MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WKRN) — For nearly 40 years, Middle Point Landfill has loomed on Murfreesboro's northern edge, a ridge of waste visible from the highway and impossible to ignore on a hot day. Now, the city says the time for patience has run out.

City leaders have accused the landfill of being more than an eyesore, calling it both an environmental and public health hazard.

"People should be able to live five to seven miles away and not smell the landfill and also making sure our water source, our drinking source, is protected," Murfreesboro Mayor Shane McFarland said.

According to city records, Murfreesboro has logged more than 4,000 odor complaints and seven environmental violations in the past year. The city has also issued new notices under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, alleging contamination risks from leachate, the chemical-laden liquid that drains from buried trash. Officials said it contains so-called forever chemicals.

The landfills operator, Republic Services, does not dispute the numbers but disagrees with how the city is presenting them.

“Those are very important items for us, and we were already working on them at the time of those inspections," said Rob LaTourette, area president of Republic Services. "Those items have been put out in the public domain in a kind of dangerous way, frankly, and they've been sensationalized by the city to make it seem like we’re actively contaminating people’s water and air.”

The company also argued that the city also left out data that could add context and said the seven violations were minor and that no enforcement actions were taken.

McFarland sees it differently.

“Minor is not a minor violation when it is around your drinking water,” he said.

State environmental officials confirm the most recent citation involves leachate testing while the city continues to pursue litigation against the landfill. Republic Services said it plans to file a counterclaim that could ask the city to share the cost of cleaning up any contamination linked to forever chemicals.

LaTourette says his company wants cooperation rather than confrontation.

“This is the last thing we want to do as a business," he said. "It should be a collaborative effort that we work through to a resolution that makes sense.”

News Source : https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/murfreesboro/murfreesboro-landfill-fight-heats-up-after-new-environmental-violations/