In May, anonymous investors in Scott County announced intentions to purchase up to 700-acres of land between the towns of Oneida and Winfield on which they hope to build a landfill, complete with a rail transfer station for importing waste from beyond state lines.
Cody Cox was working on renovations to his home near Chitwood Mountain when he learned about the plans.
“And I thought, ‘man, that’s gonna be awfully close,'” Cox said.
He, along with several others in Scott County, began filing public records requests and asking questions of their local government officials. They wanted to know if there was any way to stop the development, and if it was even legal. They weren’t having much luck.
“It became serious,” Cox said. “And we realized that, unfortunately, if we wanted to stop this, us as citizens, we’re going to have to take up the fight.”
In the last three months, residents of Scott County and neighboring McCreary County, Kentucky have stood up in near-unified opposition to the landfill development. Angered by cut corners, government silence and the potentially devastating environmental impacts, they’ve chosen to take matters into their own hands.
Two community groups have emerged to amplify the voices of residents. The Transparent Bridge Initiative, co-founded by Cox, prioritizes providing as much information as possible to the public while delivering petitions to local governments. The other, Cumberland Clear, is seeking to raise as much awareness around the issue as possible, while simultaneously retaining its own legal representation.
Both groups have repeatedly reached out to their state legislators, the governor’s office, and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) for help. Cumberland Clear President Kathy Obrusanszki says the response is almost always the same:
“You need to reach out to your local government,” she said. “That’s the patent answer that we get.”
While the groups have received a nod of solidarity from State Senator Ken Yeager, who sent a letter to TDEC on their behalf earlier this month, they say they’ve had little luck with their State Representative, Kelly Keisling, or Governor Bill Lee’s office.
Residents ‘want to be protected’ from landfill
From the very beginning, residents of Scott and McCreary counties have said that they feel almost defenseless in their struggle against the landfill development. Many can’t understand why the county needs another one, as for nearly 30 years it’s been home to the 800-acre Volunteer Regional Landfill which still has decades of capacity.
The initial public backlash against the plans led to Scott County’s re-adoption of “The Jackson Law,” a Tennessee legal provision which allows counties to restrict landfill development. But the county’s lawyer, John Beaty, speculated it may have been too late.
All the same, the local municipalities and Scott County government banded together with McCreary County to form the Scott and McCreary County Environmental Coalition, a loosely-united body that seeks to oppose the landfill development.
Locals feel it was too little too late. The developers’ front-man, Knox Horner, said they were hoping to begin construction as early as September.
“We realized very early on that our local leaders were failing us,” said Cumberland Clear Secretary Jennifer Shockley. “We had two options: We could either give up or we could fight back. So we decided to fight back for our community.”
Cumberland Clear began holding community meetings at the Timber Rock Lodge outside of Oneida to figure out how they could raise as much awareness around the issue as possible. They’ve also retained a lawyer who says the legality of the landfill is dubious, at best.
“We are very clear on what we want,” said Alison Cowen, Cumberland Clear’s treasurer. “And we want to be protected. And they at least can’t say we didn’t know how everybody feels.”
Cox opted for a different approach. He says he wanted to do as much as he could to share public documents and get information out to members of the public so they could make their own decisions.
Keeping people informed
In 2022, Lisa Wojcik moved her family to Scott County from Buffalo, New York. She was drawn to the conservative values, open green spaces and small-town-living of the region. Plus, she was tired of living near a landfill.
After learning about the plans for a second landfill near her new home, she says she’ll do whatever she can to stop it.
“We moved to get away from all of that,” Wojcik said. “And there was no way I picked up and moved my kids, my family, after 18 years in the same house, to come and have to deal with the same thing with a landfill like that.”
Since May, Wojcik has prioritized attending government meetings. She livestreams them on Facebook so that members of the community can watch them from home, as the county and its local municipalities don’t provide access to meetings online.
