiative, visit www.mountainlandscapesnc.org.

Schedule of Community Forums (bold indicates forums in the Little Tennessee Watershed):

MLI Forum

Cherokee County
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Murphy Library

Clay County
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Courthouse Multipurpose Room

Graham County
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Community Building

Haywood County
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Waynesville Rec Center

Jackson County
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Community Services Building

Macon County
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Macon County Rec Park

Qualla Boundary
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Location to be determined

Swain County
Thursday, April 10, 2008
SCC Campus, Almond School