We've been told so many scary stories of how we could have a disaster any minute is we didn't get the old dump fixed. The whole thing may slide right into the Tennessee River. Green goo might come pouring out any second. Loudon City officials have warned that if something wasn't done now, it might contaminate their whole water supply. We must move and we must move now.

Commission first approved the repairs way back in May, 2016. The work was to be completed by the end of September 2016. But something happened. Nobody seems to know exactly what happened but the repairs were never started way back then. However, during the course of the process, more than $340,000 has been paid to two law firms and still no work has been done on the dump.

Earlier this month, a majority of commissioners again voted to proceed with the project under the hollow threat from the state of a $5,000.00 per day fine if the work wasn't done. Again, because the dangers to the environment were so eminent and so great.

Now all of a sudden, there's no hurry at all. In fact, the work may not begin till next July. How is that possible? As I understand it, the property has a lot of deer hunting going on and maybe going in there now with dozers and backhoes might disturb the deer hunting?

What the heck is going on with this?

Loudon County, Lenoir City nor Loudon, the stakeholders, own the old landfill and never have. We have an $18,000.00 report from an environmental law firm that told us we didn't have any responsibility to fix the old landfill, yet by the time it's all said and done, more than a half million dollars will have been spent to make repairs on private property owned by a millionaire developer. The scope of the work is tiny. Fill in a few gullies, spread some top soil and plant some grass.

This has been one cockeyed, screwed up mess and we've not even started on the project yet. This thing is bad.

How is it possible that the three mayors, Buddy Bradshaw Loudon County, Tony Aikens Lenoir City and Jim Greenway Loudon, have spent this much money and still not fixed anything?

Nearly all the money spent to date came from the Loudon County Solid Waste Commission's (LCSWC) funds even though the LCSWC has never approved any of the expenditures. In fact, neither the County Commission, Lenoir City Council nor the Loudon County has ever voted to spend the money from the LCSWC funds. In fact, the commission nor the councils would even have the authority to spent the LCSWC money.

At some point, someone is going to have to answer for this boondoggle and I can't wait to hear how they explain away spending over a half million dollars of money that wasn't theirs to spend.