CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – The Clarksville City Council has formally asked the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation to preserve Swan Lake at Dunbar Cave State Park.
The resolution came after a Tennessee State Parks public meeting earlier this month where officials detailed the state’s plan to allow the artificially created lake to be drained and returned to its natural state as a creek.
At the state meeting, after hearing details surrounding creek restoration benefits, a number of local officials spoke out in support of maintaining Swan Lake, including City Mayor Joe Pitts and Councilperson Stacey Streetman, who sponsored the City Council’s resolution on Thursday.
Her reasoning included that community memories that have been built at the site. “Everyone who has lived here in Clarksville, most likely everyone has a memory of some sort tied to Swan Lake,” Streetman said. “For all the rest of us, we would have no way to try and relive that memory and talk to others about it and say there used to be a lake here.”
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Streetman also spoke on the financial impact of the decision.
“There is also some financial expense that will come along for the city should Swan Lake revert back to a stream. When the land was sold (to the state) back in 1973, the city had water rights in perpetuity for the irrigation of Swan Lake Golf Course,” Streetman said. “If we do not have access to that and instead have to use city water to be able to do that, it’s going to be different than what natural water would be. Chemicals would have to be added for the turf, so that’s a financial expense we would be taking on as well.”
‘We’re owed this’
Councilperson Tim Chandler shared some additional history of the site. He said Dunbar Cave State Park’s first-ever superintendent, Bob Wells, told him that when the state took over the park, Dunbar Cave was a civil defense shelter.
“There were big cans of food and stuff stored inside the cave,” Chandler said. “Over the years, while it was being neglected, people went in there, busted the cans open and set the majority of it on fire.
“I was reminded that it wasn’t the state that brought it to the shape that is in, it was the citizens of Clarksville. Bob said he had Boy Scout volunteers, civic organization volunteers that packed (up) thousands and thousands of pounds of waste that was in that cave. Not only is it in our heritage, but it also took citizens of this town – from 12 years old and up – to clean it up and make it look like what it is today. We’re owed this.”
The City Council voted 12-0-1 Thursday in favor of the resolution with Councilperson Ambar Marquis abstaining. She said she didn’t have enough information to vote for or against the state’s plan.
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