Passing horse pens and front-yard goats on a winding country lane can make a city driver forget about Nashville. Lush green hills rise up from all directions as the Bordeaux suburbs slowly turn into back roads running alongside babbling creeks. At least three community clubs, the kind where neighbors meet for Fourth of July barbecues, are still active around here at Whites Creek, Little Creek and Scottsboro. The cicada chorus is loud. For decades, Nashvillians fed up with the urban hustle and bustle have moved over the river for something close to Briley Parkway but closer to nature.
The small-town energy also means neighbors talk. About 20,000 people live in the northwest quadrant of Davidson County from the Cumberland River to I-24 West, give or take a few square miles. The entire area is a single Metro Council district — District 1, by far the largest by area and home to much of the county’s undeveloped land. Recently they’ve been talking at local meetings and in Facebook groups about the sudden influx of red dirt, rubble and rock that’s collecting in piles, disappearing in backyards or tumbling down ravines across the district’s tightly knit neighborhoods. A few residents have even started counting the dump trucks that have become frequent travelers on the district’s quiet back roads. One resident once followed a truck into town to Ewing Drive, where a half-finished construction site prepped for 18 townhomes recently hit the market.
These rolling patches of hillside can look very different depending on the vantage point. Some see pristine country wilderness smartly converted into public land at Bells Bend and Beaman Park, occasionally spoiled by single-family homes, which get more sparse toward the county line. Parcels here sell at a relatively low price per acre, offering others the chance to bring in bulldozers and backhoes to build a modern estate. Anne Bohnett, a YouTuber whose Anne of All Trades account brings her family’s homesteading journey to 393,000 subscribers, set up her family’s property on a quiet hillside off Ashland City Highway a few years ago. Robert James Ritchie, better known as Kid Rock, built up his compound over the past 20 years, complete with a replica White House overlooking Knight Drive. He follows Barbara Mandrell, the legendary country singer who developed the neighboring Fontanel Mansion in 1988.
Tucked in the corner of District 1, one massive dump — the Southern Services Landfill, run by Waste Management — towers over Briley Parkway between the Ashland City exit and the Cumberland River. It’s a beast at 183 acres, a combination construction-and-demolition (C&D) material and recycling operation well-versed in working with state and local regulators. Beyond Southern Services, there are large regulated landfills in Clarksville and Murfreesboro.
In 2022, Nashville’s Solid Waste Region Board denied Waste Management’s request to expand Southern Services. Waste Management subsequently decided to close the landfill to outside contractors, sued the board, lost, and lost again on appeal in August 2023. Nashville’s 494-page solid waste plan briefly addresses C&D waste if only to say: We are producing a lot of this, we lack good options for disposal, and we are failing to recycle it.
Construction-and-demo fill has flowed from Nashville’s construction boom by the thousands of tons. When preparing a site for townhomes or apartments, contractors have to dig up earth, move it around and level it out in a process known as grading. They often hire other contractors to make the leftover truckloads of dirt and rubble disappear. Finding the cheapest and easiest way to get rid of debris has become an industry in itself.
“You call them, they bring you a dumpster, you have 30 days to fill it up, then they come and haul it off,” says a Nashville home builder who requests anonymity, citing professional concerns. “We know what we can and can’t put in dumpsters — things like paint or stains or anything flammable — and, to be a commercial dumper, you have to sign an agreement and understand your rights and regulations.” His company contracts a waste management service for 30 dumpsters across all its job sites. The service charges $600 per dumpster, including dropoff and pickup.
Two large properties between Scottsboro and Whites Creek are claiming protections as grading and construction sites while they take on loads of fill to spread across 30 or more acres. Several more appear to be following suit. Still others are eyed suspiciously by neighbors (and passionately discussed on Facebook) for existing in a seemingly perpetual state of construction.
“A lot of times they get these grading permits just as a guise to dump,” says Metro Councilmember Joy Kimbrough, who has represented District 1 since 2023. “If you go in some places in Joelton or Scottsboro, there are signs that say: ‘Dump here.’ Ever since I took office it’s been a major complaint from residents.”
