The culture of callousness at Metro Water Services: in 2005 they failed to be transparent with neighbors about storage of soil they knew to be contaminated

The pattern of a tense, distant relationship between Metro Water Services and the surrounding community in Salemtown and Germantown has a long track record engendered by callous treatment of neighbors concerned about constant streams of noxious odors, treated waste-toting trucks on area roads and neglect of stormwater issues. Recent attempts by water service officials and the reporters who repeat their talking points to spin community attitudes as more supportive of MWS belie the rocky history between the water treatment decision-makers and the people who have actually lived near the plant for decades.

This could have gone better.

When we first moved to Salemtown almost 10 years ago, we listened to long-time residents recount their frustrations with MWS. Then in 2005, I attended my first community meeting with Metro Water officials on the planned biosolids facility and I experienced firsthand some of the frustrations felt in the community. Revisiting my notes on the 2005 meeting, my mind draws out a few impressions based on what I have experienced with the agency since then (and especially in light of recent revelations that MWS is creating a new North Nashville landfill with petroleum, PCBs, lead and arsenic):

• Metro Water officials were not effective or diplomatic at handling public criticism and fair questions about their project. At one point in 2005, neighbors expressed skepticism about the changes at MWS. That skepticism proved to well-founded in retrospect, given water treatment odors continued for a long time after managers told residents the smells would abate. Also the prospect of selling "the product" of the biosolids process as promised at that meeting was not realized because "the product" was not marketable (caveat: this week I received an email from an energy company official saying that an Arkansas company had recently started buying "the product"). Instead of acknowledging the validity of public concerns, the team MWS assembled seemed defensive and guarded. One person in their group responded sarcastically that the agency existed to dispose of waste, not to manufacture it. That flippant response is particularly ironic now knowing that Metro Water generated a humongous pile of petroleum-laced soil waste that they now plan to bury in their landfill located right here in our midst.
• Metro Water leadership was not community-minded. At one point in the biosolids meeting well-known Germantown homebuilder Skip Lawrence recommended to MWS leaders that they they hold cook-outs or other social events periodically for the community around the plant to generate good will. I agreed then and I agree now that being more social would represent a greater PR coup than trotting out scripted marketing pro Sonia Harvat to issue talking points to the press. In 2005 the MWS response to Skip's recommendation that I detected was icy and silent. Since then, I am aware of no friendly attempt by Metro Water Services to reach out to the local community. They do not express respect for us. Our recommendations fall on deaf ears.
• Metro Water Services failed to be transparent with neighbors most affected by biosolids construction. In 2005, MWS leaders were asked if they included anyone who lived in Germantown, Salemtown or East Germantown on the committee charged with choosing designs for the biosolids facility. The admitted that no one in the community was included in that process, although one unnamed individual who lived here was said to have been shown the designs the committee selected. The only time they claimed to invite community feedback was at that one meeting, and as I already reported, they were anything but inviting of feedback.

A logical consequence of callousness.

It is the last bullet that underscores the basic problem with a petroleum pile from the 2004 biosolids building construction still sitting on and planned for burial in public property in 2013. Metro Water Services should have been transparent with us in 2005 and informed us then about the environmental assessment report that analyzed high levels of fuel contamination without naming a source of that contamination. They should have made us aware of the exposure of the petroleum toxins to the groundwater that flows into the Cumberland River. They should have told us of their plans to leave the soil in a pile indefinitely. But they chose to limit our knowledge of their work to designs and drawings of architecture while deflecting our more critical questions. The agency's behavior now confirms the suspicions expressed at the 2005 meeting by the neighbors bold enough to so speak their minds.

After Channel 4 exposed Metro Water's contaminated pile and their plans to bury the soil in the incinerator basement I sent Sonia Havat a letter saying that I remember that she was in the same position with Metro Water in 2005. I also asked her to help me understand why her agency failed at that time to be transparent and accountable about the risks of the soil content since soil remediation was a part of the construction process. It has been 24 hours and I have not received any response to her. That is consistent with my experience of the careless and cavalier culture that seems to drive Metro Water whenever they have to exercise community relations with their closest neighbors. Shame on them.

