The setting may have been humble –– a nondescript meeting room in a county administration building –– but the Swain County commissioners’ vote to pass a moratorium on communications and utility projects may prove monumental. The vote could force utility giant Duke Energy to the negotiating table, and it was a bona fide act of solidarity with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians on the part of the county.

Last week, four Swain County commissioners –– Genevieve Lindsay, Steve Moon, Phil Carson, and David Monteith –– voted unanimously to pass a 90-day moratorium on all telecommunications and utility projects that require a county building permit.

The moratorium could prevent Duke Energy from moving forward with a controversial electrical substation project near the sacred Cherokee site Kituwah.

After the vote, a small but energetic crowd of Swain County residents –– some enrolled EBCI members –– applauded loudly.

“We don’t often get applauded,” said a smiling Commissioner Genevieve Lindsay, who chaired the meeting in the absence of County Chairman Glenn Jones.

Judging by the crowd, Lindsay should not have been surprised by the applause.

Nate Darnell, whose family operates Darnell Farms, an agri-tourism business in the same valley as the Kituwah mothertown site, expressed his support for the moratorium.

“I want people to come to our farm and say, ‘Wow, this place is unscathed by development,’” Darnell said. “We have to take a stand and say some things are more valuable than power.”

Darnell’s family has leased the farmstead since 1984 and is the most recognizable business in the valley below the proposed Duke Energy substation project at Hyatt Creek, between Ela and Bryson City.

“I’m not a conservationist. I’m a preservationist,” Darnell said. “I don’t want the land locked up, I want it used wisely.”

Natalie Smith, a Swain resident and Cherokee business owner who has led a citizens’ group that opposes the substation project, also spoke in support of the moratorium.

“I am so relieved to see Swain County take the reins. It is overdue. This could be an historical event,” Smith said. “I feel as if Swain County has taken many punches over the decades from big conglomerates and continues to suffer from them. Finally, we are standing up for ourselves and acknowledging our assets.”

Smith’s citizen action group has announced its intent to bring suit against Duke over the project.

“The coalition is organizing and we are going legal, but we can’t discuss any details until the case is in court,” Smith said.

But it was the Swain County commissioners themselves who had the final say on the moratorium, which will be in effect for 90 days. During that time the county will develop an ordinance regulating the construction of telecommunications and utility facilities. New ordinances can’t be adopted until a public hearing is held, meaning Swain citizens will get the opportunity to address the proposal before it becomes law.

“You can’t stop progress, and we don’t want to,” said Commissioner Steve Moon. “But it would be a shame if they were allowed to continue to desecrate that site. Let’s see if the project can be located in a place that would be less visible and less detrimental.”

Moon said he felt the need to stand up for the Cherokee residents of Swain County, in part, because his wife Faye is an enrolled EBCI member who feels strongly about the issue.

“They’re our friends, our relatives and our neighbors,” Moon said.

Commissioner Phil Carson said his vote was prompted by his experience at a meeting last month between Duke Energy’ and the EBCI to which the Swain commissioners were invited.

“I felt like it was a real eye-opener,” Carson said. “We were really just observers and weren’t considered as part of the solution to the problem. Working together for all our people is the common goal.”

While it’s not entirely clear whether the moratorium will stop Duke’s progress on the 300-by-300-foot substation on a hill overlooking the Kituwah site, Fred Alexander, Duke’s regional director, was clearly concerned by the vote.

“Quite frankly what Duke is trying to do is find an alternative that will meet the needs of our customers in Swain and Jackson counties that gets us off of that mountain,” Alexander said.

Renissa Walker, another enrolled member of the EBCI who resides in Swain County, confronted Alexander after the meeting, asking him to consider the issue from the perspective of a tribal member.

“Stand on top of the mound under a full moon and do a 360-degree turn making a full circle, and you’ll see that Kituwah is protected by all of those mountains and you’ll see the genius of why our ancestors put it there,” Walker said.

The EBCI Tribal Council passed a resolution last month clearing the way for the tribe to take legal action against Duke. So far, the tribe has not filed any suits in court or with the state utilities commission, preferring instead to hold ongoing negotiations focused on locating alternative site locations and considering options for mitigating the visual impact of the project.

The Swain moratorium poses the first legal hurdle to the project, but much depends on what kind of ordinance the county produces during the moratorium period. Duke needs a county building permit for the project and does not have one.

Alexander, while communicating Duke’s desire to resolve the conflict with the tribe and the county, was careful to reiterate the company’s stance so far on the issue.

