NATCHEZ, Miss. (Dec. 4) – Questions continue to linger about what the Adams County Board of Supervisors can do about the oilfield waste dump being planned near Natchez.
Supervisors have said it’s solely up to state environmental regulators to decide whether to permit the landfill, but board attorney Scott Slover said today Adams County has a waste plan that would need to be revised by supervisors for the facility to be located here.
However, it’s uncertain what will become of the waste dump developers’ plans since they haven’t yet sought permission from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality. “Until there’s an application, it’s pure speculation,” Slover said.
Adams County supervisors the past couple of months have been hearing concerns expressed by worried residents living near the proposed landfill site, located about 15 miles south of Natchez by U.S. 61 near the St. Catherine Creek National Wildlife Refuge. They’ve been regularly attending board meetings seeking information and asking supervisors to enact measures to prevent what they fear will be an environmentally threatening waste dump.
County board President Warren Gaines said in November that this “is totally over our heads” as MDEQ state regulators are charged with deciding whether the landfill gets permitted. However, he agreed with Supervisor Ricky Gray that more study is needed on what the county board’s legal authority is over this.
“I’m going to have to research that a little further,” Gray said Nov. 20, “because if it endangers the health and welfare of this community, the Board of Supervisors should have a say-so on it.”
While he stressed that he’s not specifically directing his concerns at the planned oilfield-waste dump, he said “there’s no way in this world that anybody can bring anything to your county without the Board of Supervisors having a say-so.”
Gaines agreed the board should know what it legally can “approve or disapprove.”
“If there is something that legally the board has jurisdiction on, then we can move forward,” he said.
Slover said today that Adams County does have a “solid waste plan” adopted in past years that supervisors would need to revisit if the landfill developers ask for its revision. He said supervisors would consider various factors before a final decision on the proposed facility. No application has been filed for the oil-waste facility, according to a search of MDEQ’s online records.
As residents in recent weeks have questioned the Board of Supervisors about revising the county’s waste plan, discussions have focused on updating the county’s emergency-response plan if the facility is actually built. That would be prompted by what MDEQ does, said Adams County Emergency Management Director Brad Bradford.
The county has small public waste dumps it maintains. A larger commercial landfill operated by Texas-based WM – formally known as Waste Management – is located in south Adams County. It buries household trash that private garbage collectors contracted by Natchez and Adams County haul away from city and county residences.
The proposed oil-waste landfill is located by WM’s facility on Shieldsboro Road. The property envisioned for the new dump is owned by county Supervisor Kevin Wilson, who’s in the oil business and has cited a need for such a facility to serve the oil industry in a five-state region.
Wilson has stepped out of recent county board meetings about the proposed landfill to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Government officials are prohibited from exerting undue influence in their public positions for personal financial gains.
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