Residents turn out to be heard as Solid Waste Board prepares to submit letter of opposition to proposed landfill

🥜 IN A NUTSHELL: The Scott Solid Waste Board could not take formal action on Monday due to a lack of a quorum, but county attorney John Beaty will consolidate three letters that had been submitted for the board’s consideration into a letter for County Commission to consider when it meets on Aug. 18. The Solid Waste Board will then meet on Aug. 25 to consider the letter. While the Solid Waste Board can submit a letter opposing the proposed landfill at Bear Creek, it does not have the authority to reject the landfill; permitting authority for landfills rests with TDEC, which has a history of overriding opposition from local governments.

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HUNTSVILLE | Dozens of residents opposed to a proposed landfill at Bear Creek turned out to protest the idea at the quarterly meeting of the Scott County Solid Waste Board here Monday morning.

Made up of volunteers, the Solid Waste Board is normally an out-of-sight and out-of-mind part of county government that deals with rather mundane matters, but it has been thrust into the spotlight as fervor grows over the proposed landfill.

Monday’s crowd, many holding signs arguing against the landfill, filled the conference room at the Scott County Office Building to near capacity, and representatives of two citizen coalitions — Kathy Obrusanszki of Cumberland Clear and Cody Cox of the Transparent Bridge Initiative — took the floor to speak out against the proposal.

Ultimately, the Solid Waste Board could not act on any official business because a quorum was not present. Only three members were on hand, including Winfield Mayor Jerry Dodson, 7th District County Commissioner Tom Payne, and community representative Jimmy D. Byrd.

However, the only action that the board would have taken related to the landfill proposal was a letter to the TN Dept. of Environment & Conservation stating its position on the proposal. As it turns out, three different letters were written before the meeting for the board’s consideration: one, apparently, by citizen opponents of the landfill, a variation of that letter that was amended by County Mayor Jerried Jeffers, and one written by Oneida resident Ralph Trieschmann, whose Timber Rock Lodge neighbors the proposed landfill. All were different, but all stated the Solid Waste Board’s opposition to the landfill.

Scott County Attorney John Beaty said he would draft a letter that includes points made in all three letters that will be presented to Scott County Commission at its regular meeting on Monday, and a special called meeting of the Solid Waste Board has been scheduled for the following Monday, Aug. 25, to also consider the final letter.

“That’s all I can do at this point,” Beaty said.

Scott County is already on record in opposition to the proposed landfill, as part of a coalition of local governments that also includes the towns of Oneida, Winfield and Huntsville, along with McCreary County. The county has appropriated up to $20,000 for legal fees associated with its opposition to the landfill.

Ultimately, the Solid Waste Board does not have the authority to stop a landfill. The state statute adopted in 1991, which created municipal solid waste boards, tasks those boards with reviewing landfill permit applications. However, approval of the permits rests solely with TDEC, which has a history of overriding local opposition when it considers permitting new landfills.

Local authority in the landfill approval process was the point of the Jackson Law statute that was adopted by the state legislature in 1989, which requires approval of county and municipal governments where the proposed landfill is located once the county opts into the Jackson Law. Scott County and each of its three municipalities have opted into the Jackson Law this summer; however, it’s not clear that will have any bearing on the current landfill fight. Scott County originally opted into the Jackson Law in July 1989, and County Commission later voted overwhelmingly against a landfill at Bear Creek. However, that opposition was negated by a court, which ruled in 1992 that Scott County did not have standing to deny the landfill from being permitted. That court decision led to the creation of Roberta Sanitary Landfill at Bear Creek, which is known today as Volunteer Regional Landfill.

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There has been much discussion about the county’s Jackson Law opt-in expiring in 2010, weeks before a 24-acre landfill permit that is part of the current controversy was approved by TDEC. In response to a question from the audience during Monday’s meeting, Beaty said the county is preparing a legal argument that its participation in the Jackson Law never expired.

“The legal argument we are prepared to make is that Scott County Government adopted the Jackson Law in 1989,” Beaty said. “There should have been no expiration. We are pursuing that. We feel good about our standing. We are prepared to argue that Scott County has been under the Jackson Law since July 21, 1989.”

However, it’s still unclear what bearing that argument might have on the landfill battle. Although the approval of the 24-acre Roberta Phase II Landfill in 2010 came just after TDEC’s interpretation of the law to be that Scott County’s opt-in to the Jackson Law had expired due to County Commission not adopting a new resolution, TDEC said in February 2010 — as it was scheduling a public hearing on the Roberta Phase II application — that it was prepared to move forward with approving the permit. Under any interpretation of the law, Scott County was still under the Jackson Law at that time.

Ultimately, the landfill issue seems destined to be decided in court.

