Monday evening, after our meeting a constituent shared with me that a property owner in the Eighth District, at 6209 Flint Gap Road, which sits in the 8th District but is literally on the border between the 8th and 9th District, received a permit from Tennessee to allow for the discharge of water associated with industrial activities. The discharger is listed as M & M capstone Farms, LLC, and they propose to use this tract as a “borrow pit.” In other words, the industrial activities are mining activities. Mining activities are a use-on-review for agricultural zones.
This tract is adjacent to another piece of property owned by the same person, Sandra Keck, along with Michael Malicote of Thunder Mountain. These owners previously applied for a use-on-review to allow mining activities to take place in 2020, and they were denied, case 6-F-20-UR. The denial was recommended by planning staff, and the planning commission at the time followed the recommendation, finding that the use “will have an adverse impact on the character of the neighborhood in which the site is located and significantly injure the value of adjacent property by noise, lights, fumes, odors, vibration, traffic congestion or other impacts which may detract from the immediate environment.”
We thought we may never have to address a mining use-on-review situation after our vote on the past one, but it looks like a situation of a new (not a previous one that is revisited) use-on-review may be coming down the pike. I would think that Commissioner Thompson would agree with me that to best represent our constituents, who are the residents who will be affected, we would like to keep use-on-review in-house with the Board of Commissioners, and not delegate it to another unelected body.
At this time, I oppose ending our current use-on-review powers.
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