Kimbrough has been drafting legislation that could allow closer government oversight on a property if there’s suspicion that it’s out of compliance with existing regulations.
“They’re wild in Ashland City when it comes to dumping,” Kimbrough says. “If they have a grading permit and I — or any councilmember — see something else is going on, this allows us to initiate a closer investigation. It’s more than what we have now, and it’s a little bit of accountability.”
Mounds of construction debris pockmark District 1. Residents identify the same two perpetrators as the most blatant examples of at-home dumping: a looming mass at 5250 Ashland City Highway and a steep roadside ravine at 5795 Old Hickory Blvd.
Thousands of cars pass Dirt Mountain every day. It sticks out among the modest 2- and 3-acre residential properties on Ashland City Highway. Barry Sulkin knows many of these neighbors and enjoys free passage in their driveways, where he frequently takes visitors on a “dump tour” of greater Scottsboro.
“We want them to stop dumping — that’s number one,” Sulkin says. “Number two, control the mud. Number three, remove all the illegally placed waste. Restore the land. Pay a penalty for violating federal laws and reimburse us for our legal fees.”
Barry Sulkin (left) and members of Tennessee Riverkeeper
A retired environmental scientist with the state who specialized in water regulation, Sulkin has lived in a secluded property deep in the Scottsboro woods since 1978. He helped kill the 840 North expansion in the 1990s and the Maytown development proposal aimed at Bells Bend in the 2000s. Sulkin is obsessive, effective and respected by the Scottsboro community. Unfortunately for C&D debris, fill dumping near Sulkin’s home has intersected with water regulation — his area of expertise — thus becoming his latest fixation.
Property owner Ricky Ray bought the Dirt Mountain site for $220,000 in July 2019 and turned it into a construction zone six months later. Permitting history shows that work on a tall cell tower — the property’s only visible structure — began in 2020. Ray secured a grading permit that May. Overhead satellite footage shows the site’s transformation from a wooded hillside into a bald dirt patch over the next two years. Ray maintains that the mountains of fill dirt and rubble are related to a cell tower access road that is still under construction. His grading permit covers the site through September 2026.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Ray tells the Scene. “It’s in litigation right now, so I can’t say much more than that.”
Neighbors teamed up with Tennessee Riverkeeper, a regional environmental group, to sue Ray last summer. When it rains, they say, water spreads Ray’s construction debris across nearby yards. Streams carry the dirt into Sulphur Creek, which runs muddy and drains into the Cumberland River less than a mile away. They accuse Ray of violating both the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act by operating an open dump that generates illegal discharge. The Tennessean covered the suit in October. Since then, Tennessee Riverkeeper attorney Mike Martin has been fighting Ray for discovery, hoping to peel back the private dumping industry they expect is operating on Ray’s property.
“We want to know where it’s coming from,” Martin tells the Scene on a sunny Tuesday, Dirt Mountain looming in the background. He’s tight-lipped like his opponent. “I want to be careful about my words — we’re trying to win this lawsuit.”
The right people can dump a C&D truckload here for $50 or $75, one local contractor tells me. Working with Waste Management a few miles down the road at the official Southern Services Landfill could cost five times that. Ray’s email, splashed all over permit documents, identifies him as an employee of Summit Constructors, a company specializing in grading and site prep bought last year by Jones Bros construction in Mt. Juliet. An in-house fill connection on Ashland City Highway can make work cheaper and faster than frequent trips across the county, especially for the extensive residential construction on and near Briley Parkway, Whites Creek, Clarksville Pike, Ewing Drive and King’s Lane. Shorter drives also mean less fuel and a better bottom line.
Plaintiffs must nail Ray down inside a regulatory jungle. Wiggle room between the local and state regulations that govern solid waste, landfills, debris disposal and grading have allowed Ray and other property owners to navigate bright lines that could cost them their permits. Inert materials, for example, are allowed under grading permits. Metro looks favorably on temporary disposal sites where fill can be dropped off or picked up between projects. Permanent C&D disposal can qualify a property as a landfill under federal law, requiring a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit and a Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan, both of which Ray has on file. Just because they exist doesn’t mean they’re sufficient or being followed, plaintiffs argue. Sediment continues to flow downhill. Their big complaint is that Ray has not done the required site assessments to evaluate Erosion Prevention and Sediment Control, a step required for properties draining more than 10 acres.