First, though, it appears the fight could drag on for months before reaching the legal stage. Knox Horner, the landfill developer who is pursuing the new landfill, is seeking to have the Roberta Phase II permit re-certified under his ownership. TDEC has not approved that re-certification and apparently will not until ARAP issues are addressed, although plans for addressing those issues were submitted to TDEC by Horner as part of his re-certification request. Separately, Horner has applied for a rail transfer station permit, which is also pending action by TDEC.

Earlier this summer, Horner pledged that construction would begin on the landfill by September — a goal that seems impossible for his group to achieve.

Recycling questions

The lion’s share of the discussion at Monday’s meeting centered on recycling initiatives, with both Kim Raia of the University of Tennessee’s County Technical Advisory Service and Tim Hedrick of the East Tennessee Development District on hand to assist with questions that were raised.

During the course of the discussion, County Mayor Jeffers revealed that the latest “diversion rate” for Scott County is 41% — meaning that an analysis found that 41% of waste produced by homes and businesses in the county is diverted away from landfills through recycling. That’s well above the 25% that is required of each county by the state. Jeffers said he’s optimistic the county’s diversion rate will reach as high as 43% next year.

Hedrick explained the process for determining the diversion rate, which he said relies on the participation of the landfill in reporting the volume of waste coming into its facility, and various large businesses in Scott County who return surveys distributed by the county, as well as numbers from the county-owned recycling center in Huntsville. That data is fed through what Hedrick called a complex formula provided by TDEC to determine the diversion rate.

There was some question about what items the county-owned facility will or will not accept. That information is available on the county’s website.

Jeffers said that the first step to encouraging more recycling is for schools to get involved. “You have to start with kids and work your way up,” he said.

Hedrick encouraged residents who are passionate about recycling to carry their concerns to their municipal governments, saying that other communities have found it key to promote recycling through the residential trash collection process by providing ways for recyclable items to be separated at the point of pick-up.

The state’s landfill crisis

Raia, whose University of Tennessee CTAS organization advises county governments across the state, explained at length about the general landfill discussion in Tennessee since the 1990s. She said the state was “a lot more concerned” about landfills in the ‘90s “because we weren’t doing 21st century practices” of containing waste. A lot of counties got out of the solid waste business at that time, she said.

Although Raia didn’t say so, Scott County was among those counties that got out of the solid waste business in the ‘90s. The county-owned landfill at Sulpher Creek closed for good in 2000. Although it was slated for closure as much as 10 years before that due to nearing capacity, the county balked at building another local landfill due to extremely high costs that would have been associated after the state adopted requirements adopting the “21st century containment practices” that Raia referred to. At one point, in 1991, it was estimated by then-County Executive Denny Lowe that a new county-owned landfill would result in Scott County’s property tax rate doubling. Ultimately, the newly-formed Solid Waste Board formulated a plan for placing convenience centers throughout Scott County, as well as a transfer station at the Sulpher Creek site. Those facilities were approved by TDEC, but were never built because they were deemed unnecessary after the Roberta Sanitary Landfill was permitted. The cost in 1991 was expected to be more than $1 million up front, then $750,000 per year to collect and truck Scott County’s trash to landfills outside the county.

In recent years, Raia said, there hasn’t been much discussion about landfills. That is changing, she added, due to what she called “complications with permitting landfills.” She specifically mentioned the Middle Point Landfill in Murfreesboro, which takes trash from “30 counties at least” in Middle Tennessee, including all of the Nashville area. The City of Murfreesboro was successful in opposing an expansion of Middle Point, which could close within two years without an expansion. The fight is not over, however, as Middle Point is now seeking an expansion in Rutherford County outside the city limits. Scott County and the other governments that are part of the local coalition have retained the attorney who led Murfreesboro’s fight.

“The brutal fact of it is that we do need landfills,” Raia said. “We need well-managed, well-run landfills that are compliant with the law. There’s no way around that. We can’t recycle everything. The question for every community is do we want to be the community to host that landfill?”

That question is the one Scott County is currently grappling with — though the answer seems to be nearly unanimous, with every local government and an overwhelming majority of residents opposed to a second landfill here, even as significant questions remain about how or if the landfill can be stopped.

Missing records?

One of the citizens’ groups formed to oppose the landfill, Cumberland Clear, said last week that it has requested the meeting minutes from Solid Waste Board meetings in the late ‘00s — preceding TDEC’s approval of the Roberta Phase II permit — but they could not be provided because they had been destroyed by a prior administration.

The state addressed the missing minutes during an audit of the county’s Solid Waste Department in 2020. In an audit finding over missing receipts and records, which had been self-reported by then-County Mayor Jeff Tibbals after he discovered the issue upon taking office in 2018, the TN Comptroller’s Office said that the issue had been addressed, and the county had put plans into place to correct the situation.

According to County Mayor Jeffers, minutes for all Solid Waste Board meetings since that 2020 audit are on file.