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Landfill Debate Far from Over

Roberta II Strikes Back with Appeal

By Shane Gilreath
SCN Contributing Editor
[email protected]

If Scott County thought Roberta II had ceased to sing its contaminating song, the controversial landfill proposal that has dominated news for more than a year found a new voice last week, when Roberta II formally appealed the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s (TDEC) April denial of the key Aquatic Resource Alteration Permit (ARAP). The appeal sets the stage for yet another chapter in a battle that has galvanized opposition throughout Scott County and McCreary County, Kentucky, whose drinking water stands directly in the path of any potential pollutants.
“We have the highest cancer rate in the nation,” Darlene Price told a December 2025 public forum in Kentucky. “And we have the highest cancer rate related to what’s called ‘forever chemicals.’”
As previously reported by SCN, forever chemicals – formally known as PFAS – include compounds such as PFOS that do not break down naturally in the environment. These chemicals, which have been the subject of major lawsuits in the United States, are commonly found in landfill leachate, the toxic liquid that forms when rainwater filters through waste. If not properly contained, leachate runoff can migrate into groundwater, rivers, and lakes, directly impacting local communities with Kentucky and the National Park Service’s (NPS) Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area directly in its wake. Because of that, both Scott and McCreary County – and their collective tourism bodies – breathed a collective sigh of relief with TDEC’s April decision, all the while expecting Roberta II to attempt to rise like a phoenix.
The first step of that rise comes with the attempt to appeal the ARAP, which follows a significant blow to the project on April 15, 2026, when TDEC’s Division of Water Resources denied the landfill’s application for both an ARAP and Section 401 Water Quality Certification. The agency’s ruling represented the strongest rebuke – along with a damning letter from NPS – the project has faced to date, concluding that Roberta had failed to demonstrate that its plans would avoid pollution, lacked adequate alternatives analysis, and did not provide sufficient mitigation for environmental damage.
The denial centered on plans to fill approximately 1,573 linear feet of unnamed tributaries feeding East Branch Bear Creek, along with nearly an acre of wetlands and a pond. To compensate for those impacts, Roberta proposed stream restoration work elsewhere in Scott County and the purchase of wetland credits. These credits are a form of trading system purchased by developers to offset environmental damage caused by their projects. This system ensures that, even when natural wetlands are lost to development, an equivalent environmental value is replaced, which has long been Roberta’s proposed solution.
TDEC, however, found those measures inadequate.
Among the agency’s most serious concerns was the potential for acid rock drainage. Both the proposed landfill site and the mitigation area sit atop geological formations known to produce acidic runoff, a longstanding problem in portions of the Cumberland Plateau where coal mining activities have historically disturbed the landscape. State regulators concluded that Roberta had failed to sufficiently evaluate the risk, raising concerns about possible long-term impacts to streams, wetlands, groundwater, and aquatic life.
TDEC also challenged the landfill’s design, particularly plans to route streams beneath the landfill through a French drain system, which ceases to be an acceptable solution for waste management. TDEC determined that such alterations would effectively eliminate the streams’ natural functions and could create pollution risks if the drainage system failed. Regulators noted that any future failure beneath an operating landfill would be difficult to detect and even harder to repair.
Another major point of contention involved alternatives. TDEC argued that Roberta failed to demonstrate that less environmentally damaging options were unavailable, noting that even among the alternatives presented by Roberta II, another location on the property appeared to have fewer impacts on aquatic resources.
With locals undertaking a long fight against Roberta, the April denial was celebrated by local officials and citizen groups who have spent months standing in opposition. Huntsville Mayor Dennis Jeffers called the ruling “a good day for Scott County,” while Cumberland Clear President Jennifer Shockley told SCN the TDEC denial was a validation for longstanding concerns regarding water quality, environmental degradation, and public health.
Yet Roberta’s appeal makes clear that the company believes the state – the NPS and the locals across two states who would have to live among the landfill – got it wrong.
In its appeal filing, Roberta argues that TDEC improperly interpreted its own regulations regarding practicable alternatives. The company contends that while other locations may theoretically exist, they are not feasible when costs, logistics, technology, and project objectives are considered. Roberta maintains that alternative locations would create significant delays and expenses that render them impractical under Tennessee’s regulatory definition.
The appeal also disputes TDEC’s assessment of the proposed French drain system. Roberta argues that the drainage design was evaluated according to existing stream mitigation guidelines and that, even if regulators determine the impacts are more severe than originally classified, the issue should be resolved through additional mitigation rather than outright permit denial.

Similarly, the waste company rejects the state’s conclusions regarding acid rock drainage, asserting that restoration activities at the proposed mitigation site would improve, rather than degrade, stream function and provide environmental benefits. The appeal further argues that questions regarding application fees could easily be corrected and should not serve as grounds for rejecting the permit outright.
The filing ultimately asks TDEC to reverse its decision and allow the controversial project to move forward, ensuring that one of the region’s most divisive environmental and political battles is far from over. The ARAP denial was already accompanied by another major ruling from TDEC, which determined that Roberta’s recertification request constitutes a major modification rather than a minor change. That finding potentially sends the project back through local approval processes, once again invoking Tennessee’s Jackson Law. Notable is that should TDEC stand by its original denial, Roberta would have no choice but to go back to local governments and seek permission, where Jackson Law and zoning laws might come into place. Officials, who formed the Scott-McCreary Environmental Coalition (SMEC) as a result of the proposal, have long indicated that no such permission would be granted.

For opponents, April’s decisions represented a major victory and a breath without the threat of toxicity. For Roberta II, who seem to not be deterred from building what could be the second largest dump in the nation in Scott County, it merely represented another obstacle in a long line of them. And now both parties wait while an appeal officially underway.