Wal-Mart Johnson City
Washington County, Tennessee
Wal-Mart Stores East LP (Wal-Mart) proposes to construct a Sam’s Club Wholesale Club store and supporting infrastructure in Johnson City, Washington County, Tennessee. As a requirement for the development of this site, Wal-Mart also proposes to fill and encapsulate 919 feet of an unnamed stream channel confluent to Knob Creek and the Watauga River.
Wal-Mart evaluated alternative sites in the area that would not result in impacts to waters of the United States or TVA jurisdiction; however, these sites were infeasible or economically impractical for the proposed development. Wal-Mart also considered various design alternatives that could potentially avoid or minimize stream impacts on this site. Wal-Mart’s final proposal would provide improved business services to the community, provide economic benefits to investors, increase the number of short-term construction jobs, and, in the long-term, benefit the local economy and tax base and increase future permanent job opportunities for Washington County and the Johnson City area. Due to the limited value of the stream and aquatic resources proposed to be impacted, further consideration of other sites was determined to be unwarranted.
Because the stream impacts would exceed the thresholds for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Nationwide Permit, an individual Section 404 permit was deemed to be required for the project. Construction of a permanent obstruction by placement of fill and encapsulation of an unnamed stream channel confluent to the Tennessee River system also requires approval under Section 26a of the TVA Act. The Corps of Engineers, in cooperation with TVA, prepared an environmental assessment (EA) to evaluate the impacts of the permitting decisions of the federal agencies.
TVA independently finds that the effects of the project, with mitigation, would be minor and insignificant and has prepared the finding of no significant impact (FONSI) adopting the EA as its own. The TVA FONSI can be viewed below.
TVA issued its Section 26a permit on April 4, 2006.
A copy of the Corps of Engineers’ final EA and FONSI document can be provided upon request. Please contact:
Stanford E. Davis
Tennessee Valley Authority
400 W. Summit Hill Dr. WT 9B
Knoxville, TN 37902
Comments, questions or a request for a copy of the USACE EA may also be sent via e-mail to email@example.com.