Landfill fight next moves to Town of Winfield
Winfield Board of Mayor and Aldermen to meet Tuesday afternoon. Like Scott County and Oneida, however, it does not appear the town can stop the proposed landfill or transfer station.
Opinions have been voiced against a proposed landfill at Bear Creek in front of Scott County Commission and the Town of Oneida’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen. Next could be the Town of Winfield’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen, which meets Tuesday afternoon in regular session.
While none of the three local government entities are backing the proposed landfill, and none are responsible for permitting the landfill, local residents have made their opinions loud and clear — first at a meeting of County Commission last month, then at a public forum hosted by the Town of Oneida on Thursday.
The proposed site of a rail transfer station to serve the landfill is located on the southern edge of the Winfield city limits, along Poplar Lane. However, it does not appear that Winfield has zoning regulations in place that would prevent the transfer station.
Trans-Rail Waste Services has applied with the TN Dept. of Environment & Conservation for a permit to build a transfer station along the Norfolk-Southern Railroad at Poplar Lane, on a parcel of property owned by Bearcat Properties Inc. That company owns most of the 700 acres of land being considered for the new landfill.
According to developer Knox Horner, who has become the public face of the landfill proposal, trash would be shipped to Scott County in sealed containers, offloaded onto trucks at the transfer station for the final distance into the nearby landfill, where the containers would be opened and emptied.
State regulations require transfer stations to be located a minimum of 500 feet from the nearest residence. There is a residence on Poplar Lane approximately 300 feet from the entrance to the property where the transfer station is planned; however, that parcel of property extends several thousand feet further north along the railroad. The location is three-tenths of a mile — 1,500 feet, or five football fields laid end to end — from Winfield Elementary School. For the sake of comparison, McCreary County Middle School is about the same distance — 0.33 mile — from a transfer station operated by McCreary County on Cabin Creek Road in Stearns.
Winfield’s board meetings begin at 1 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that transfer stations must be located a minimum of 1,500 feet from the nearest residence. The correct distance is 500 feet.