“On the other hand, we’re not in a position to say, ‘No, we can’t be where we are today,’ because we have a responsibility to serve our customers,” Alexander said.

Both Swain County and the EBCI have offered alternative locations, and Alexander said Duke would continue to evaluate its options before making a decision on whether to relocate its substation.

When the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians took over the Cherokee Indian Hospital from the Indian Health Service in 2002, the hospital’s administrators faced a challenge.

They wanted the hospital to feel like it belonged to the community, but they inherited a building that was far from welcoming.

“People wanted to be surrounded by Cherokee things,” said Jody Adams, the hospital’s director of community relations.

The hospital’s motto “Ni-hi tsa-tse-li” means “It belongs to you,” but there was nothing Cherokee about the white walls and clinical feel inside the hospital.

Adams formed a culture committee comprised of hospital staff and community elders and turned to the Cherokee Preservation Foundation for grant funding. Susan Jenkins, executive director of the Foundation, said the hospital’s makeover mission was exactly the kind of project the organization wants to fund.

“When they came to us, we thought it was a great fit, because they would have to work with the elders and the community and reach out to the local artists,” Jenkins said.

The Foundation has contributed $20,000 per year to the hospital’s cultural makeover. Adams has overseen the projects, which partner with local artists to transform the interior spaces of the building into venues for displaying Cherokee art and culture.

When you walk in the main entrance, you can see the impact right away. A large mural in the waiting area combines Cherokee words written in the syllabary and their English translations. The television monitors in the waiting rooms show cultural documentaries instead of Fox News or CNN.

Look deeper in the hospital and you’ll see walls filled with the portraits of elders, or hand-painted with animal tracks.

Jenkins has been impressed with the hospital’s transformation. An enrolled member of the Choctaw tribe of Oklahoma, she has seen enough of IHS hospitals to know the difference.

“Now when you go in there you get a sense that ‘Oh gee, this is my place,’” Jenkins said.

Room by room, Adams’ committee has targeted rooms for overhauls. They started with the hospice room, a place where patients come to live their last days in comfort surrounded by family. Then they found an artist to design a traditional Road to Soco Mountain pattern, and they filled a hallway with it.

The waiting area to the dental clinic has a wall-sized mural of a mountain stream. Another room shows the process of making river cane baskets.

“One of the things we wanted to do with every room is teach something,” Adams said.

Adams said the latest project is to transform the hospital’s inpatient rooms.

“Most of the inpatient rooms still have that IHS feel,” Adams said. “The research shows the rooms are a factor in the healing process.”

Adams wanted new ideas for the rooms, so she turned to Western Carolina University’s interior design program for a partnership.

“I wanted new ideas. I wanted to show the nurses and the providers that there are a lot of options. We don’t have to be a facility full of white rooms,” Adams said.

Candace Roberts, a WCU interior design professor, along with her students created a portfolio of potential design schemes for the inpatient rooms and along the way they met with elders to learn about the Cherokee culture. The first transformed inpatient room was finished last week, but Adams said the transformation of the hospital will continue.

Promoting culture

Filling the otherwise institutional walls of the Cherokee hospital with cultural themes is just one of many projects funded by the Cherokee Preservation Foundation. The Foundation was formed in 2000 with a mission to preserve Cherokee culture, enhance economic development and improve the environment using casino revenue. Since 2002, the Foundation has given out more than $47 million in grants throughout the region, which in turn have generated more than $100 million when combined with matching money.

A Cherokee archaeological site spanning from at least 6,000 years ago to the 18th century stands in the way of bridge widening project over the Tuckasegee River in Jackson County.

Plans call for widening the N.C. 107 bridge over the river from its existing width of just 20 feet to 50 feet at a cost of $4.2 million. The new bridge will be three lanes with shoulders and a sidewalk.

Landowners and the N.C. Department of Transportation are at odds over the project. The archaeological site is on land owned by the Moses family for 120 years. The family has taken pride in the site and hosted university sponsored archaeological digs on its property through the years.

While a wider bridge has been in the making for more than a decade, plans initially called for building a new bridge in the same place, leaving the archaeological site untouched. Plans were altered in 2007, calling not only for a much larger footprint but also shifting the bridge over to sit on top of the site.

The DOT failed to notify the landowners of the change until now, according to Cherrie Moses of Tuckasegee.

The family got a phone call a few weeks ago from DOT to discuss purchasing their property for the widening.

“We were in total shock,” said Moses, 52, a retired school teacher. “This is the first time we are hearing about this, and it is already a done deal. It was like all you need to do is sign on the dotted line, and the bulldozers are ready.”

