Street View is a monthly column in which we’ll take a close look at development-related issues affecting different neighborhoods throughout the city.
Southern Services Landfill, Waste Management’s 77-acre construction and demolition landfill, is in a tight spot. Until 2022, it received 90 percent of Nashville’s construction and demolition waste. Like many waste facilities in the United States, it borders a predominantly Black neighborhood — a neighborhood that has historically contained a disproportionate number of Nashville’s municipal sites. And now, it’s close to running out of space.
Throughout Nashville’s development boom, Southern Services’ intake increased. In the past 13 years, it took on debris from two separate natural disasters — the historic 2010 flood and the March 2020 tornado. In September 2022, after the Davidson County Solid Waste Region Board rejected WM’s proposal to expand, they closed the site to outside contractors. They’re currently appealing the Solid Waste Region Board’s decision. But unless Nashville drastically reduces its construction and demolition waste, there isn’t a clear solution in sight.
Don Gentilcore, area director at Waste Management, says limiting the amount of waste they accept was a “difficult decision,” but it was a better option than closing completely. Their proposed extension adds 17 acres to the site, which Gentilcore says would extend the facility’s capacity by 10 to 12 years. WM initially appealed the Solid Waste Region Board’s decision in chancery court, but their appeal was denied in March of last year. They’re currently fighting the decision again in appellate court. But in the meantime, they don’t have enough space for the volume of construction and demolition waste Nashville produces; by restricting outside carriers, they’ve eliminated 60 to 70 percent of their intake.
Southern Services Landfill
For non-WM contractors, Southern Services’ closure meant additional costs and logistical challenges. Phillip Nappi is the CEO of Vavia, a waste disposal company. In September, Vavia had to divert their trucks to new sites. “It was pretty scary there for a few weeks,” he says. “Luckily some sites opened up, but they’re double the price. It drives costs and inflation up, which is going to slow down growth in the local economy.”
According to the Solid Waste Region Board, construction and demolition debris makes up 23 percent of Nashville’s total waste. In 2008, Nashville produced about 180,000 tons of C&D waste, and recycled about 40,000 tons of other C&D materials. Over the next few years, C&D debris increased substantially. Nashville produced 432,065 tons of C&D debris in 2021, and recycled 13,928 tons. Southern Services accepted 390,315 tons of material that year.
Southern Services borders Bordeaux, where the Rev. Marilyn E. Thornton has lived for 30 years. “The dump has been a matter of contention the whole time,” she tells the Scene via email.
“Moving to Nashville, I noticed that even as this part of town included many African American citizens who would be considered middle-class (doctors, lawyers, teachers, professors), and who had built lovely brick homes, there were also many poor whites living here,” Thornton says. “This seemed to be the area of preference for the government to ‘dump’ necessary but NIMBY institutions like prisons/jails, dog pound, water plant treatment, potter’s field, county home/hospital for the sick, as well as an actual dump, for a long time.”
Bordeaux previously housed a landfill on County Hospital Road that accepted household waste. Advocates campaigned for its closure in 1996. In 2004, the city converted the closed dump to a wildlife area. But Bordeaux’s history has some residents wary of other municipal and waste management sites, which can cause additional disruptions and depress property values. When Southern Services applied for a different expansion back in 2003, then-Metro Councilmember Brenda Gilmore asked, “Is it fair to burden one community with all of these problems?”
Cecilia Olusola Tribble, a cultural educator and Thornton’s daughter, also lives in Bordeaux. She sees the Southern Services site as part of a larger history of environmental racism. “It has kept our economy depressed and limited the business that comes to Bordeaux,” she says, adding that “the added trucks mess up our roads,” making vehicle maintenance more expensive.
Southern Services Landfill
Nashville’s Zero Waste Master Plan aims to reduce the waste Nashville sends to landfills by 90 percent over the next 30 years. The plan has introduced regulations to C&D projects, like minimum recycling thresholds. Gentilcore says WM’s requested 10- to 12-year extension would give them time to adapt to new solutions, including increased recycling. “We can’t go from the landfills that exist to nothing immediately,” Gentilcore says. “There has to be a bridge.”
The master plan suggests that recycling more materials will “spur development of new C&D waste processing facilities — reversing the recent trend of declining C&D waste processing capacity in the area.” But even with that goal, the puzzle of C&D waste remains complex.
“I don’t foresee them ever having a direct-haul landfill in Davidson County,” says Vavia CEO Nappi. “Southern will be the last one. So transfer stations are going to be popping up. We’re going to have to deal with those, and this is going to drive up cost.”
Even with transfer stations in place, the debris still has to end up somewhere. David Padgett, associate professor of geography at Tennessee State University, researches waste and environmental justice issues. He points out that shutting down municipal waste sites doesn’t automatically solve underlying issues.
“It’s difficult to say that the solution is to spread the problem around,” Padgett says. “The true solution, which is kind of a utopian solution, is to ask, ‘Why do we create this much waste in the first place?’ That’s really the solution — to create less waste, to recycle, and to take waste materials out of the front end of the waste tree.”
