March 18, 2025
By: Dwayne Page
For years the county has maintained an unmanned garbage collection convenience center in the Wolf Creek community at the intersection of Medley Amonette Road (Highway 96) and Old Buffalo Valley Road, but its located on the Tennessee Department of Transportation right of way and TDOT wants it to be removed.
During last week’s public works committee meeting, County Public Works Director Brian Reed raised the issue about whether the Wolf Creek site could eventually become a manned site. According to County Mayor Matt Adcock, Reed later checked with TDOT and the answer was not only no, but even the unmanned site there will have to go.
“The waste container can’t be on TDOT right of way and should be removed. It may be possible to purchase land from TDOT using the excess land program. I drew a line on the picture (attached) to show a possibility for purchasing excess land. Any entrance would have to meet TDOT’s driveway manual and would be difficult to have a safe entrance this close to the intersection,” wrote TDOT District 27 Engineer Bo Hoskins in an email correspondence to Reed.
The county has 11 manned convenience sites and Wolf Creek is one of three unmanned sites. The other two are at Temperance Hall and in the Austin Bottoms community. Of the fourteen sites, the county owns all but three, Snow Hill, Silver Point, and at Alexandria.
According to Reed, the state is making a push for counties to go to all manned sites and is funding grants for that purpose.
“The state has put a priority on grants for those sites and is funding up to $125,000 with a 10% local match per site and I would like to apply for some grants in next year’s budget to eventually get rid of our unmanned sites,” said Reed.
The county has not yet come up with an alternate convenience site location for Wolf Creek.