Since 1997, Moses said she was told the site would be protected.

“The plans that my family had been given stated that the bridge was going back basically where it is, that the site would not be compromised,” Moses said.

Pam Williams, a bridge project planning engineer, said the Moses family was made aware of the new plan, but they must not have fully understood.

The DOT was well aware of the archaeological site in the path of the bridge widening. It plans to excavate the site first and document all the artifacts that are found, said Matt Wilkerson, a DOT archaeologist.

Wilkerson said one of the most intriguing aspects of the site is relatively recent Cherokee occupation dating to the 1700s. One house site was excavated in an archaeology dig by a university team a few decades ago, and Wilkerson thinks there may be more.

The site won’t be destroyed by the bridge, Wilkerson said. If anything, the bridge project will allow the secrets of the site to be uncovered with an archaeological dig.

In crafting an excavation plan, DOT consulted with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the state historic preservation office. Both signed off on the project with the caveat that the artifacts be saved in advance of the bulldozers.

Moses doesn’t understand why they included everyone except the landowners.

“That is not right. We would have liked to been in on the meeting and voiced our concerns,” said Moses, who also happens to be the chair of the Jackson County Historic Preservation Commission.

The site is on its way to being listed on the National Historic Register after being recommended by the DOT archaeologist.

Federal law requires a formal public process when impacting sites that are eligible for the National Register, but no one ever sought out participation by the Moses family.

Chain of events

The bridge was targeted for replacement more than a decade ago due to its age and narrow width. It is technically deemed “structurally deficient” and “functionally obsolete.” It is still safe, Williams said, but won’t stay that way forever, and maintenance costs will increase.

The existing bridge has 10-foot lanes and no shoulders.

“We have had several side swipes over the past few years,” Williams said.

The new bridge will have three 12-foot lanes, 4-foot shoulders that will double as bike lanes and a sidewalk on one side.

It will also have a left-turn lane for Shook Cove Road, which sits 100 feet from the bridge. The turn lane will be 200 feet long in all. Some left-turn lanes may only be 50 feet — just long enough for a couple of cars to queue up while waiting to make a left. Why is Shook Cove’s turn lane so long?

“There are a lot of variables actually to determine how much traffic would back up on the main line,” Williams said.

Williams cited an increase in development up Shook Cove as justifying the turn lane. Traffic counts in 2005 showed 4,700 cars a day passing over the bridge, with 200 vehicles making a left onto Shook Cove.

Moses questioned why the new bridge has to be so wide.

“This is a massive bridge. It is not even going to fit in,” Moses said.

Moses believes the bridge was planned with the expectation that new developments would add to traffic in the future. But the once zealous plans of developers are drastically scaled back these days, Moses said.

How it will be built

Under the original plan, a temporary river crossing would be built on the Moses property to accommodate traffic while the existing bridge was demolished and built back in the same place. To protect artifacts, heavy black fabric would be laid down and fill dirt placed on top. It would all be hauled away when the project was done. That method is no longer considered sensitive enough, however, Williams said.

Instead, DOT will use the “staged construction” method. Traffic will continue to flow on the existing bridge while the new bridge is built alongside it. Then traffic will shift to the new bridge while the old one is torn down and the other half of the new bridge built in its place.

Williams said there were two attempts to share the new plan with the public. One was a newsletter sent to property owners in December 2007. While the newsletter announces that the bridge will use a “staged construction method,” it fails to explain that such a method necessitates a larger bridge footprint.

“Reading the literature and having someone sit down with you and explain the plans are two different things,” Williams said.

The other outreach by the DOT was a public meeting in early 2008 on upgrades to N.C. 107, specifically lane widening and the new shoulders through the Tuckasegee community. Williams went to the meeting with the bridge plans in hand expecting residents would ask about it as part of the larger N.C. 107 upgrades.

Williams also said she twice mentioned “data recovery” to Moses in emails. But just as the term “staged construction” means little to the lay person, Moses did not realize that references to “data recovery” translated to “archaeological dig,” meaning the bridge’s footprint would consume the site and require an excavation in advance of construction.

But, by the same token, the DOT didn’t know exactly where the new footprint would be until now.

“We can’t sit down and tell them how much land we are taking until we get the design plans done,” Williams said. And at that point, property owners are contacted about buying right of way.

More information:

Construction of a wider bridge over the Tuckasegee on N.C. 107 could start by spring of 2011. The project would take 18 months. Two lanes of traffic — one in each direction — would remain open throughout.

