I’m investigative reporter Kelly Puente, and this week I’m taking you behind the reporting of an important story unfolding in rural Tennessee.
When I started reporting on the proposed mega-landfill in Scott County, I knew I wasn’t just reporting on a landfill project. I saw it as part of a much bigger story unfolding across Tennessee: who gets to decide what communities should bear in the name of growth.
Scott County, near the Kentucky border, sits in the scenic Upper Cumberland Plateau, where forests, rivers and rugged hills shape both the landscape and the identity of the people who live there. Residents in this corner of Tennessee are fighting a massive rail-fed landfill proposal that could bring millions of tons of trash into the region and dramatically alter the environment and way of life that have defined the area for generations…