I just got my tax bill with the new "Equalized" tax...mine went up 15.6%.

Okay...Roane County got $44 Million for Ash Spill " reparations"...they have chosen to not spend one dime on ANY improvement to the lake, so $40 Million plus was spent on "other stuff" ...oh sorry...a new restroom at the Kingston shoreline is being built.

Well the truth is lake values are down 35-45% since Dec 22, 2008 and Watts Bar's market share of lake Property sales has dropped EVERY year since then, every year. Good job Roane county on helping us "become whole" again by wisely using the $40 Million... My tax bill went up 15.6% while my appraisal dropped. The tax millage rate increased 17.9%....

A very enthusiastic thanks to the Road County Road Department...the Caney Creek Bridge...one of the most picturesque bridge settings in the state is getting a fresh coat of paint...it is looking great. The littering along Caney Creek and all around the Roiane County Park has dropped remarkedly...yeehah! What a beautiful county we have...the county is a natural park....Take a drive out Caney Creek... honk twice!!!
I wish I had a picture of the bridge...I will tomorrow....here is the sunrise out toward The main channel from the Caney Creek inlet.....hope this posts right

My family owns and operates Sail Away Homes and Land in Kingston.

For three years now we have tried to maintain and grow our business while the Watts Bar Lake properties recover slowly from the negative impact of the December 22, 2008 Ash Spill. Our business income dropped over 85% from 2008 to 2009...we have recovered a little each year....about 6 months ago we even bought a new coffee pot for our office...yeeehah!!

We will continue to stay here...we love Watts Bar Lake, Roane County and East Tennessee...we are making progress. We believe Watts Bar's lake properties are a great value and we advertise our enthusiasm to the world everyday with wide ranging internet activities.

Like some other businesses that were uniquely tied to Watts Bar Lake, we felt we had economic losses that TVA should be required to compensate. In fact, our studies of the lake property market clearly show that Watts Bar Lake was enjoying a consistent market share growth from 2004 up through 2008. In 2008 Watts Bar attracted well over 25% of all Lake Front property buyers who were looking to purchase in East TN's lake "Corridor"...this market share had increased consistently every year from below 10% in 2004 to over 25% in 2008.

This trend changed immediately and abruptly as of the Ash Spill event...now dropping consistently every year since the spill....in three years, by 2011 it had dropped to 12.9% and if trends continue we will see year 2012 drop below the 10% level. In other words, today Watts Bar lake's Real Estate popularity has been cut in half....this occurring at a time when the baby boomer retirement floodgates were just opening.

Roane County is suffering a huge and increasing economic loss. These missing buyers....50% of them are now not here, would have paid property transaction taxes, they would have brought money to our local banks, they would have eaten in our restaurants, bought boats from our dealerships, supported our retailers, they would have used our new hospital, and because they are usually retirees, they have no requirement for schools or jobs...they quite simply would have brought their money and enjoyed living here and spending it...now they are missing. They would have had friends visit them all through the year and these visitor's would have added to Roane's economic income...visitor dollars circulating among Roane County businesses.

This morning we received word that a Federal Judge has ruled that businesses like ours that have purely economic losses can not recover these economic losses from TVA. TVA has always promised to make us "whole again", I wonder why they asked a judge to rule that they don;t have to do that ???

This morning along Caney Creek right by the baseball parking area I found these ducks...I'm not a hunter but I don't object to it if it is done with responsibility but this kind of thing hurts us all

I sent a letter to the Roane County News a week or so ago and it got published here on Roane Views.

In that letter I wanted to vent my anger that none of the $43 million or so of the TVA payment to the county was applied to anything actually hurt by the ash spill. I was right to do that but my letter seemed to bash Ron Woody for this. I know better than this and knew better than this when I wrote the letter. Sometimes when you are angry you'll shoot from the hip...and when you do that you often hit a totally innocent person. Ron Woody was not on the committee that made the spending choices, I knew that too. Ron is just the guy we elected who is charged with administrating those decisions and I know Ron will responsibly do that...we will know where every single cent goes...that is great.

Under Ron's leadership our county is progressing, developing and has a much, much brighter future. Among other accomplishments, thanks to Ron, Tony Brown, and other hard working county employees, Roane County Park is now award winning, clean and a county asset we can all enjoy with pride...I enjoy it often and point to it in pride to my friends and customers.

What a stupid, stupid thing I did...I've apologized to Ron already. I'm still upset...angry...amazed at the committee's decisions on the application of these funds, but I'm a little angrier at myself for not choosing my words better and making Ron look bad. I voted for Ron and will do so again.

I'm sentencing myself to several hours of community service...watch for me on River Road picking up litter.

Can anyone tell me where I could go to discover what TDOT intends to do at the Hwy58 & Hwy70 ( Race & Kentucky Streets) intersection ? Will this effect the buildings ?

Instead of a year extension to unemployment benefits why not give unemployed people "EMPLOYMENT VOUCHERS" that they can sign over to any company that will hire them ? Let's say a person gets $150 per week for a year. They can then pay $150 a week of their own wages by turning the vouchers over to a company that will hire them. This will help the companies hire people who really want to work and help ONLY those unemployed people who want to go find a job.

