Concerns over the Patty Bridge access points to the Hiwassee River in West Polk County resulted in the Polk County Board of Commissioners breaking from regular meeting procedure Thursday, June 25.
Those concerns resulted in a resolution asking the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) to step in and help fix the problems.
The resolution, which was unanimously approved by the board, states, “The governing body of Polk County, Tennessee, has identified a correlation between the use of some personal water craft and maintenance of sanitary condition, human waste on private property, trespassing on private property, image to clearings and farm fields by both human and motor vehicle and assaults and discords on property owners in Polk County.
“The legislative body of Polk County also identifies that calls for such problems are being handled by the Polk County Sheriff’s Department at county taxpayer expense with no reimbursement from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.”
According to Chairwoman Debbie Davis, a man was violently attacked on his property by visitors who were doing doughnuts with their vehicle on his field, which is adjacent to the river in the Patty Bridge area.
“It’s a hotspot because it’s below the bridge,” Davis said. “It is literally going to be taken over, because they can hide. They get down there, and you can’t see them. You could literally murder someone down there ,and you probably wouldn’t find them for days and that’s about what happened. It’s just a thousand wonders if this man had not been killed.”
Davis also discussed an issue with cars parking on the side of the road in masses on Highway 411 to put in water crafts.
“If it were somebody local and you parked a car there, you’d be towed off in two hours,” she said. “These people are parking there for hours on the road sides because there’s not enough adequate parking at the input. Now, because we’ve got all these outsiders that are coming in, which is fine I understand all that, but they’re getting by breaking rules and regulations that we’ve never been able to get by with as taxpayers in Polk County, so this is a major problem.”
Commissioner Greg Brooks expressed his frustration with TWRA as well, stating, “As normal, TWRA has failed to have a long range plan. They went into something once again without any foresight on how to complete a project. They’ve put a put in at Nancy Ward, a put in at 411 and a take out at Patty Bridge is basically how it gets used. There’s no public land between any of those spots from Point A to Point B. So they’ve got no choice but to get on on people’s land, use the bathroom, throw out their garbage. They put out no trashcans, not portable toilets at their sites.
“Our law enforcement are staying tied up all weekend with fights, break-ins and anything that can happen with that big of a crowd, and TWRA ain’t nowhere to enforce it.”
The resolution requests that TWRA meet with the Polk County Buildings and Ground committee within 30 days of the resolution’s passage with an action plan to combat the county’s issues.
“If not done, the county executive of Polk County is asked to make an inquiry into the removal of such landings from the county at costs being sent to TWRA,”