Not everyone pleased with WastAway: Citizens concerned about possible long-term effects
Bouldin Corporation may have encountered the first significant obstacle in its WastAway project during the Health and Welfare Committee meeting Tuesday night – a small, but vocal, group of protesters who live near the former Aquatech building where WastAway will be located.
At the meeting, a Municipal Solid Waste Processing Agreement drafted by Bouldin Corporation was presented to the committee for approval in preparation for a vote by the full County Commission on Sept. 24.
The approval of that contract is essentially the final step needed before WastAway can begin operation Nov. 1.
WastAway’s Wade Sparkman was on hand and made an effort to alleviate any concerns the committee members and residents might have regarding the WastAway plant.
“We invited all the Tennessee regulators in,” Sparkman began. “They spent half a day at our factory where we had the system running.
“Glenn Pugh [Assistant Director of the Division of Solid Waste Disposal for Tennessee] saw the system eight years ago. Glenn is 100 percent behind it. Glenn’s even authorized us to give any city or county a certificate of 95 percent recycling with their household solid waste.”
Sparkman assured those present that regulations are in place to protect residents if there are any problems.
“Even the zoning codes protects the city,” he said. “Even though we don’t have any emissions from it, there’ll be no steam in the air, there’ll be no smell. Even if for some odd reason we did, your zoning codes are very strict on that, as far as this new building is involved.”
Committee chairman Wayne Pryor asked Sparkman about regulations at the state level.
“The state of Tennessee will be regulating us for the first year or two very closely,” Sparkman said.
Commissioners who had seen the process spoke in its favor.
“A group of us did go out there to see it in operation,” said commissioner Herb Wright. “There was no smell to it. It seemed to me to be a very clean operation.”
But all the positive comments failed to quell the reservations the Belair residents, represented by spokesman Ron Southard, had concerning the plant. The group had presented a petition against the WastAway plant at an earlier public hearing.
“When we came up here during the public hearing on Aug. 26,” Southard said, “there was close to 50 people here, and there was 144 signatures on that petition.
“We don’t feel we were represented very well at all in the commissioners meeting that followed. There were a lot of angry people who showed up at the public hearing and voiced their concerns about the quality of their life, and how it was on the brink of being changed.”
Southard went on to question whether any testing had been done to determine the long-term effects the process might have on the environment, while others expressed concerns about what a steady procession of solid waste disposal trucks might mean to the aesthetics of the neighborhood.
In the end, the committee decided to continue the decision for two weeks in order to give the county attorney time to study the issues involved.