How does the solid waste department operate in DeKalb County?

March 28, 2023
By: Dwayne Page

How does the solid waste department operate in DeKalb County?

County Mayor Matt Adcock has issued a prepared “educational statement” to provide more information to the community on the issue including a decision he made last fall to establish new operating hours for the 12 convenience sites and having them all close on Sundays.

Some want the Sunday policy changed to better accommodate the public.

The following is County Mayor Adcock’s statement to the community in its entirety.

“Our new operating hours for the convenience sites are 9am to 6pm Monday through Saturday. These hours are to provide better availability for the largest amount of the community. Although we know that this will not be a perfect fit for some of our citizens, we do believe it fits for the most amount of people. We have heard a lot of satisfied citizens on how this schedule has helped them. The schedule is based off of the most used work schedules. People working a first shift job normally get off work in the hours of 4pm or 5pm. This is why the sites stay open till six. To give people an hour or two to get home and dispose of their waste. Second shift job employees can utilize the time from 10am till noon before they go into work. And then third shift job employees have time to go home and collect their trash to dispose of at 9am. Again, we do know it can’t be perfect for everyone, but we have tried to make it as convenient as possible for the most amount of people,” said Adcock.

“The transfer station that is operated by the Capital Waste Company also accepts trash at all times of operations. This transfer station is where all DeKalb County trash is taken. The trash is then shipped to the landfill located in Dayton, Tn. DeKalb County does not have an operational landfill anymore. Although the transfer station weighs trash for large industrial trash and charges companies for dumping there, citizens’ that are there with a reasonable amount of household trash can dump there for free. It is only charged if it is a large amount that is more than the average household would accumulate in a week,” Adcock continued.

“The transfer station is open from 6am to 2:30pm Monday through Friday. The Capital Waste Company does close their operation on Saturday and Sunday. It is open to the public, industrial companies, and commercial companies. The transfer station is located on Transfer Station Road, which is centrally located in the county. It is behind Tenneco off of Sparta Hwy just after the animal shelter. So, technically there is a way to dispose of household trash from 6am to 6pm in DeKalb County Monday through Friday. Saturday’s convenience sites are open from 9am to 6pm for the people that could not make it through the week. This weekend day alone causes a back up in the flow of the system,” said County Mayor Adcock.

“In further discussion, we see that Capital Waste is the company that transports the trash out of DeKalb County. Without their operation, trash accumulates at the transfer station and the convenience sites waiting to be removed from our county. Again, Capital Waste is closed on Saturday and Sunday. This creates an issue for DeKalb County. We try to dump all we can on Friday to prepare for Saturday so that it can hold us over till Monday when Capital Waste reopens on Monday to transfer the trash away. Before, when we were open on Sunday, our convenience site dumpsters were completely full and citizens were being turned away because of the trash that had accumulated. The other surrounding counties around us are all closed on Sundays, so their citizens would come and throw away their trash here as well. The trash would be falling on the ground of the convenience sites and falling out of moving trucks littering our county because of the overloaded trucks. Full dumpsters sat at the transfer station waiting to be taken from Saturday. And every dumpster in the county is full waiting to be emptied. Then on Monday the entire system would be extremely behind trying to catch up from the overloaded system. Many made the comment to just not let people without DeKalb vehicle tags enter the convenience site to mitigate the out of county people, but some people from other counties have tags from their primary residence but have a secondary home here and still pay DeKalb property taxes. Many employees made the statement that they would like Sundays off with their families. So, because of the logistical nightmare of keeping the operation open with the combination of giving our employees at least one confirmed day off without even having to worry about someone calling out so they have to go in, we made a decision to close all operations down on Sundays,” said Adcock.

“This decision worked just as planned. The employees are happier, and the operation of transferring trash has ran so much more smoothly. We no longer have out of county citizens filling up our dumpster cans. This saves us so much money alone. The county pays an average of $55 a ton to dispose of the waste. In the month of November, the county paid $99,148 in just that month alone on disposing county waste. In December, DeKalb County paid $101,521.18 to dispose of county trash. The county has only budgeted $985,000 to dispose of this waste. If you divide this 985,000 by 12, the number of months in a year. That only allows us to spend $82,083 a month in trash disposal. This is why we charge a fee to companies and to residents that dump anything larger than what a resident would normally accumulate in a week of household garbage. We have only budgeted for what a normal household would accumulate in a week. People abusing the system and out of county residents cause a problem to our overall budget. We are already in danger of going over our budget. Although we have taken precautionary steps to reduce trash collections and also try to offset it as much as possible with revenues, the rapidly increasing population is making it very difficult,” he said.

