Scott County renegotiates host fee agreement with Volunteer Regional
County government will receive increased revenue from existing landfill at Bear Creek
HUNTSVILLE | Scott County will soon begin receiving more money for trash placed at Volunteer Regional Landfill.
That is the result of a renegotiated host fee agreement with Waste Connections — the owner of the landfill — that the Scott County Solid Waste Board approved earlier this month, following discussions between representatives of Waste Connections and Scott County Mayor Jerried Jeffers.
Host fees are commonplace in the private landfill industry. They represent payments made by a landfill operator to a host community for the right to locate and operate a landfill there. Volunteer Regional has operated in the Bear Creek area north of Oneida since the late 1990s, when it was started by late Oneida businessman Johnny King and originally named Roberta Sanitary Landfill.
Host fees are different from tipping fees, which are what waste haulers pay the landfill to dump waste. Host fees are negotiated between the landfill operator and local governments in the communities where they’re located. They can include direct cash payments per ton of waste, and sometimes other community benefits. In Tennessee, final approval of host fee agreements lies with regional solid waste boards, like the Scott County Solid Waste Board.
Waste Connections pays host fees to both Scott County and the Town of Oneida. Under the existing agreement, a five-year agreement signed in 2020, Waste Connections pays 85 cents per ton to both the county and the town.
At Monday’s meeting of Scott County Commission, Mayor Jeffers said that the Scott Solid Waste Board approved the new host fee agreement when it met in special session on Monday, Oct. 6. At Monday’s meeting of County Commission, commissioners voted to put the minutes of that Oct. 6 meeting to record. However, as clarified by Mayor Jeffers and 4th District Commissioner Kenny Chadwell, County Commission was not taking formal action on the host fee agreement itself. Jeffers likened the solid waste board’s unilateral authority on that matter to the Scott County Beer Board, which is authorized by the state to consider beer permit applications without a stamp of approval from County Commission.
Jeffers said at Monday’s meeting that the county’s current agreement with Waste Connections was set to expire Dec. 31, and the county had a July 4 deadline to request a renegotiation of that agreement. Otherwise, the existing agreement would have simply renewed for another five years. Jeffers said he submitted a letter informing Waste Connections of the county’s intent to renegotiate the agreement on June 16.
Under terms of the renegotiated deal, a 10-year agreement, Waste Connections will increase its price per ton by five cents per year for each of the first three years, then two cents per year for each of the last seven years of the deal.
In other words, Waste Connections’ fee to Scott County will go from 85 cents per ton to 90 cents per ton in 2026, then to 95 cents per ton in 2027. By 2035, the final year of the agreement, Waste Connections will pay Scott County $1.14 per ton — an increase of 34% over a 10-year period.
The new agreement is otherwise unchanged from the previous agreement, Jeffers said, except that the new agreement contains a provision that “if a second landfill comes into Scott County, all will be treated the same … no special treatment.” That is a nod to the possibility of a second landfill adjacent to the existing landfill that has been proposed by Chattanooga-area investors. The much-protested plan has yet to receive a final okay from the TN Dept. of Environment & Conservation.
Jeffers said that Scott County has been able to do “pretty spectacular things with host fees,” adding that the money received from Waste Connections enables the county to employ three people at the county-owned recycling center in Huntsville, employ a “litter person,” and operate the recycling center, which is open six days per week for residents to dispose trash free of charge, with the exception of tires, which carry a disposal fee.
The mayor added that Scott County traditionally budgets $230,000 each year in landfill host fee revenue. However, he said the incoming revenue has increased steadily since 2020, and last year topped out at $329,000 — an increase he attributed partially to clean-up from the tornado that impacted the southeastern Kentucky towns of Somerset and London.
“What we managed to do other than cut the budget, like we’ve been doing, is we took that host fee and reclassified four employees,” Jeffers said. “We used the host fee money to pay their salary.”
Jeffers said that reclassifying the employees also enabled County Commission to give a 5.5% pay raise to all county employees without increasing the property tax.
Under state law, landfill host fees must be used for solid waste-related purposes. Jeffers said that can be a fairly ambiguous rule, however. Because the county’s volunteer fire departments will be called upon in the event of a fire at the landfill, he said, the host fees can be used to provide contributions to help fund the fire departments.
“I have no war with the existing landfill we currently have,” Jeffers said. “I expect TDEC and EPA to do their job.”
Not having a landfill, the mayor said, would be costly to Scott County. He pointed to Morgan County, which does not have a landfill for residential or commercial waste. Instead, it operates nine convenience centers and a transfer station, and disposes most of its waste at Volunteer Regional Landfill.
“It’s taken years and millions of dollars for Morgan County to secure what they have,” Jeffers said, adding that it costs Morgan County taxpayers $1.6 million annually to run the county’s solid waste program. He also pointed to Pickett County, which pays $95 per ton to haul its trash to a landfill in Clay County.
If Volunteer Regional Landfill did not exist, Jeffers said, it would mean a 15-cent property tax increase for Scott Countians to truck local garbage to a landfill somewhere else.
Based on the $329,000 received in host fees in fiscal year 2024-2025, somewhere around 387,000 tons of trash was disposed of at Volunteer Regional during that 12-month period. Under the new deal, the same amount of trash would generate $441,247 by 2035 — an increase of about $112,000.
“I feel that we have secured a deal that is good not only for the citizens of Scott County but also for county government to keep us moving forward,” Jeffers said.
Early in Monday’s meeting, Oneida resident Jennifer Shockley asked commissioners to table the host fee agreement for further investigation and consideration, adding that some other communities where landfills are located receive more money in host fees than Scott County does.
However, as pointed out later by Jeffers and Chadwell, the host fee agreement was approved by the Scott Solid Waste Board on Oct. 6; County Commission’s vote on Monday was merely to approve the minutes of that Oct. 6 meeting.
Commissioners also heard Monday from William Murphy, a resident of Winfield, who said he would like to be considered for future vacancies on the solid waste board.