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By Shane Gilreath
When news of the Roberta II landfill first broke last May, I admit my first reaction wasn’t outrage like so many. It was something closer to a shrug. After all, I grew up around it. In conversation, if not in practice. I had an uncle who owned a waste management company. Garbage wasn’t some distant entity, in the family. My aunt even had a dog named “La Trash.” You get where I’m going. The topic was a common one. So when Roberta reared her head, part of me instinctively filed it away in that same category. Unpleasant, but necessary.
The more I learned, however, the more I researched and wrote, the less comfortable I became with my early shrug. The deeper I dug into the industry – its history, the environmental risks, the stories from communities across the country who have lived with the repercussions of these sites – the harder it became to call what was happening in Scott County “just business.” Concerns about water quality, long-term environmental degradation, and public health isn’t sensationalized journalism, nor is it speaking in hypotheticals. The cases deemed fearmongering by landfill supporters are well documented – by both media outlets and the courts. Many families have lived nightmares. For those in the wake, the damage from the waste industry lingers long after the trucks – or trains, as it may be – pull away. Somewhere along the way, my thinking on the entire thing dramatically shifted. More and more, I found myself wishing Uncle Barrett was still here, because I have serious questions and you don’t get that chance to ask them once someone’s gone.
Uncle Barrett liked to joke with me when I was a kid, but I’m not sure either of us would be laughing about what’s happening under our noses or what happened in Nashville last week. Sitting in Hearing Room 1, watching the proceedings unfold, I realized the shrug I once had wasn’t mine alone. It had simply been elevated to legislators. The cry of “it’s just business” had been dressed up as legislative reasoning. What was happening in that room didn’t feel like policy. It felt more like an exchange, which seemed more and more real as we progressed into Holy Week to study the greatest betrayal mankind has ever known – that of Judas.
Thirty pieces of silver is the number history remembers, though the exact sum is almost irrelevant. The truth is that it wasn’t much. It rarely is. In our modern version, the currency may look different in the sad world of politics – campaign support, industry backing, promises whispered in hallways, different bills, lobbyists in bathrooms, as Rep. Bud Halsey indicated – but the transaction feels eerily familiar.
These proverbial silver coins were evidently enough for some legislators to turn their backs on Scott County, but Scott and McCreary Counties have made their will known. They’ve spoken plainly. Roberta isn’t wanted, yet the voices of the people were set aside. Horrifying when you think about it.
That’s not to say everyone followed that path. There are names that deserve to be spoken with gratitude: Representatives Clay Doggett, Aftyn Behn, Monty Fritts, Johnny Shaw, Ron Travis, Greg Vital, and maybe Scott County’s newest adopted son, Justin Jones. They were an unlikely coalition on paper, spanning different political parties and ideologies, yet somehow they united in a single act: to stand with Scott County and to hear her voice. As much time as I have spent in politics, I’ve always said, “it’s so easy just to do the right thing.” And it is. That’s the part that always stings the most. Not just what felt like the betrayal of Scott County’s will, but just how very little it took. How fickle people really are. How avaricious.
Because of that, what surrounded the clarity of some committee members was something harder to swallow. It’s the game. By their own admission, lobbyists swarmed the capital. Not metaphorically. Literally. Following legislators from room to room, even into the restroom. It raises an obvious question: what kind of desperation drives that level of pursuit?
We already know. The answer, of course, is money. Sitting there, it was hard to escape the sense that the decision had already been made. That somewhere, long before any vote was ever cast, the price was settled. For whatever goes with it and whatever it buys. Nor is it small money, but an industry with billions and the rest of us be damned.
And in Hearing Room 1, when the moment came, some turned. Just like Judas. We can only speculate why. But I think we can say for certain that they didn’t turn just on HB2022, but on a people. On Scott County. On McCreary County. On people just looking out for their families. The very people that just weeks earlier, Rep. Chris Todd had called a “mob.” It was easy for him to dismiss and move past the very people he had mischaracterized. Harder still to ignore the moment when he literally ran from a Scott County resident seeking answers. If you are willing to condemn a people in public, the least you owe them is the courage to face them, but betrayals rarely come that way. They come in pretty packages wrapped in rules and procedures, in time clocks and rearranged agendas. But if you’re paying attention, you can probably still hear the subtle sounds of silver hitting the table. Judas Iscariot. And all you’re left to ponder is just how cheap you were sold.