The North End name game steams into full marketing mode

Now that "Capitol District" is promoted in the Tennessean under the auspices of journalism, the PR drive is full steam ahead. The paper also seems to nod to a query I made not too long ago: Capitol District is the latest vehicle for bringing a new minor league ballpark to Sulphur Dell.

Mee-mi-mo-mistrict. District.

A dozen fire trucks respond to industrial fire this afternoon near Salemtown; no one injured

Driving home, I stopped by the Downtown connector greenway and snapped this.
The building is owned by a business in the old East Germantown industrial area.
The Cumberland River is just on the other side of the smoke to the east.

Interesting old map of North Nashville

Middle Tennessee State is working with a Texas university's Civil War map project to locate 150-year-old defensive earthworks that might still exist around Nashville. While looking at one of the old maps online, I found it interesting that an 1891 reproduction of a Civil War map shows that the East Germantown bluff on which the Neuhoff Plant was eventually built (now the location of several shops, including the Nashville Jazz Workshop) was a steamboat landing 150 years ago.

Biosolids fail neighborhoods: forward to the past with Metro Water Services' water treatment

That old stink we were once subjected to in Salemtown has been on the rise again over the past few months. In spite of years of promises from Metro Water Services, there are mornings we walk out our front door or evenings we get home from work and we are hit by noxious odors from human waste sludge treated a few blocks away at Central Wastewater Treatment Plant. Now, it is not as bad as it was in 2005 and 2006, but that is little solace to neighbors who were told that the funk would end once the new biosolids facility went on line and their end product started selling like hotcakes.

Then last week WSMV journalist Demetria Kalodimos contacted me bearing the news that the biosolids facility had not been meeting standards it had told us it would in 2005. She asked me for an interview, which we did last Friday. Given that this community had received no information from MWS that anything was amiss, I believe I had as many questions for Ms. Kalodimos as she had for me.

I learned from this veteran journalist that not only had the biosolids facility not been fulfilling its purpose of generating less smelly biosolids since last May's flood (which might be understandable), but they had not been doing so since going on line [see update below for clarification of Ms. Kalodimos's point]. She told me everything she put into an April story that I had completely missed. The biosolids produced were rejected by the contracted buyer for failing to meet industry standards. Instead of selling those biosolids, Metro Water used private contractors to continue to truck them to landfills, and those trucks were usually dangerously overloaded. Biosolids drying tanks had overflowed near a greenway on several occasions. Biosolids facilities have a dubious reputation elsewhere of catching on fire during the drying process. The pellets produced may not be safe for fertilizer use even with market standards in place.

Perhaps the most disconcerting disclosure of all was that once again Metro was not converting dewatered sludge into biosolids, but instead it was sending it down conveyor belts as it had before [see update below for clarification of Ms. Kalodimos's point]. Then it was loading the sludge into large rigs and trucking it out to landfills. Those landfills, according to Ms. Kalodimos did not accept sludge shipments every day, which is why we could smell it on certain days more than others. That again was consistent with what we had experienced 6 years ago. Incidentally, when I raised the issue at the Salemtown Neighbors meeting last night, a number of other residents shared that they smelled noxious odors, too.

On Friday, I told Ms. Kalodimos during our interview that Metro Water Services officials informed us in 2005 that biosolid production would be replacing a system suitable to the 1950s. With due incredulity and proper frustration I asked her rhetorically whether the return of sludge hauling was a return of the wastewater plant to the 1950s. If Metro Water is moving backwards in their treatment of downtown sludge then the quality of life in every North End neighborhood is also regressing.

