Flashback: Residents turned out to oppose landfill in 2010
There have been accusations that local government officials kept public hearings secret in 2010, when the TN Dept. of Environment & Conservation (TDEC) was considering an application for a new landfill at Bear Creek by Roberta Phase II.
However, just as the case had been when the original Roberta Sanitary Landfill was being planned at Bear Creek in 1989, and as is the case now that another landfill is being planned on the Bear Creek property, the proposed landfill was front page news in 2010.
After several public notices published in the Independent Herald by TDEC in the winter of 2010, a pair of public hearings were held at the Oneida Municipal Services Building: one on Feb. 9 and another on March 8.
The March 8 public hearing specifically saw a standing-room-only crowd turn out to oppose the Roberta Phase II permit, which was ultimately approved by TDEC in July 2010. The IH’s page one story from that public hearing is included in its entirety below.
The initial landfill at Bear Creek was ordered by a court in 1992, ending three years of contentious battles between Scott County and the landfill planners. It was originally known as Roberta Sanitary Landfill. It was later sold to Waste Connections, and is today known as Volunteer Regional Landfill, encompassing approximately 800 acres of property at Bear Creek.
The property’s owner, the late Johnny King, presented plans for a landfill as far back as 1986. After the Tennessee General Assembly passed the Jackson Law statute in 1989 that gave local governments more control over privately-owned landfills, County Commission voted overwhelmingly to reject the landfill proposal. King sued both Scott County and the Town of Winfield, and ultimately won when a Chancery Court ruled in November 1992 that the county did not have a valid reason to reject the landfill. Roberta Sanitary Landfill was ultimately permitted in the mid 1990s.
In early 2010, King returned to TDEC to request a permit for Roberta Phase II, which was to initially begin as a 24-acre disposal facility. TDEC began issuing public notices in Scott County, and held a pair of public hearings in Oneida in February and March.
Ultimately, TDEC approved the landfill permit in July 2010. However, the landfill was never constructed. That property is now in the process of being purchased by Cleveland, Tenn. landfill developer Knox Horner, who is also planning a trash transfer station on Poplar Lane. It’s not clear that the 2010 landfill permit will transfer with the purchase of the property; when Bearcat Properties Inc. purchased the property out of foreclosure in 2020, it filed a legal challenge saying that Roberta Phase II had refused to transfer the landfill permit. Bearcat’s property is now under a purchase sale agreement with buyers affiliated with Horner. Earlier this year, TDEC issued a letter stating that additional investigation was necessary on its part since construction hadn’t started on the landfill within 365 days of the permit being issued.
Following is an Independent Herald article from March 11, 2010:
Residents sound off on landfill
Speakers at public hearing mostly against proposal
By Ben Garrett
Independent Herald Editor
Dozens of residents from Scott and McCreary counties turned out Monday evening for a hearing on a proposed landfill at Bear Creek, voicing opinions that were overwhelmingly opposed to the proposal.
The hearing, the second in a month’s time to be conducted by the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation on the subject of the proposed Roberta Phase II landfill, drew a standing-room-only crowd to the Oneida Municipal Services Building. The hearing was scheduled in response to written requests from area residents.
Unlike the first hearing in February, which was conducted by TDEC’s Water Quality Division and was limited to water quality concern issues, Monday’s hearing was conducted by TDEC’s Solid Waste Management Division and was broader in scope, giving citizens an opportunity to broach a wider range of issues.
It was an opportunity quickly seized upon, as several residents took the floor to have their comments entered into the record.
“I live next to this landfill,” Bear Creek resident Rhonda Mabe said, referring to Volunteer Regional Landfill, otherwise known as Roberta Phase I, located adjacent to the proposed Roberta Phase II. “I see what goes into that dump,” she added. “I smell it. Why is this county taking in all this trash?”
As proposed, Roberta Phase II — which was applied for by Oneida businessman Johnny King and would occupy 24 acres of a 300-acre tract next door to the existing landfill — would accept solid waste from 10 counties in addition to Scott and McCreary counties.
Oneida resident Chuck Valentine agreed with Mabe.
“I would like to see Scott County take care of their own waste and let other places take care of theirs,” he said.
George Hyfantis, an engineer with Quantum Environmental & Engineering Services of East Tennessee, the firm charged with designing the proposed landfill, said the landfill would be built using state-of-the-art techniques, which would include two feet of compacted clay being used as the base, topped by a 60-mil. liner and a leachate collection system to prevent contaminated liquid from the landfill from seeping into the ground or nearby Bear Creek.
After the landfill is filled to capacity — estimated to occur in 2.5 years, after about 200,000 tons of waste have been deposited — the landfill will be capped with more clay and another liner.
But Hyfantis’s reassurances did little to squelch residents’ fears of water contamination.
“If you are going to construct a landfill, pick you a hole back in the hills away from where people live, where the drainage won’t come back to where people live and their towns,” McCreary County resident Robert Stephens said.
Stephens said cancer rates in Scott and McCreary counties are inordinately high. “That comes from this water down here and what you’re trying to do to it,” he said. “Let’s do something to improve the lifestyle around here.”
Oak Ridge resident Frank Hensley, a long-time advocate of the Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area, said Bear Creek “is just starting to recover from one of man’s follies, and now we’re going to go and start over again … TDEC should’ve stopped this a long time ago.”
The landfill, which has already been tentatively approved by TDEC, proposes to fill several hundred feet of stream — described by engineers at the earlier hearing as more of a wet-weather conveyance than a stream — and nearly one acre of designated wetland.
“I don’t like the fact that we’re so ready to destroy a wetland,” Oneida’s Myra Marcum said.
McCreary County resident Linda Blankenship agreed.
“There are three basic things required for living: good air, good water and good food,” she said. “If we destroy our water we have destroyed our livelihood and our lives.”
For Oneida Vice Mayor Cecil Anderson, the concern was the nearby Bear Creek Recreational Complex, which houses several baseball and soccer fields slated for a grand opening this spring.
“We spent a lot of money on soccer and baseball fields and we’re gonna have a landfill that brings in garbage from everywhere,” Anderson said.
Not all of the comments were negative. Former Huntsville alderman Wesley Riggins said issues with poor groundwater in Scott County predated the construction of local landfills.
“This is a case of ‘not in my backyard,’” Riggins said. “We have to put a landfill somewhere.”
Himself a cancer survivor, Riggins went on to say that he didn’t feel his cancer “had anything to do with this stuff.”
TDEC spokesperson Tommy Himes, who moderated the discussion, said that his agency is required by state statute to issue a permit for the landfill if no technical information is received to indicate a reason why the landfill should not be granted.
Steve Owen, superintendent of the McCreary County Water District, said that local wastewater treatment plans cannot handle contaminated water from the landfill that would have to be treated.
“From a utility standpoint, we are very concerned about this,” he said. “We are against it.”