Here is how a free website translated the German article:

Tennessee, country of the rivers, lakes and forests. Nature purely in the heart America. So for a long time one does not even look so exactly. Fly ash is what clouds water and idyl. The lake is closed for months, the houses stands empty. Given up after an environment disaster, whose extent is still examined - the largest their kind in US history. We are close of the city Kingston, where the operators of a coal-fired power station up-poured poisonous for many decades ash mud to an enormous waste dump. Until the dams and the underground did not withstand that any longer. Poisonous mud contaminates the farm country Steve Scarborough speaks for all adjacents resident: „The whole Konstrukt was criminal. In investigation reports it is located that they had taken only three drilling samples from the underground. Thus lax one would not put on times the water pool of a farm. “ Inexorably the poison mud flowed into the landscape. First measurements resulted in alone in the case of arsenic the 35-fache of the limit values for drinking water. „Several-day-long were angespült dead fish, which Aschebrühe has a part of my farm country covered and still more of it contaminated “, farmer Terry Gupton complains, „because the river water accumulated and with it mixed. They can see it still, because the valley is still blocked of ashes, cannot that all any longer flow off. We know that it is poisonous. “ Clean-up operations are expensive and lengthy Actually the US environmental protection authority never classified ash mud as health-endangering. The industry always repelled controls as too expensive. Now clean-up operations all the more cost. „Which one cannot see here is that on the river reason still up to ten meters highly mud is appropriate “, says for work engineer Dennis Yankee. „To suck off, still months will take. “ So that the wind cannot blow anything away, engineers pump ashes to a water circle. Thus it remains further damp, just as the new substances, which the power station continues to discharge. The costs of the evacuation into a more suitable dump carry now the current customers - who wanted to preserve America politics so for a long time. Energy should remain cheap. Now here daily hundred railroad cars poison mud roll of the area. Adjacents resident want to be compensated Meanwhile our hosts Dennis Yankee practice of the Tennessee Valley power station in beautiful speeches. „I think, from today's viewpoint give it to reference on construction problems within the dam range. But one must also see that this dump was away up-poured over fifty years and since things were changed again and again, without knowing exactly, on which one the actually up-poured. There surely much accumulated. “ „There are certain poisonous components “, admit Kathryn Nash of the Tennessee Valley power station. „We cannot say, what will make the environmental protection authority. I think, there now many emotions play. Many are furious, because they are strongly of the misfortune concerned. But purely scientifically regarded, there is no reason to the concern. “ Thus the work changes to putting on the mud into the environment now as grass country. It bought up the houses to a large extent. Farmer Gupton however waits on compensation until today. Its it lets cattle eat hardly still on the pasture. Besides it complains that with the dams the number of the abortions rises. But it did not find a new farm yet. „Each day, which is we still here, is a lost day. For us and for the enterprise “, farmer Terry Gupton complains. Besides cost the law case money. „We did not get a dollar. We must in-complain everything before court. “ Many further poisonous dumps exist in the USA The company spokespeople praise the clearing work in the meantime as the largest research project in the region. , Critics grumble all Wischi Waschi. America limps environmentallegally to the west around decades afterwards. The environmental custodians actually announced country-wide last in Washington over thousand similar dumps, which hardly supervises most of it. Often sources of drinking water and rivers are already contaminated. After Kingston, the officials a colleague delegated Tennessee, who hopes now for few rains. „If the river too much water leads here, cannot let it not accumulate I, because it would then flood the houses and the work. Thus remains only to take out up to then as much ash mud as possible there. Yes, we hang very from the weather “, explain Leo Francendese of the US environmental protection agency. „A tsunami could further-rinse the poisons “, says also environmentalist Steve Scarborough. „However for it to dig there “, then he astonishes us at the end, „everything would still aggravate. Because there down radioactive substances from a close weapon waffenschmiede rest for decades. Better one brings there nothing more in disorder. “ Oh, which concerns health damage by fly ash, the work operators proved amazingly to much distance vision. Late sequences, then it is called in compensation contracts, is not in complainable any longer. Author: Klaus Scherer, pool of broadcasting corporations studio Washington

Keep Roane Beautiful and Sail Away Homes & Land is sponsoring a Thief Neck Island Clean up project tomorrow, Saturday, from 10:00am to 4:00 pm. Transportation by boat to the island will leave at 10:00 in the morning from the day use ramp and dock in Crystal Cove...this is on Thief Neck Road.

Directions: Hwy 27 to Right on Ables Valley to right on Winton Chapel...about two miles to left on Crystal Springs...cross the covered bridge (Crytsal Cove entrance) then right on Hidden Oaks then right on Thief Neck...Questions ? Call Bob Giltnane at 865-717-9600

No under 16 without an adult. Be prepared for trail clearing and litter pick up....no power tools !!

Keep Roane Beautiful and Sail Away Homes & Land is sponsoring a Thief Neck Island Clean up project tomorrow, Saturday, from 10:00am to 4:00 pm. Transportation by boat to the island will leave at 10:00 in the morning from the day use ramp and dock in Crystal Cove...this is on Thief Neck Road.

Directions: Hwy 27 to Right on Ables Valley to right on Winton Chapel...about two miles to left on Crystal Springs...cross the covered bridge (Crytsal Cove entrance) then right on Hidden Oaks then right on Thief Neck...Questions ? Call Bob Giltnane at 865-717-9600

No under 16 without an adult. Be prepared for trail clearing and litter pick up....no power tools !!