At times, state inspectors have agreed with the complaints, citing Ray over the past year for lacking proper documentation (including a site assessment) and insufficient sediment control. Bill Murph of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation also flagged procedural errors in required twice-weekly inspections carried out by Andy Travis Miles, a certified EPSC inspector.
Down the road, Sulkin recalls the various phases of the Barnes site, a 34-acre bowl where construction debris disappears down a cliff between Old Hickory Boulevard and Blue Berry Hill Road. The two roads form the lip of a steep ravine that drains like a sink into a few small waterways and eventually into the same Sulphur Creek that runs down to Dirt Mountain. The border of Beaman Park, a 1,678-acre natural area under Metro Parks, comes within a few hundred yards of the parcel known either as the Barnes Dump or the Barnes Fill Site, depending on whom you ask.
Asphalt and broken concrete mark small parking areas by the road. Robert Barnes purchased the property in 2019 for $22,500. Another name, Adam Barnes, and a phone number are handwritten on a folder in the weatherproof permit box. It’s full of reports by the same inspector who signed off on Dirt Mountain, Travis Miles, most recently dated May 16. Other than a missing Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan, Miles finds no problems with the site.
“No comment,” Barnes tells the Scene.
A permit box at the Barnes site
Miles could not be reached via contact information on a business card left with the reports, which identifies him as an employee of stormwater compliance company Greenrise Technologies.
Tennessee Riverkeeper’s lawsuit against Barnes is like déjà vu: violations of the CWA and RCRA, dirty stormwater runoff, insufficient mitigation measures.
It includes a statement from neighbor (and Tennessee Riverkeeper member) Joe Ingle, who says runoff endangers his land and livestock. Ingle, a well-known prison reform advocate in Nashville, says he has seen debris including “rocks, metal, dirt, asphalt, mattresses and other trash” disappear into the property. Photos at the Barnes site reviewed by the Scene show piles of rock that include metal rebar — a big no-no classified as a contaminant in C&D fill.
Starting in December 2020, Barnes operated the site under a general construction permit. Trouble came two years later after a neighborhood complaint brought a young TDEC environmental official named Laurel Jobe to the site. Her report, complete with photos, starts a long paper trail documenting issues with runoff and debris at the site. In December 2023, state regulators, notified of an impending lawsuit from environmentalists, sent Barnes a letter outlining three violations: no stormwater plan available, unpermitted material (wire, metal and a wrecked car) in the fill, and a lack of stream protections. The Riverkeeper lawsuit came Feb. 1.
While these two suits proceed in federal court, locals point out other sites around the area engaged in seemingly open-ended construction. Many see trucks turning down residential roads with full loads, then see them returning empty. They hear rumors and peek into neighbors’ yards. Farther down Sulphur Creek, Nathan Stone lets Sulkin park in his driveway. A short hike up to Stone’s property line offers a clear view into his neighbors’ backyard, which looks like an active construction site. The owner, David Hargrove, told Stone he was just widening the driveway. Steady dump truck traffic has outlived the project.
“He’s just taking waste from whoever, we don’t know who yet,” Sulkin tells the Scene between dump sites. Sulkin is convinced that a silver pickup truck, possibly Hargrove’s, is tailing him, and we pull into a church parking lot to let it pass. “We haven’t sued him. We can’t keep suing everybody. We’re going to let the first two percolate a little bit more.”
Apparently a few loads of old Titans gameday grass found its way from Nissan Stadium into another massive fill operation near Whites Creek. John Donelson IV — nine generations removed from the frontiersman who helped found Fort Nashborough in 1780 — bought the site seven years ago under an LLC. Two years later, he rezoned it from residential to agricultural, significantly expanding its legal uses. Donelson does not charge per truckload; contractors he knows come and dump here for free, Donelson tells the Scene. They’re helping shore up his hillside so he can build on top.