Cherokee’s trout streams have earned their reputation as the crown jewel of North Carolina’s trophy waters, and now the area has an outfitter shop of the same quality. Business partners Joe Street, Chris Anderson and Steve Mingle, building on the success of their Spruce Pine store, believe their new all-purpose outfitter shop will help make Cherokee a national trout Mecca.

“Our goal is really to be the best fly shop on the East Coast,” Street said.

Joe Street’s ambitious plans for River’s Edge Outfitters Cherokee were incubated during a 20-year corporate career at UPS in Atlanta. An avid fisherman who used his guided trips as a pressure release, Street retired to his home in Spruce Pine two years ago knowing where he wanted to put his passion.

“It had always been a dream of mine to open up a fly fishing shop, and in the world’s worst economy, we decided we would go for it,” Street said.

The Spruce Pine store offers a full range of top-of-the-line gear and a two-mile stretch of private trophy water. With the tourism economy lagging in general, Street said he was only a little surprised that River’s Edge did so well.

“Rather than people doing elaborate vacations, they’re spending more time within a three-hour ride from home,” Street said. “The store’s had a lot of success.”

With some of the best trout water in the nation, less than three hours from Atlanta, and only a little ways down the Blue Ridge from their Spruce Pine store, the partners kept track of what was going on in Cherokee.

“We’ve been watching Cherokee for a while and saw how well they managed the fishery. We did some market research and we felt the area needed an outfitter shop,” Street said.

Spruce Pine only gets about 200,000 tourists per year and Cherokee, as a gateway to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and home to Harrah’s Cherokee Casino, beats that number by about 3.8 million.

Add to that fact Cherokee is centrally located within striking distance of the Tuckasegee, Nantahala, Oconaluftee, Watauga, Little Tennessee, French Broad and South Holston rivers and the thousands of miles of streams that flow into them, and you’ve got a formula for success.

Street wants the shop’s outfitter trips to spread the joy he felt when he was still in the corporate trenches.

“It was my getaway, my stress reliever,” Street said. “When I left UPS to move back to the mountains, I wanted to share that with people.”

Street, Anderson and Mingle are newcomers to Cherokee, and they relied on strong local connections to execute their plan. They had made friends with television fishing host Curtis Fleming.

Fleming brought his Fly Rod Chronicles to Cherokee last year, and he had already built relationships with local guide Eugene Shuler. Street said Shuler supplied the missing piece of the puzzle.

“We knew no one guide-wise, so we hired Eugene to direct our guide operation and he has a network of guides, so it’s a perfect fit,” Street said.

An experienced local guide, captain of the North Carolina Fly Fishing Team, and creator of the Southeast Fly Fishing Forum, Shuler had a network of friends with decades of on-the-water experience in the area.

“It’s kind of a neat thing,” Shuler said. “I knew their abilities and skill levels and the way they were on the water, so it wasn’t a stretch for me to put a team together.”

Shuler said his team of 12 guides will emphasize customer service and friendliness, but the focus is still going to be the abundance of prime fishing water.

“The Southeast is slowly becoming the West in terms of fly fishing,” Shuler said. “Our rivers may not be quite as wide as some of theirs, but we just have great water and great fishing.”

With that kind of water and a steady supply of tourist passing through Cherokee because of its casino and other draws, a large-scale outfitter was the only thing missing.

River’s Edge Outfitters in Cherokee will model itself after the biggest full-service outfitter shops in the West. The shop will offer a full range of gear with top of the line brands like Sage, Simms, St. Croix, and TFO, as well as every kind of trip from all-day floats and wading trips to week-long backcountry adventures.

They’ve even got partnerships in the works with local bed and breakfasts and cabin rentals to create a seamless fishing vacation experience for beginners and experts alike.

“Sometime fly-fishing comes off as being stiff to folks, and it doesn’t have to be that way,” Shuler said.

Joe Street said the Spruce Pine shop has been successful making fly fishing approachable for groups by providing features like catered lunches and specialty trips for women.

“It’ll be something you won’t find many places,” Shuler said.

River’s Edge Outfitters Cherokee, located on the west side of N.C. 441 a few miles south of NC. 19, opened Saturday, Feb. 27, and the guide service will be ready in time to launch trips for walleye during their spring run.

Shuler said his guides will harness their experience in creative ways to go after white bass, walleye, carp, smallmouth bass, and, of course, the mammoth trophy trout that make Cherokee’s waters so spectacular.

