Landfill developer says rail trash would be in sealed containers
Plus: A look at what county employees' salaries will look like with pay raises, and Scott High football will host a fundraising auction on Friday
Good Thursday evening! This is The Weekender, a final look at this week’s news from the Independent Herald. The Daybreaker (Monday) and The Weekender (Thursday evening) are our two news-first newsletters. We publish several other newsletters throughout the week, as well as our regular E-Edition on Thursday and our Varsity E-Edition on Sunday (during sports season). If you’d like to adjust your subscription to include (or exclude) any of these newsletters, please do so here. If you haven’t subscribed, please consider doing so!
Today’s newsletter is sponsored by Buckeye Home Medical Equipment. Serving Scott County and several other communities in the Upper Cumberland region, Buckeye is a full-line DME providing home health equipment to its patients.
Landfill developer says trash will be moved in sealed containers on rail cars
Knox Horner, the developer who is the face of efforts to build a new landfill in Oneida, said Wednesday evening that a transfer station that has been proposed for a site on Poplar Lane in Winfield is “not a dump,” explaining how the process of transferring trash from rail to trucks will work.
“Sealed Conex containers will arrive by rail car, be offloaded with heavy equipment, loaded onto a frame and then hauled on our internal road to the landfill working face,” Horner said. “At this point the containers will be cracked open, dumped via a tipper and the empty closed containers returned to the rail car.”
Conex (which is a portmanteau of “Container Express”) is a generic term used to refer to the familiar steel and aluminum cargo containers that are used in the shipping industry. The word is a throwback to military usage in the Korean War era, when the U.S. Army began using the shipping containers to move military supplies in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Horner is president and CEO of Capiche LLC, and is planning a Class I landfill at Bear Creek that will be adjacent to the existing Volunteer Regional Landfill. As reported Wednesday, a state permit has been applied for to build a transfer station along the Norfolk-Southern Railroad on Poplar Lane in Winfield.
Not surprisingly, revelation of plans for a transfer station have again rankled the community, and many have expressed concerns about the site’s close proximity to Winfield Elementary School. The site is a little more than a quarter of a mile away from the school — about 1,500 ft. It would not be visible from the school.
Residents turned out en masse at a Scott County Commission meeting last month to protest both the landfill and what at that time was a proposal to build the transfer station on the former Hartco property in downtown Oneida. Following the meeting, Horner said he was abandoning plans to build the transfer station in the downtown area. The Town of Oneida is planning a public hearing Thursday evening at Oneida High School.
Among the many concerns raised by residents is that trash will be spilled along the railroad if it is transported into Scott County via rail car. Horner said Wednesday that would not be the reality.
“While it may be true that Tennessee does not require tarping of rail cars, it’s not necessary because the railroad company does require the containers to be covered and contained,” he said. “It is a clean and safe environment. The rail bed is not a waste dump as falsely claimed but instead is a well-maintained asset of both Norfolk-Southern and our facility will certainly meet the standards as required by TDEC and by s in protecting and carefully protecting our assets.”
Horner said that the transfer station will move trash transport from highways to the railroad, which will be a positive for the community.
“There’s the benefit of reduced traffic on the roadways by using rail,” he said. “There will be less traffic than if it was being trucked in. There will be less pollution, less litter, better safety and more. It is our hope that folks will educate themselves about the working of a landfill.”
Trash is already being transported on the Norfolk-Southern Railroad. Waste Connections, the nationwide company that owns the existing landfill in Oneida, has a large transfer station along the railroad in Somerset, just off the Southeastern Bypass near Lake Cumberland Regional Airport.
Residents have also expressed concerns about the types of waste that would be disposed at the landfill. Class I landfills, like the existing Volunteer Regional Landfill at Bear Creek, are permitted to receive treated medical waste and byproducts of the sewage treatment process. Horner said opponents of the landfill are playing on a misunderstanding of what those items actually are as a “scare tactic.”
“The medical waste currently received at the landfill has been treated and is not a threat to human health or the environment,” he said. “As for the ‘human feces,’ that is wastewater treatment sludge generated by every POTW in the country. It is made up of microbes and other solids — all of which are nonhazardous and not a threat to human health or the environment.
“It would be difficult to identify a more thoroughly regulated business than ours,” Horner said.
Horner also said that the landfill would not be a threat to Bear Creek or the streams that feed into it and reiterated an earlier pledge that his company will work to improve the stream quality on the property it owns.
“Currently on the 700 acres there are abandoned strip mines that are a negative impact on the watershed,” he said. “We are committed to restoring those streams to pre-mining conditions at a significant cost to us. There is no burden on the taxpayers of Scott County. We are privately funding this work. The water quality from the site will improve, not be negatively impacted by the work we are committed to.”