In July, soon after the first meeting of the Scott and McCreary County Environmental Coalition, Cox and Wojcik decided to combine their efforts. They created a Facebook page called, “The Transparent Bridge Initiative,” where they livestream government meetings and post public documents.
“We wanted to bridge both McCreary and Scott County together in transparency,” Cox said.
Together, the two wrote a petition to TDEC pointing out flaws in the developer’s landfill permit application and asking the regulator to deny their recertification. They’ve gone door-to-door in both Scott and McCreary counties, and have hundreds of signatures.
“And we have a lot of teeth to this,” Wojcik said. “So it’s not just like, ‘here’s a bunch of signatures, we oppose this,’ because they already know that. This has points saying, ‘look at this, look at this, look at this law that says you’re not doing this the right way,’ and things like that.”
Their efforts have paid off. Steve Salter lives in the county, and says that the Transparent Bridge has helped him stay informed over the last several months.
“The work that I’ve seen that they’ve put into it, and the dedication that they’ve done, the due diligence that they’ve actually committed to this was very impressive,” he said.
Cox and Wojcik have also been advocating on behalf of the community to the state capitol. They’ve both made trips to Nashville to make contact with their state representatives and Governor Bill Lee. But they say they’ve had little luck.
The ‘patent answer’ is talk to your local government
Since Cumberland Clear first formed, they’ve asked state legislators for help. But they, along with Transparent Bridge, had little luck for weeks.
“You need to reach out to your local government,” Obrusanszki said. “That’s the patent answer that we get.”
The groups have reached out to their local government – many times – but say they remain consistently ignored or left out of discussions about the landfill. Plus, the decision on the landfill currently lies with TDEC, a state department beyond local control.
“We intend to get more vocal, certainly in Nashville, knowing that the TDEC itself is an executive branch entity,” said Ralph Trieschmann, a local businessman who works closely with Cumberland Clear. “So we intend to take this all the way up to Governor Lee’s office and back down again.”
Eventually, State Senator Ken Yeager sent a letter to TDEC asking the regulator to deny the landfill permits.
But their representative to the state house, Kelly Keisling, has had a different response.
“I got a call from his personal line, and was not very pleased with that conversation,” said Cox.
According to Cox and Wojcik, Keisling told them both over the phone that he “doesn’t get involved in local matters,” and that he’s “not gonna get out there on anything on that.”
“If you’re gonna sit here and just tell me it’s a local issue and you’re not gonna help us, then I’m going up the chain,” Wojcik said. “That’s just how it’s gonna be.”
On Monday, Keisling repeated his position to WUOT News, and said that even if he wanted to get involved nothing he could say or do would sway TDEC’s decision-making process due to their own internal rules. Cox isn’t satisfied with this response.
“If your community supports you backing them, then you don’t have nothing to worry about,” Cox said. “But like, because you’ve been scared out of taking action, then why are you even there?”
So far, Governor Bill Lee has remained publicly silent on the matter.
The fight isn’t over
Despite a lack of interest from their state government, Wojcik and Cox are confident that they still have a chance to stop the development of the landfill.
“We as a community, we the people, are the government,” Cox said. “We have the ability to make our voice known. We have the ability to say enough’s enough and put a stop to this.”
Recently, TDEC acknowledged that Scott County may have been opted into the Jackson Law when the developers originally applied for their permits. While they’ve yet to reject the application altogether, the Transparent Bridge Initiative sees it as a win.
“It’s not dead in the water,” Wojcik said. “I’m not gonna say it’s dead in the water until I see trash being taken … Then I might be like, ‘okay, maybe we might have lost this one.'”
Meanwhile, Cumberland Clear continues to make strides in its legal struggle. Nearly two weeks ago, Nashville-based environmental lawyer Elizabeth Murphy sent a letter to TDEC on the group’s behalf alleging that the entire permit application is illegal, and that it bypassed the lawful local approval process.
“They’ve made mistakes,” Obrusanszki said at the time. “And luckily, we’ve done the research to find those mistakes. So we intend to get all of our community behind us and push this and win.”
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