Also in 2005, I observed how long-time Salemtown residents responded to Metro Water's presentation with suspicion. They noted that promises made that measures would be taken to abate odors before the previous major plant renovation had not been realized. On Friday I noted that I understood that suspicion and sense of betrayal, particularly because Metro Water had failed in 2010 to inform its neighbors about its mistakes. While angered at the lack of MWS transparency during the biosolid bungling, I understand now why water officials were so defensive about public feedback and the idea of working with the community: they do not seem to want to be open and accountable to our community when the process goes pear-shaped.

I am thankful that WSMV seems to be properly investigating this problem. There was no press coverage of the actual roll out of the concept to the local community. City Paper reporter, Craig Boerner, who later went on to become an information officer at Vanderbilt did not report on the 2005 community meeting proceedings at all, choosing instead to write copy that looked a lot like regurgitated PR from Metro Water's own information officers. This blog contains the only public, published record that I have seen of that community meeting and the indications of the future problems Ms. Kalodimos is now investigating.

Maybe if more critical investigative work is pursued by local journalism, we will get some reform and a strategy consistent with quality of life issues within the water treatment process. In the meantime, those of us who live in neighborhoods proximate to Metro Water should start making our presence felt in the politics of water treatment, because it smells like we are back at the drawing board on odor control here.


UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: Demetria Kalodimos e-mailed and asked me to clarify my interpretation of what she told me during our interview. I overstated a couple of points she made. Here are the points she intended to make:

My information is the pellets had not been SOLD since going on line, but they indeed have been produced. I have some of the finished product.

Also…the de-watering conveyer belt is said to be a temporary fix that might be corrected as of next week (they were to finish repairs this week) so we shall see. Still, it has been 5 months of portable de-watering that neighbors apparently were not prepared for.

I would encourage Metro Water information officers whom I know are reading this to contact me directly in the future about problems they have with my reportage of media reports. To MWS employees who have issue with information, I am responsible for what is written here.

Chinese news agency covered Nashville oil spill story Nashville media ignored

After the historic May flood, I documented the oil and/or chemical spill in East Germantown around the Central Wastewater Treatment Plant. As far as I knew no news service covered that spill. But I was wrong. There was an agency in China that covered our hyper-local environmental crisis.

Reporters with the Xinhua news service were on the scene last May 4 corroborating with photos what I witnessed and giving more behind-the-scenes details (though not much more because Metro still did not divulge analysis):

Xinhua reporters at the scene saw workers in Metro Water Services uniforms laying fabric-like material and boom in the water and on the shore. The slick has darkened grass on the shore.

Workers at the scene said they are not authorized to speak to media, and phone calls to Metro Water Services went unanswered.

Rachel Vance, a spokeswomen with Nashville Emergency Operations center ... confirmed to Xinhua it was indeed an oil leak, and authorities were still trying to determine its origin ....

"They don’t know why [oil sludge spilled] yet, they are just trying to get a remedy as quickly as possible,” she said, noting more information could become available Wednesday.

The Coast Guard was assisting local authorities in their efforts. Jason Kuriaen, a Coast Guard member said they are trying to identify the source of the spill, as local workers focused on mitigating the impact of the oil spill.

He said the spill seemed to be a mixture of waste oil and oily sludge, and they are still in the process of making contact with companies in the area and gathering information.

I am not aware of any disclosures to the public about the nature or degree of the spill across the Downtown Connector Greenway. NewsChannel5 covered efforts to contain a spill on the East Bank, but no local news media covered the East Germantown spill. They left it up to the Chinese.

Photos of 2010 Nashville flood in East Germantown

Green Neuhoff

East Germantown's Neuhoff re-development does not only include its focus for the arts (via Nashville Jazz Workshop and Actor's Bridge) and future residential development. It also includes a "Green Roof Prototype" on top of one of its buildings, featuring cedar glade species. Details of Neuhoff's Green Roof Development in 2002-2003 can be found after the jump. Practices that have not been applied elsewhere characterize Neuhoff's pilot project, including development of a 6,000-square foot Green Roof Park adjacent to the Green Roof and porous pavers in a new parking lot. The Cumberland River Greenway extension cutting through will include bio-retention and carbon sequestration elements.