On April 17, the shop will hold a grand opening to celebrate its involvement with Healing Waters, a nonprofit fly fishing program for injured war veterans.

River’s Edge Outfitters Cherokee will also offer free fly fishing clinics every Saturday at the shop. For Street, that’s just part of spreading the word.

“Trout only grow in beautiful places, and it’s a great way to get outdoors and relieve the stress for a while,” Street said.

For info, visit www.flyfishcherokee.com.

Macon County Airport Authority members are confident their application with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is moving forward, but the project may still face significant procedural hurdles.

The airport is planning a 600-foot extension of its runway. In order to re-route a creek in its path, it needs approval from the Army Corp to impact five acres of wetlands and 800 linear feet of stream. The airport authority applied for a permit last fall, but in early January, Army Corp regulatory specialist Lori Beckwith put the project on hold.

At an airport authority meeting last week (Feb. 23), the project’s engineer, Eric Rysdon of W.K. Dickson, said he had addressed the concerns posed by the Army Corps.

Beckwith’s letter informed the authority that its permit application could not be reviewed because it failed to address a number of concerns raised by everyone from federal agencies to private citizens concerned about its impact. The letter also said the Environmental Assessment included in the application was out of date and that the information provided was “inadequate for us to evaluate the proposed project” and assess its impacts.

The authority was given 30 days to respond. In the letter, Beckwith emphasized the volume of public comment that had poured in — 37 letters and emails, most of them against the runway extension. She also stressed the importance of responding specifically to concerns raised by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

While the authority said last week that it had responded to Beckwith’s concerns with a report prepared by Rysdon, the report itself was not been made available for public review.

The authority’s attorney, Franklin Mayor Joe Collins, released a statement saying the report would remain private until Beckwith returns from personal leave on March 9.

“The Authority feels it inappropriate to make public the report until such time as Ms. Beckwith has had the opportunity to review it. The report is very positive and favorable to the project, and the Authority is anxious for its public release at the earliest appropriate time,” Collins’ letter read.

The future of the runway extension project hinges on the Army Corp allowing the airport to re-route the stream.

Under the Clean Water Act, a project must show that it is choosing the “least environmentally damaging practicable alternative.”

Beckwith’s letter asked the Macon County Airport Authority to address all the concerns expressed by entities opposed to the project, but she also asked for a clarification of the project’s purpose.

“In addition to responding to the comments detailed in this letter, please describe any off-site alternatives you considered and explain why these are or are not practicable and clarify the applicant’s main purpose for the project (safety or economic development) and any secondary purpose,” the letter stated.

The airport authority has received heavy criticism for the way it has shared information about the runway expansion project with the public.

Olga Pader, a member of the Save Iotla Valley group, has been an outspoken critic of the project and sees Beckwith’s concerns as a justification of the criticism expressed by the Iotla community.

“What’s interesting to me is the questions the Army Corps of Engineers were asking are similar to the questions we as citizens have been asking all along,” Pader said.

Pader believes the underlying motivation for the runway extension is a misguided economic development program that would adversely affect the Iotla Valley.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s expressed concerns that “multiple federally threatened and endangered species and federally designated critical habitats” downstream of the project could be affected. Meanwhile, the Cherokee voiced concern that the impacts to the ancestral graves and the presence of a historic Cherokee trading path were not properly evaluated.

Should the permit get rejected, the runway project may need to pursue an Environmental Impact Study, a much longer procedural process that could involve more federal oversight and public hearing requirements as it moves forward.

After a day of discussions between the leadership of Duke Energy and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the dispute over the construction of a proposed power substation near the tribe’s most sacred site remains unresolved.

Last Wednesday (Feb. 17) Brett Carter, President of Duke Energy Carolinas, led a delegation to the EBCI Council House to meet with members of the tribal council and Principal Chief Michell Hicks. The meeting was billed as a closed-door discussion between leadership of the two entities, but before it began a group of demonstrators expressing support for the tribe’s leadership was invited inside.

What followed was, according to participants, a formal and orchestrated dialogue in which Carter expressed his regret that Duke Energy had not consulted with the tribe before beginning the site preparation for the substation. But while Duke has admitted to poor communication and expressed a willingness to pursue mitigation of the visual impact of their project, they have also continued to work on preparing the site for construction.

“The work that’s going on at the site is grading and prep work, and that work is going to continue,” said Duke spokesperson Jason Walls.

While the tribe wants to see the substation moved to another tract, Duke asserts the visual impacts can be mitigated.