John Donelson IV’s property
Unlike Dirt Mountain, the fill appears to be genuinely graded — consciously shaped and flattened with heavy construction machinery and connected to a dirt path winding uphill big enough for a vehicle. He has a silt fence for runoff. Donelson is planning a field and a barn that blend into the hollow, but the full timeline is fuzzy. The next step is a clay layer and 6 to 8 inches of topsoil. It’ll be built when it’s done, he says.
“I don’t have to have a permit because I’m zoned agriculture,” Donelson tells the Scene. “Drive by and look at it. It’s better than it was.”
Meanwhile, pissed-off locals (Donelson lists their names) complain about the property on Facebook. Electrician Dave Harder, Donelson’s direct neighbor, has struggled to maintain niceties after living next to Donelson’s large construction site. He says the runoff affects downhill neighbors, while the noise, deforestation and heavy equipment near his property line have dramatically affected his quality of life. The two have recently gotten back on speaking terms — as engineers and surveyors probe their shared property line.
“I’m talking to him again, but not often,” Harder, who bought his property in 2006, tells the Scene in his backyard. “I said to myself, ‘How can this problem get better without us talking?’ I’ve been revolving my whole life around when they work and when they don’t. I’m just hoping time heals all this.”
The exact lines between landfill and open dump, grading and disposal, permanent deposits and temporary fill will likely be tested in court. Legal accountability for environmental violations is a luxury rarely available unless there’s someone resourced or dedicated enough to sue and someone knowledgeable and organized enough to bring together the right people.
“I could tell you seven places where this is happening — the problem with what they’re doing is that it’s legal,” says Nick Leonardo about C&D debris in the district. He represented District 1 on the Metro Council before Kimbrough. “Nobody else in Nashville has this problem; the city always looks to District 1 to absorb its growing pains. We have the most beautiful place in the world in Whites Creek and Bells Bend. This is what this country looked like 300 years ago. We’ve got bald eagles, we’ve got all kinds of wildlife, we’ve got insects and things that you don’t have anywhere else in this county. And the pressure is coming quick.”
A truck disappears into the Hargrove property in Ashland City
Northwest Davidson County — specifically Scottsboro and Bells Bend — has long fought attempts to transform the green countryside for profit. Leonardo puts the fill problem into a much larger context driving industrialization out of Nashville’s core. Leonardo mentions Roy T. Goodwin and Smyrna Ready Mix, the large-materials company sitting on property by the Jefferson Street Bridge. As a councilmember, Leonardo helped pass legislation requiring local approval before expanding a landfill.
The city has mostly stayed out of District 1’s dumping issue. Residents have harried public officials, including Mayor Freddie O’Connell, in community meetings, and successfully gotten a few Metro officials out to see the properties earlier this year.
“The owners are allowed to do what they are doing under a mass grading permit issued by Metro Stormwater,” explained Councilmember At-Large Burkley Allen in a May 12 email to Ingle and Sulkin. “It may take a change to Stormwater policy and getting something into the Code to provide the teeth needed to protect neighboring properties better.”
The other end of Nashville’s construction boom is truckloads of hard earth from whole neighborhoods ending and beginning again. A private LLC named Scottsboro Farms registered to site-prep company Demo Plus bought nearly 250 undeveloped acres in Scottsboro in early April, a sign that the private C&D disposal industry is growing rather than shrinking. The solid waste board’s decision to stop Waste Management’s landfill expansion protected an area already suffering environmental racism and degradation. It didn’t make less construction or demolition. In fact, real estate development has continued humming, especially around North Nashville and Bordeaux.
Contractors, hired to make debris disappear by the truckload, often take the cheapest and easiest ways out, sometimes involving unsavory solutions. While sites like the Barnes ravine or Donelson’s level dirt field differ in size and scope, neighbors see them as part of the same construction scourge disturbing the backwoods peace.
And the silt always flows downhill.