Enclave to Donate $100 to Nashville Jazz Workshop

Last Fall I donated my first $100 earned from ads displayed on Enclave to the Friends of Bicentennial Mall State Park. I am just a few bucks away from earning my second $100 after a shorter time span, and I have decided to contribute it to another non-profit institution here in the North End: the Nashville Jazz Workshop. The Workshop, located in East Germantown's Neuhoff Complex, promotes jazz in Nashville through providing unique educational and community opportunities for jazz professionals, students, and enthusiasts. I believe that it represents an important cultural and artistic presence in the North End community, too. The donation I will be sending the Workshop is my small way of helping it continue to do that. I hope that you will consider making a donation yourself to this worthy cause.

New Neuhoff Plan Renderings

Intown Will has more details on and a SHoP rendering of East Germantown's Neuhoff Development Plans. He seems particularly awed by comparing Neuhoff's planned quantity to the entire Gulch buildout projections.

Below are a couple of the exterior renderings that Will didn't include with the interior drawing that he posted:

East G-town Waiting Game

The City Paper has some more details on some old news. Let's not get too excited, kids, before we see some actual blueprints in place of a big green-and-white box.

A Troll Grows in East Germantown

I discovered tonight that I am being "tracked" by a blogger in East Germantown who calls me his enemy, without ever having met me. I also see that he has linked me in name as a "socialist busy body," which would make me something close to a Stalinist Gladys Kravitz?

East G-town Rendered

Plan Of Nashville's Idea for Morgan Park

Here is Christine Kreyling's and the Nashville Civic Design Center's vision for the re-development of the Morgan Park area. In the Plan of Nashville, Kreyling proposes expanding Morgan Park west to the Werthan property and east to the river. The currently operational Werthan Packing Plant (corner of Hume and 5th) would be closed and torn down and a Governor's mansion, suited for functions but not for residence, would anchor that corner.

The recreational facilities in the park would give way to a "Governor's Green" with a reclaimed surface water shed to the river (it is currently buried). In one drawing, the baseball diamond has been moved east between 2nd and 3rd. However, our community center would go away in Kreyling's plans. This re-development would be part of what Kreyling calls the "River District," which includes Germantown, East Germantown, Hope Gardens, parts of Cheatham Place (a.k.a., Historic Buena Vista) and the blocks of Salemtown south of Garfield.

This is an ambitious plan that I don't see happening any time soon, and with the money that Parks is about to invest in a new playground, community center renovations, and diamond upgrades, I don't see this plan happening in my lifetime. I also have a hard time understanding how one could justify doing away with a neighborhood community center, even in the name of creating more green space and ridding ourselves of unsightly Werthan Packing.

Requiem for the Wagon

I've known of a while that the East End's premiere brunch stop, Red Wagon, was going to close up shop soon. In fact, I had kept information that this weekend would be it's last on the down-low; I was planning on doing a "Farewell to the Wagon" post tomorrow after it closed. And our family brunch today and tomorrow were going to to be at the Wagon regardless; nothing was going to keep me from my last chance to savor the best damned biscuits in Nashville, with some shrimp and grits or migas on the side.

Well, I found out today that weekend brunch has gotten a reprieve and that owner and chef Meg Guiffrida will keep the place open on weekends until her lease is up at the end of January. So, we've been given the gift of 7 more weekends after this one to scarf down Meg's wonderful fare. The end of the Wagon's trail is going to leave a huge vacuum in the weekend brunch market.

But Meg tells me that she has a friend who is planning on opening a restaurant in Germantown and that she may help him out once and a while there. If the menu includes those fat cat-head biscuits, I'm all over it.

NewsChannel5: WMD Threat Sits on the North End's Door Step

On Friday night, NewsChannel5 Investigative Reporter Phil Williams broadcast the alarming news that the Metro Water Treatment facility, which sits a block outside of Salemtown, is not only still using hazardous chlorine gas in the water treatment process, but keeps that gas stored in 4 large railroad cars on the northern edge of its property near a public road. The cars are guarded by one security guard, two chain-link fences topped with razor wire, and security cameras, none of which would do much to prevent a terrorist attack on those cars.