After the discussion between Carter and the members of the Tribal Council had finished, the council allowed a series of questions from the audience. Some were probing and others impassioned, but all of the tribal members who showed up wanted to make it clear visual mitigation wasn’t enough; they wanted the substation and line upgrade project moved off the hill.

Natalie Smith, a tribal member and Cherokee business owner who helped organize the demonstration, said she was grateful to the council for inviting them into the dialogue.

“You can’t do this here,” Smith said. “That was the bigger message.”

Chief Hicks also invited members of the Swain County board to the table. Swain County Commissioner David Monteith was not impressed with Duke’s communication with the leadership of the county or the tribe.

“I think they treated Swain County like a left-handed stepchild,” Monteith said. “Professional courtesy from a company of the size of Duke with a project that large would at least tell you to talk to the commissioners.”

George Wickliffe, a chief of the Oklahoma Cherokee United Keetoowah Band, sat in on the meeting, too.

“Kituwah is well documented as our Mother Town and due to its history, not only through such documentation, but orally and as a part of our religious tradition, is like the Garden of Eden to the Christian,” said Wickliffe.

After the meeting, Hicks said the tribe had already identified areas that could be used as alternative sites for the substation, but he wouldn’t comment on whether any definite alternatives had already been discussed.

“We’re still working on what our options are,” Hicks said. “I think they were sincere about the failure to notify us of the project. As far as negotiating, we won’t know until we see what options they present.”

Hicks said over the next two weeks Duke would submit plans to minimize the visual impact of their project, and the EBCI would offer Duke options for moving the site off the hillside.

Walls called the meeting “productive” and said Duke “left with a commitment to work on additional mitigation to minimize the visual impact” of the project.

In the wake of the controversy surrounding the company’s proposed substation, Duke Energy representatives claimed they were unaware of the project’s potential impact on the Cherokee’s most valued site.

But Russ Townsend, historic preservation officer for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, isn’t so sure. Townsend received an archeological report that Duke conducted on the site of the substation in 2008.

“It basically clarified that Duke did know all of these things they were saying they weren’t aware of,” Townsend said. “That was disappointing. They’re not required by law to consult with me, but they’ve always said they wanted to be a good neighbor.”

Archeologically, the substation project’s interference with Kituwah presents an interesting dilemma.

The EBCI bought 309 acres around the mound site in 1996, and an archeological survey the following year discovered a 65-acre village site that confirmed a long term of settlement. The mound site and the surrounding village are listed separately on the federal register of historic places.

The mound, 170 feet in diameter and five feet tall, formed the base for the council house where the Cherokee conducted some of their most sacred ceremonies.

The Duke substation project is taking place on a surrounding hillside that is not owned by the tribe. Duke considers the project an upgrade of an existing line, and therefore is not bound to a public vetting process that would involve consulting with state historic preservation officials. The substation site covers a 300 by 300 foot square, and its structures will be 40-feet high.

But the Cherokee have argued the project directly threatens the integrity of the Kituwah site.

Tom Belt, who teaches Cherokee language and culture at Western Carolina University, explained that the concept of the Kituwah mothertown for the Cherokee would encompass the entire area within a day’s walk of the council house. Belt said the actual valley and its mountains play crucial roles in spiritual ceremonies held on the solstices and in the cosmology that support the tribe’s clan structure.

“On those days if you stand at the mound where the council house was, the very place the light hits first is on the seven peaks on that mountain where the substation will be built,” Belt said.

Townsend said the archeological report filed by Duke confirmed there were 15 important sites within a mile of the substation project, and two nationally registered sites within a half mile. Townsend said there are likely no artifacts left in the ground in the area, but the report, conducted by a private firm, leaves little doubt about its archeological significance.

“It’s my professional opinion that this is really a true adverse impact to Kituwah,” Townsend said. “It’s not just a site on a hill we don’t want developed.”

A disagreement over Duke Energy’s placement of a power substation near Cherokee’s most significant cultural site has instigated a meeting between the top leaders of the tribe and the company.

Principal Chief Michell Hicks, the tribal council, and the attorney general of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians are set to meet with Duke Energy Carolinas President James Rogers behind closed doors on Wednesday (Feb. 17) to discuss the issue.

Hicks said he wanted to wait until after the meeting to discuss whether negotiations would involve visual mitigation of the substation or moving the project entirely.

“We want the land protected, and we want the viewshed protected,” Hicks said. “I don’t know where they’re at. Until I sit down with the president and hear where they’re coming from, I don’t want to comment on that.”

