BFI has chosen to attempt to circumvent the normal statutory and regulatory obligations required by law and has filed an application with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (“TDEC”) for a significant vertical expansion of Middle Point Landfill. This vertical expansion requests placing a 70-foot high landfill on top of the existing landfill, adding an estimated 19 million tons of waste to the existing landfill. According to BFI’s projections, this would extend the site life of the landfill by an additional 14 years to 2046 and result in 39 percent more garbage being added to the landfill.
In filing this application with TDEC, BFI has circumvented the statutory process which allows for local review and public comment. In turn, BFI has effectively deprived the citizens of Murfreesboro and Rutherford County to weigh in on this vertical expansion, which is the very community this expansion would affect.
The Central Tennessee Regional Solid Waste Planning Board and the City of Murfreesboro, Tennessee filed this lawsuit Monday evening in the Rutherford County Chancery Court asking the Court to force BFI to comply with its legal obligations. This proposed expansion comes after the City has expressed numerous concerns regarding the environmental safety of the landfill on Rutherford County citizens. Most recently, the Middle Point Landfill received an alarming seven environmental violations in just the last year and the City has received more than 4,000 complaints related to odor at the landfill from the public portal. In the pending federal lawsuit against Republic and BFI, the City sent notices of additional and continued violations of the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act due to test results showing continued discharges of landfill leachate into the East Fork Stones River, which provides drinking water for Rutherford County and City of Murfreesboro residents.
No comments:
Post a Comment