Waste board denies request to expand Bordeaux landfill

Residents cheer decision, company ponders next step

By Cynthia Coleman Franklin and Anthony Pennington
Diversity Institute Fellows

07.28.04

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Spurred by vocal residents and supporters of the Bordeaux community, the Metro Solid Waste Regional Board rejected a plan Tuesday night to expand a controversial landfill in that neighborhood.

"We want things better for our children," resident Carolyn Broyles told board members before a roll-call vote was taken. "My 14-year-old son had two operations. His asthma may be due to the landfill. It should be closed!"

Broyles was one of more than 150 people attending the board meeting at the Howard School Auditorium. Most came to protest an application by Waste Management Inc. to convert six acres of wetlands into part of a landfill that now covers 58 acres. Under the proposed application, the landfill's dome would have stood 30 feet tall when completed.

But the board sided with opponents in a 6-3 vote.

Board member Ray Throckmorton, who voted against the project, said too many legal uncertainties remained about the landfill.

"We should take the time to dot the 'I's' and cross the 'T's,'" Throckmorton said.

Last May, a group of residents calling themselves Bordeaux is Beautiful filed suit against the landfill, contending that their neighborhood was being used as a dumping ground, according to published articles. The group asked the court to void a state permit allowing expansion of the Waste Management Southern Services construction and demolition landfill, which is located at 4651 Amy Lynn Dr.

"Seems like every objectionable thing they have, they put it in Bordeaux," Mona Kelley, a Bordeaux resident for 29 years, said referring to a youth juvenile detention center and a women's correctional facility also located in the north Nashville neighborhood.

Many of the people attending the meeting had to stand in the hallway. They included elderly residents who endured the stuffy sauna-like room temperature throughout the four-hour meeting. But when the vote was taken, they cheered the decision to block the permit.

Glenn Youngblood, Waste Management's director of landfill operations, was visibly frustrated with the outcome.

"I will talk with legal counsel and figure out our next step," he said after the vote.

The board had initially approved the landfill plans in May 2003. But after the residents filed a lawsuit, a decision on the expansion was postponed and a judge later ordered the board to re-evaluate the case.

During Tuesday's meeting, company officials and their public relations representatives showed a video and displayed charts and maps hoping to persuade board members to grant the permit.

Waste Management officials noted that the landfill occupies only one third of the 178 acres the company owns near Bordeaux. They said the new plan would have filled in a six-acre gap between two mounds of construction and demolition waste currently on the site and was intended to create a 30-foot dome to promote drainage in the region.

"We think it would be foolish to squander that property," Youngblood said, adding that the company merely wanted to close that gap and then exit the site.

However, environmentalists and residents complained that filling that gap would sacrifice precious wetlands.

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