“When the DeKalb County Budget Committee meets soon, they will be given this information and more to see the great strain that has been placed on this topic. The fact that we must budget more for waste disposal is evident, but how is the next question. More people means more trash. The commission will have a big job to do moving forward to this new budget process, but I, Mayor Matt Adcock, will help in any way I can. James Goff, the Solid Waste Director, has been asked by myself to pull as many statistics as possible to help the upcoming budget committee make the best educated decisions they can. By keeping the commission informed on budget restraints, tonnage of trash accumulated, price per ton, and much more crucial information, that they can use to make better decisions that will positively impact DeKalb County,” County Mayor Adcock said.

“Also, I would like to enlighten all of our community members about our new furniture dumpsters located at the Shiney Rock convenience site located on the new Highway 56 south and the Snow Hill convenience site located on Nashville Highway. These were chosen because they had the amount of room to accommodate for it and they are centrally located”.

“Before we had asked everyone to take furniture to the transfer station where the workers can unload them onto a flat level concrete pad instead of trying to lift heavy furniture over someone’s head possibly injuring an employee or community member at one of the regular dumpsters at a convenience site. Now we have a furniture dumpster that has the door opened to throw small items of furniture inside without having to raise the furniture over anyone’s head. For very large items that you don’t believe would be easily placed into a dumpster or a large amount of furniture we would still ask for you to go to the transfer station to dispose of this,” added County Mayor Adcock.

If you have further questions, call the Solid Waste Department at 615-597-6071.

“Thank you to the community for all of your support and we will continue to strive to perform above the expectations of the public,” Adcock concluded.

March 28, 2023
By: Dwayne Page

Members of the DeKalb County Swiftwater Rescue Task Force were summoned into action only a half hour after their latest training exercise Saturday afternoon when a group of kayakers got caught in swift creek water on Smith Fork near Temperance Hall.

Six people were reportedly in the group with five kayaks. Two of the vessels reportedly overturned but the three people on board, two adults and a youngster, were able to climb onto a log jam of debris, tree limbs, etc. which had formed in the creek. Members of the Swiftwater Rescue team tied off a rope and traversed the rapidly flowing creek water to reach them. They were all brought safely out of harms way. The task force’s life raft was put in the creek nearby but did not have to be deployed during the rescue effort.

Three other kayakers in the group further downstream were able to get to the creek bank safely from their vessels. None were injured and all were wearing life jackets.

Members of the TWRA, DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department and DeKalb EMS were also on the scene along with the Swiftwater Rescue Task Force.

March 28, 2023
By: Dwayne Page

Arrests have been made in recent days by the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department in separate cases of property theft, possession of methamphetamine, and domestic assault.

34-year-old Robert Blake Rollins of Barrett Road, Smithville is charged with two counts of property theft. His bond is $6,000 and he will make a court appearance April 6.

Sheriff Patrick Ray said that on March 21 a deputy was summoned to Potts Camp Road where a resident reported that a man had stolen his white Ford 150 and a bumper trailer. After A Be on the Lookout (BOLO) was issued to other counties, a Warren County deputy spotted the vehicle and trailer, and he pulled it over. Rollins was the driver. The F-150 was valued at $1,500. The value of the trailer was $500.

46-year-old Billy Jason Lackey of McMinnville is charged with domestic assault. His bond is $2,500 and he will be in court April 6.

Sheriff Ray said that on March 24 a deputy was called to a residence on Holmes Creek Road due to a domestic incident. A woman there said she and Lackey began arguing during which he became irate, started screaming at her, and then broke a fan causing the woman to fear for her safety.

41-year-old Christopher Matthew McPherson of Smithville is charged with possession of methamphetamine with intent to manufacture, sell or deliver. His bond is $50,000 and he will be in court April 6.

Sheriff Ray said that on March 27 a deputy conducted a traffic stop of a gray BMW due to the license plate returning to be stolen out of Maury County. The driver, McPherson admitted to having narcotics on him and during a pat down search, the officer found a small baggie containing a crystal-like substance believed to be methamphetamine that weighed 1.3 grams.

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