The ECBI owns a 309-acre Kituwah mound site, which was historically the tribe’s spiritual and political center. But it does not own the surrounding hillsides where the substation is slated to go.

In November, Duke began bulldozing part of a mountainside tract near the Hyatt Creek/Ela exit off the Smoky Mountain Expressway between Cherokee and Bryson City to prepare for construction of the substation. The mountainside is considered by the Cherokee to be a part of the greater Kituwah mothertown. Should the project move forward, it would mar a viewshed integral to the tribe’s cultural identity.

The EBCI’s tribal council passed a resolution authorizing Principal Chief Michell Hicks to seek outside legal counsel to attempt to prevent Duke from moving forward with the substation and a transmission line expansion near the Swain County site during its meeting on Feb. 4.

Since then, work at the site has continued. Some 15 members of the tribe traveled to the Swain County commissioners meeting last week in order to ask the board to join with the tribe in opposing the Duke project. The commissioners took no formal action.

“We don’t have any ordinance or regulatory authority to cover that,” said Chairman Glenn Jones. “If the Cherokee want to bring a lawsuit or whatever, we told them we would probably be willing to put our name to it.”

Representatives from Duke have said the substation and line upgrade was intended to serve the expanding demand for energy created by the growth of Harrah’s Cherokee Casino.

Company spokesperson Paige Layne cited a lack of communication over the issue as the point of tension.

“This was not something we initiated to cause harm,” Layne said. “Our goal was to provide energy to our consumer base. I guess the next step is to make sure we’re doing that with the utmost respect to the tribe’s culture.”

Wednesday’s meeting could clear the air, but it could also solidify differences between the tribe and the utility company.

Duke has already expressed its intent to resolve the issue through a plan to mitigate the visual impact of the substation on the mountainside. But the tribal council’s resolution cleared the way for a legal battle that could play out in the form of hearings before the North Carolina Utility Commission.

Kituwah is a concept much larger than the mound site proper, which is recorded with the state register of historic places. The name signifies the mothertown of the Cherokee, a kind of original community with which all Cherokees identify.

“The boundaries of Kituwah aren’t confined to the area. It’s intrinsic to the heart and soul of the Cherokee people,” said Tom Belt, a professor of Cherokee Language and Culture at Western Carolina University.

Belt explained Cherokees as far west as Memphis would have identified themselves as Kituwah during the 1600s.

But the tribe lost control of the Kituwah village in the years preceding their forced removal from their ancestral land in Western North Carolina.

During most of the last century and a half, the land has been under agricultural cultivation as part of a tract called Ferguson’s Field.

The Eastern Band bought 309 acres around the mound site in 1996, and an archeological survey the following year discovered a 65-acre village site that confirmed the long term of settlement.

The mound, 170 feet in diameter and five feet tall, formed the base for the council house where the Cherokee conducted some of their most sacred ceremonies.

Belt explained that the concept of the Kituwah mothertown for the Cherokee would encompass the entire area within a day’s walk of the council house. But Belt said the actual valley and its mountains play crucial roles in spiritual ceremonies held on the solstices and in the cosmology that support the tribe’s clan structure.

“On those days if you stand at the mound where the council house was, the very place the light hits first is on the seven peaks on that mountain where the substation will be built,” Belt said.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians may pursue legal action against Duke Energy after learning about the utility company’s plans to put an electric substation near Kituwah mound, the tribe’s most sacred site.

On Friday the EBCI’s tribal council passed a resolution authorizing Principal Chief Michell Hicks to seek outside legal counsel to attempt to prevent Duke from moving forward with the substation and a transmission line expansion near the Swain County site.

“I’m very disappointed with the lack of contact with Duke on such a large facility being built near our most important site,” Hicks said.

Hicks said he learned about the estimated $79 million project –– which he termed a “desecration”–– in late December and voiced his concerns to Duke’s regional manager, Fred Alexander. The ensuing discussions were limited, Hicks said.

In November, Duke began bulldozing part of a mountainside tract near the Hyatt Creek/Ela exit off the Smoky Mountain Expressway between Cherokee and Bryson City to prepare for construction of the substation. The mountainside is considered by the Cherokee to be a part of the greater Kituwah mothertown, which was once the tribe’s spiritual and political center. Should the project move forward, it would mar a viewshed integral to the tribe’s cultural identity.

Duke Spokesperson Paige Layne said the company was surprised about the concerns over the substation, which she said is being constructed in part to service Harrah’s Cherokee Casino.

