An inventory of wetlands in the East Fork Poplar Creek floodplain, Anderson and Roane Counties, Tennessee

An inventory of wetlands within the floodplain of East Fork Poplar Creek (EFPC) in Anderson and Roane Counties, Tennessee was conducted during October, 1991 through May, 1992 for the US Department of Energy (DOE) by the US Army Corps of Engineers, Nashville District. About 15 miles of EFPC channel and 500 acres of its floodplain are contaminated with mercury and other contaminants released from the Y-12 Plant on the DOE Oak Ridge Reservation. The wetland inventory will serve as baseline information for DOE`s remedial action planning and National Environmental Policy Act compliance efforts related to the contamination. In order to provide broad wetland determinations beyond which future wetland definitions are unlikely to expand, the 1989 Federal Manual for Identifying And Delineating Jurisdictional Wetlands was utilized. Using the manual`s methodology in a contaminated system under the approved health and safety plan presented some unique problems, resulting in intrusive sampling for field indicators of hydric soils being accomplished separately from observation of other criteria. Beginning with wetland areas identified on National Wetland Inventory Maps, the entire floodplain was examined for presence of wetland criteria, and 17 wetlands were identified ranging from 0.01 to 2.81 acres in size. The majority of wetlands identified were sized under 1 acre. Some of the wetlands identified were not delineated on the National Wetland Inventory Maps, and much of the wetland area delineated on the maps did not meet the criteria under the 1989 manual