Prior to the building of Volunteer Regional Landfill — which was originally known as Roberta Sanitary Landfill — in the 1990s, Bear Creek was considered one of the most polluted streams in the Big South Fork basin, due to the mining activity from decades earlier. That was considered a major detriment in the late 1980s when planners considered damming Bear Creek to build a reservoir that would provide water for Oneida.
Currently there are 16 Class I landfills in Tennessee that can accept household waste, including Volunteer Regional Landfill in Oneida. One of those 16 is set to close within two years when it reaches capacity.
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County employees set to receive 5.5% pay raise under new county budget
HUNTSVILLE | A 5.5% pay raise for Scott County employees in the proposed budget for fiscal year 2025-2026 will push the pay scale for new law enforcement officers to over $17 an hour, and for new paramedics to over $21 an hour.
The budget, which will be considered by Scott County Commission on two votes later this month, includes a 5.5% pay raise for all county employees. Elected officials are not included in the pay hikes.
According to Scott County Mayor Jerried Jeffers, the new hire pay scale will look like this:
• Deputies: $17.01 per hour
• EMTs: $16.18 per hour
• EMT-IVs: $17.41 per hour
• Paramedics: $21.02 per hour
• Clerks: $15.19 per hour
• Dispatchers: $14.70 per hour
• Corrections Officers: $14.70 per hour
Jeffers said that county employees are eligible for retirement through the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System, as well as medical insurance, dental and vision insurance, critical care insurance, and a $30,000 employer-paid life insurance policy. Deputies and corrections officers are paid via Tour of Duty pay as defined by the TN Dept. of Labor.
Employees also receive $600 per year in additional pay if they have an associate’s degree, or $2,500 for a bachelor’s degree or $3,000 for a master’s degree. There is also longevity pay, which begins after three years of employment and increases in increments beginning with employment year number six, 11, 16 and 20.
“When this budget is passed, employees will have received 16.5% in raises in budgets under my watch (as mayor),” Jeffers said.
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Scott High football to host fundraising auction
HUNTSVILLE | The Scott High School football program will host a fundraising auction at First Presbyterian Church of Huntsville on Friday.
El Rey in Oneida will provide a taco bar for the auction. The auction will be from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
According to Isaac Blakley, items to be auctioned will include:
Josh huepel signed football
Tony Vitello signed baseball
Dolly Parton signed photo
Melton hill bill striper charter
Power tools generously donated by 27 Supply, Lumberking and potters
A custom Scott high edition Dixie custom fishing rod
Gather coffee basket
Howdy coffee basket
Iron goose package
Engineered Fitness package
First national gear package
BSN Nike fan package
Scott High Store fan package
raezacks gift card
Rock house diner gift card
Marybells and Andy’s flower shop gift cards
Skin clinic spa package
150 dollar ink garden tattoo shop gift card
great Scott barber shop gift card and Tami’s nail shop gift card
Trails End two night KOA stay
Brimstone recreation annual riding family pass
Multiple pool passes to the Huntsville pool
Big South Fork Recreation package
Tommy’s Motorsports 150 dollar gift certificate and tie down straps
The Week Ahead
⛈️ Weather: Although we’ll start the day with mostly sunny skies and will be dry most of the day, thunderstorms will be likely this evening, beginning around 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Our area is under a “Slight Risk” for severe weather from the Storm Prediction Center. We’ll remain in an unsettled pattern throughout the weekend, with rain chances being likely each day. Check out our daily Eye to the Sky updates on our Facebook page — published each morning at 7 a.m. on the dot.
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📅 Community Calendar
• Saturday: The Scott County Farmers & Crafters Market will be open from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. — rain or shine. The market is located at 600 Scott High Drive, Huntsville.
• Saturday: The Bandy Creek Pool will be open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. today ($3, or $2 for ages 6-12). Huntsville Pool will be open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. today ($3). The Oneida Splash Pad is also open.
• Sunday: The Bandy Creek Pool will be open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. today ($3, or $2 for ages 6-12). Huntsville Pool will be open from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. today ($3). The Oneida Splash Pad is also open.
• Sunday: Celebrate Recovery, a 12-step program designed to help with addiction, co-dependency and domestic abuse, will be hosted by Fire & Purpose Ministries from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at 27192 Scott Highway in Winfield. There will be food, fellowship, praise and worship. Childcare is provided.
The Community Calendar is presented by Citizens Gas Utility District. Citizens Gas operates natural gas distribution pipelines in portions of Scott and Morgan counties. Visit citizensgastn.com.
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◼️ Monday morning: The Daybreaker (news & the week ahead)
◼️ Tuesday: Echoes from the Past (stories of our history)
◼️ Wednesday: Threads of Life (obituaries)
◼️ Thursday evening: The Weekender (news & the weekend)
◼️ Friday: Friday Features (beyond the news)
◼️ Sunday: Varsity (a weekly sports recap)