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Dear Editor, Publishers, and Radio Partners,
I want to extend my sincere gratitude for your continued partnership in keeping Tennesseans informed. Your willingness to run my weekly column and air “Talkin’ the 12th” has provided an important platform to share updates on legislative issues, community priorities, and the work being done on behalf of the people of the 12th Senate District.
Local newspapers and radio stations remain a trusted voice in our communities. Your commitment to honest reporting and public service plays a vital role in connecting citizens with the information they need to stay engaged in our democratic process. I deeply appreciate your support, your professionalism, and your dedication to serving our communities week after week. It is an honor to work alongside media partners who care so deeply about informing and strengthening Tennessee.
Thank you for helping us communicate with the people we serve.
Sincerely,
Ken Yager
State Senator, 12th District
Dear Editor
Systemic Failure Risks of the ProposedLandfill
Where Systems Engineering Meets Common Sense
By Lisa Cotton,
M.Sc.Eng.
What does it mean to place what could become the nation’s second-largest landfill in a mountainous headwaters region shaped by steep slopes, disappearing streams, sinkholes, and underground water pathways?
As someone trained in engineering, I have learned to evaluate systems not just by how they work, but by how they fail. We are taught to assume Murphy’s Law: if something can go wrong, eventually it will.
With a proposal to store 80 million cubic yards of waste, we must ask a fundamental question: Can a system be considered protective when the waste may outlive the materials, the monitoring, and even the institution responsible for managing it?
Modern landfills are not fail-safe systems. They are risk-management systems. They rely on liners, drainage systems, leachate collection, monitoring wells, containment ponds, and long-term oversight to reduce the probability of contamination. But reducing risk is not eliminating it. That distinction becomes critically important over long time horizons.
All engineered materials eventually fail. Liners degrade, pipes crack, and sensors fail. Even under ideal conditions, these systems have finite lifespans due to chemical breakdown and physical stress. Yet the waste they contain, including heavy metals and PFAS, can remain hazardous for centuries or longer. This creates a fundamental mismatch. The contents outlive the container, and no amount of additional layering can fully resolve that imbalance.
A landfill is also a managed system, dependent on pumps, treatment, and oversight. Regulations often require monitoring for only a few decades, but the hazard remains for generations. Systems engineering asks: Who manages the system in year 100? Or year 200?
Corporations are legal entities that rarely last as long as the hazards they create. When a company is gone, the active management of the landfill disappears with it. Over time, infrastructure fails and maintenance costs rise. These are costs that a distressed community simply cannot afford to inherit.
In high-reliability industries such as aviation and nuclear power, systems with a single point of failure capable of causing catastrophe are rejected outright. In this case, the karst geology itself becomes that point of failure. Karst terrain is not solid ground. It is a landscape shaped by dissolving limestone, where water has carved hidden channels, voids, and underground streams. The ground can shift or collapse without warning. Our community has already seen this firsthand in the massive sinkhole that opened in the Lumber King parking lot, a visible reminder of what lies beneath our feet.
Now consider the scale: 80 million cubic yards of waste forming a massive, manmade mountain, placing continuous and increasing pressure on an already unstable foundation. This is not a temporary load. It is a long-term force that will act on this landscape for decades.
Federal regulations recognize this risk. Karst terrain requires special scrutiny because natural conditions can compromise containment systems. The denial of an Aquatic Resource Alteration Permit shows that water-related risks at this site are not theoretical. They are already being acknowledged.
The proposal relies on multiple liners as “defense in depth.” But redundancy only works when systems are independent. In karst terrain, they are not. A single geologic event can trigger what engineers call a common-mode failure, compromising multiple barriers at once. What appears to be redundancy may, in reality, be shared vulnerability.
Containment ponds and monitoring wells are often presented as safeguards, but they were designed for more predictable environments. In karst terrain, water moves quickly and unpredictably through underground pathways. Monitoring wells sample only isolated points, and contamination can bypass them entirely. By the time contamination is detected, it may already have spread beyond the site. Detection is not prevention, and in this setting, it may come too late to make a meaningful difference.
In safety engineering, protection depends on time: the time to detect, the time to respond, and the time to intervene. In karst systems, that window can disappear. Water and contaminants can move rapidly through underground channels, faster than institutions can respond. This creates a safety gap. When response time is shorter than the time it takes for harm to occur, the system is no longer controllable.
It is worth noting that the nation’s largest landfill is located in an arid desert, where water is scarce and the consequences of leakage are far more limited. That stands in stark contrast to a water-rich Appalachian headwaters region, where water connects everything.
Here, failure would not stay contained. Contamination could move through underground streams into springs, tributaries, and rivers, including the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area. It would reach wells and drinking water systems that families depend on every day. It would move downstream toward Lake Cumberland and beyond, affecting communities far outside our county. Groundwater contamination in karst is extraordinarily difficult to reverse, and the impact could persist for generations.
This project is proposed in a medically underserved and economically distressed region. From a systems perspective, that means limited capacity to absorb failure. The health, environmental, and economic consequences would not be short-term disruptions. They would be lasting burdens.
Normal Accident Theory tells us that in systems this complex and tightly connected, unexpected failures are not rare. Over time, they are inevitable. This landfill would combine unpredictable forces, including weather, chemical reactions within the waste, and the long-term settling of millions of tons of material. These forces interact in ways that are difficult to foresee. At this scale, the unlikely becomes expected.
First principles tell us that gravity is constant and materials degrade. Murphy’s Law reminds us that perfection is not realistic. Placing a long-lived hazard on top of a fast-moving water system upstream from drinking water and a national treasure violates basic principles of safety engineering.
The analysis may be technical, but the principle is not. When a system cannot be made fail-safe, you do not place it where failure would cause the greatest harm. The only fail-safe engineering solution is the rejection of the site. It is just plain common sense.
On a personal note, to my family, friends, and neighbors in Scott County and downstream Kentucky, I love you and I love our home. I turn sixty this year, and it has taken me a lifetime to fully appreciate how special this place is. I have traveled far, only to discover a simple truth: there is no place like home. I believe we are called to be good stewards of this land. What happens next is on our watch. The people of Appalachia have always been underestimated, but that does not define us. Let’s stand together now. Let’s protect this place so that our great-great-greatgrandchildren inherit a legacy of clean water and rolling hills, the same untouched beauty that was passed down to us.