The mission of the Upper Tennessee River Roundtable is to achieve clean water throughout the watershed with the involvement of citizens in planning, educating, attracting funding, and advocating our water resources. The Roundtable envisions the citizens within the watershed of the Clinch, Holston, and Powell Rivers practicing conservation and good stewardship. We strive to maintain and improve water quality so that our waters are fishable, swimmable, and capable of sustaining healthy and diverse ecosystems.

The Roundtable is apart of projects including: Stream bank restoration, rain gardens, rain barrels, green roofs, public outreach, sustainable communities, youth education, public education, conservation, recreation and much more!

They also utilize Americorps OSM/VISTAs (Office of Surface Mining/Volunteers in Service to America) to build capacity of different programs including education and outreach. VISTAs commit a year (and sometimes two) of their lives to serving full time with a non profit organization living on a small stipend set at poverty level for the area. As of summer 2010 They are currently seeking the cost share in the amount of $5500 to be able to host their next VISTA. This VISTA will serve the region by working with other watershed groups so they can host VISTAs, public outreach, and getting community involvement is a small insight to their work plan. Will you help host a VISTA?

The Roundtable does a phenomenal amount of work in the the Upper Tennessee River watershed of Southwest Virginia. We serve 7 Counties in Southwest Virginia including: Washington, Wise, Scott, Smyth, Lee, Russell and Tazewell. We also serve the two cities of Norton and Bristol.

The roundtable serves as a regional watershed office, connecting many other smaller watershed groups in the the Southwest Virginia region.