“This was not something we initiated to cause harm,” Layne said. “Our goal was to provide energy to our consumer base. I guess the next step is to make sure we’re doing that with the utmost respect to the tribe’s culture.”

Layne said Duke Energy’s president, James Rogers, has scheduled a meeting on Feb. 22 to visit the site and to discuss the matter with Hicks.

Poor communication

The controversy over the construction of the substation emerged when the tribe’s administrators became aware of the scope of the project in late December. Duke Energy purchased the mountainside site in 2008 and a report of the Edison Electric Institute issued in January of the same year identified the Hyatt Creek Substation project as part of a larger $79 million transmission line upgrade that would nearly triple the voltage capacity on 17.5 miles of transmission line from 66 kV to 161kV.

When bulldozing work began late last year as part of the site preparation work, some of the tribe’s employees inquired about the project. The tribe’s legal office contacted the North Carolina Utilities Commission to find out what was going on.

Thomas McLawhorn, spokesperson for public staff at the commission, explained that Duke determined they did not need to file an application for the project.

“Duke has not filed an application, and I don’t believe they intend to,” McLawhorn said.

McLawhorn explained that Duke’s staff had determined that the upgrade project did not require an application under general statute 62.101, which governs the construction of transmission lines.

According to Hannah Smith, an attorney for the tribe, utility companies are required by the statute to notify a number of state agencies and file an application whenever lines of 161kV or more are involved.

McLawhorn said Duke made the determination that, as an upgrade, the project did not require an application, and therefore did not have to specify why the project was necessary.

McLawhorn did say that the North Carolina Utility Commission could impose an injunction on the project in response to an official complaint on behalf of the tribe.

“The commissioners could instruct Duke to cease construction of the facility until the commission has had time to investigate the issue and form an opinion,” McLawhorn said.

McLawhorn said Duke staff members informed him that the upgrade was driven by the need to provide more power to the Harrah’s Cherokee Casino.

Layne confirmed providing power for the casino and hotel expansion is the intent of the project.

“The area up there is growing and when we look specifically at the expansion of the hotel and casino, we need to bring in more service to the area,” Layne said.

Layne said Duke was looking at how they could have communicated with the tribe better.

“We have to better understand where in our process we could have taken more steps,” Layne said. “To us it was routine, and when we learned about the visual impairment, it was not routine.”

Is mitigation enough?

Last week the tribal council met to consider a resolution authorizing the EBCI attorney general’s office to pursue a course to stop the project.

Tom Belt, a professor of Cherokee Language and Culture at Western Carolina University, said Duke’s construction of the substation near Kituwah was tantamount to putting a McDonald’s sign near the pulpit of a church. Belt urged the tribal council to do whatever it could to protect the site.

“The Kituwah site is one of the most sacred things we have and I would submit that it may have been part of the reason so many of your forbears stayed here in 1838,” Belt told the tribal council.

Tribal council member Teresa McCoy put the issue in perspective for her colleagues.

“I like power, but this is bigger than power,” McCoy said.

According to Layne, Duke has already offered to mitigate the impact of the substation on the viewshed by using non-reflective steel, replanting the area with native plants, and using stone-colored material for retaining walls.

Natalie Smith, a tribal member who owns Tribal Grounds Coffee Shop in Cherokee, asked the tribal council to stand up to Duke and get the project moved.

“I don’t think we should compromise at all with Duke,” Smith said. “I think they’re counting on us not to know the law and I think they’re counting on their Fortune 500 lawyers beating us.”

Hicks seemed to share that sentiment during the meeting.

“The bottom line is it’s a disrespect to our tribe and a disrespect to the people of Swain County,” Hicks said.

Russ Townsend, the tribe’s historic preservation officer, believes Duke should have done more to communicate its plans.

“We’re constantly gathering data that shows Duke has had more opportunities to share more information with us,” Townsend said.

Townsend urged the council to exhaust its resources in defending the site.

“This is our most important site. We’re only ever going to have one Kituwah,” Townsend said. “I don’t think there’s any resource we shouldn’t expend to make Duke realize the importance of the site.”

The meeting between Hicks and Rogers on Feb. 22 could determine whether the state’s largest power company and one of the country’s most wealthy tribes will face off in court over the issue.

The United Keetoowah Band of Oklahoma released a statement denouncing Duke’s failure to communicate with all of the Cherokee bands that hold a stake in the cultural legacy of Kituwah.

EBCI council member Perry Shell said all Cherokees should band together to protect their mothertown.

“United we stand a better chance of fighting this,” Shell said.