While other communities have changed to less hazardous agents for treating their water, Metro Water defends its use and the seemingly minimal safeguards it has to prevent an attack. Chlorine gas was used as a biological weapon in WWI because of its immediate toxicity; when inhaled it burns the lungs and literally causes a person to drown in their own fluids. Such a scenario would be disastrous for local neighborhoods like Salemtown and Germantown, but it would also be a calamity for sections of Nashville downwind of the location. Gas could blow across the river into East Nashville or into Downtown Nashville itself.

But obviously those of us who live in the Plant's shadow are the most directly affected by this if the danger is as Mr. Williams says it is. I would say that someone at Metro Water owes us a little more than a lone guard, some chain link fencing, and cameras, none of which will save us in either an attack or an accident. In a related story, NewChannel5 also reported that hazardous gas-filled tank cars pass through every section of Nashville regularly along the major railroad arteries.

Speaking of Water ...

One of the plans for the development of the Neuhoff Complex in East Germantown includes establishing an "International Center for Living Watersheds." According to the Neil M. Denari Architects:

The mission of the Water Center is to educate the public about how the precious element of water is collected, used, and often wasted in our contemporary world. Founded by the Cumberland River Compact and sited at the Neuhoff Development north of downtown Nashville, the H2O Center is a living model reflecting the scapes of both the natural and built environments. As a visitors and educational center, the programs include exhibition spaces, a 100 seat lecture hall, offices, a riverfront caf�library [café/library?], and a store for selling merchandise related to the phenomena of water and urban ecologies.

But most importantly, the green roof and it soft undulating geometry literally captures rain water to irrigate the rooftop plant material and to channel water into various pools and small wetland ponds. The low profile building allows the visitor to reflect on the runoff, recycling, reclamation, and consumption of water. Even during dry times, the building circulates both gray and clean water around the interior and exterior spaces, creating a descriptive process of how water moves and is collected.

2016 UPDATE: this got picked up by the Nashville Urban Design Program.

Violent Crime and Property Offenses Drop in District 19

While crime increased the first half of 2006 in some Metro Councilmanic districts, District 19--which includes Salemtown, Germantown, Hope Gardens, parts of Downtown, Music Row, The Gulch, and Edgehill--experienced double-digit drops in crime during the same period. Based on Metro Police statistics, violent crimes were down almost 15% from January to June in our area; property offenses were down almost 20%.

Here's What Raised My Eye Brows the Highest at Last Thursday's Riverfront Redevelopment Forum

The Design Team Leader--on the subject of East Germantown and the infamous smell periodically emanating from the Central Wastewater Treatment facility--told us that Metro told him that as of that very day odor control measures were finally operating. He told us that the odor problems are gone for good. Wanna bet on it?

Connecting to the River

At last night's forum, Riverfront Redevelopment Designers said that the primary obstacle to "reconnecting" Nashville's neighborhoods with the river is the sharp drop of the banks from ground level to the shore. I was surprised to find out last night that there are currently only 4 places along the redevelopment area where Nashvillians can literally walk down a bank and touch the river. They are: the Shelby Park boat ramp, Riverfront Park (if you are daring), the East Bank Greenway, and the East Bank near the I-65 Bridge. If people are to feel a connection with the Cumberland, according to the Design Team, more access points must be created.

Both plans would create multiple marinas and landings for that connection, including an East Germantown landing in the North End. The "Island Plan" (cutting the arterial channel east of LP), would create a recreational waterway and marina off the main shipping channel and landings for Cayce (south), Edgefield, and Ellington (north). In the process of digging the channels, crews would be creating more flood space for waters that would otherwise inundate East Nashville, as they do every 100 years (by the way, Nashville is due for one of those 100 year floods, say the Design Team).