Southern Middle TN Today News with Tom Price 5-7-26

WKOM/WKRM Radio

Southern Middle Tennessee Today

News Copy for May 7, 2026

All news stories are aggregated from various sources and modified for time and content. Original sources are cited.

Sandy Hook Railroad Bridge Opens (MSM)

After about 10 months of work, the Tennessee Department of Transportation has reopened the bridge over the Tennessee Southern Railroad on the Lawrenceburg Highway in Sandy Hook.

A TDOT representative stated that the previous bridge was built in 1925 and widened in 1956. The new bridge is approximately five feet wider and three feet higher than the old one, and cost $2.55 million. It was finished a month ahead of schedule and may come in approximately $100,000 under budget when final costs are assessed.

“TDOT thanks the community for their patience while crews worked on this project,” said Erin Zeigler of TDOT. “Maintaining a state of good repair for safe and efficient transportation remains a top TDOT priority.”

While the new bridge was closed, anyone traveling to or from Sandy Hook had to take a detour of 15-20 minutes over the hills to the south of the rural community, including emergency responders. The other northern route, over the old Sandy Hook Bridge on Old Highway 43, was closed as unsafe in 2022 by the county. Sandy Hook residents protested the simultaneous closure of both bridges, and blamed the full blockade for several delayed EMS responses in fall 2025.

Crosswaters Comes Before Planning Commission (MSM)

Crosswaters Reserve, LLC submitted its residential development of the same name for approval by the Maury County Planning Commission. Representatives of the engineering firm Barge Design Solutions first showed their plans to the Commission in March, but last Monday night was the first time the developer sought the planning commission’s approval for the zonings and the overall site plan.

Reed Martz, the attorney for the LLC, took the podium to denounce “misinformation” about the development site, which used to belong to the Monsanto Corporation and centers on an old 325-acre “tailings pond” which Crosswaters would use for a “reservoir.” TDEC restricted its permitted uses in 2007, but they lifted the restrictions in 2024 after Barge tested the soil and water for industrial contaminants and claimed to have found safe levels.

Martz and representatives of Barge claimed that the only material Monsanto dumped into Tailings Pond 15, which was across the Duck River from the actual chemical plant, was the muddy “tailings” left over from the first steps of phosphorus refinement. According to a ScienceInsights.org article on phosphate mining, phosphate is first separated from the mined soil with water and added reagents, leaving “tailings” which are diverted to settling ponds like the prospective “reservoir.” The developer representatives told the planning commissioners that the infamous “slag” produced by the later and harsher steps of phosphorus refinement, which does contain heavy metals and “radio-nuclides,” was not put into Pond 15.

“The only thing in Pond 15 is washed dirt,” Martz declared, acknowledging that the tailings used to present a quicksand danger, but he later told Main Street Maury that they should have a safe consistency after decades of “dewatering.” “Any chemicals added, [were added] way after the fact… No slag went to Pond 15,” agreed Chelsea Williams of Barge Design. “[The tailings accumulation is] not an environmental concern, it’s a structural concern.”

Sixteen public commenters got up to speak against Crosswaters, prompting Planning Commissioner Sam Kennedy to extend the customary 15-minute limit on public comments to an hour.

Dustin Kittle and Ashley Posey, two environmental attorneys who run a farm that adjoins the Crosswaters property, added new criticisms of the project to the ones they made at its planning commission debut in March, which earned them a cease-and-desist from Martz, alleging misrepresentation and defamation. Kittle pointed out that former Monsanto workers admitted they didn’t know where drums of toxic chemicals had been buried in unmarked pits on the 5,438-acre property, only 1,339 of which on one side of the Duck River would be incorporated into Crosswaters. He claimed to have handled a similar case in Escambia County, Florida, in which contaminants reached the drinking water supply through underground “karst” tunnels like those in Maury County.

“In the 1980s, what they made clear when they shut down this plant was, we do not need disturbance,” Kittle said. “When you start moving dirt… there is no telling what is going to end up in the Duck River.”

Posey challenged the thoroughness of Barge’s water and soil testing for PCBs, dioxins and asbestos, and claimed that neither TDEC’s administrative record nor Martz had provided her with these test results. Against Martz and Williams she cited the EPA’s finding that “tailings” also give off concentrated radiation, which is inherent in phosphate ore to begin with, and a 2007 study which recommended that “no construction occur on top of any of the studied tailings ponds.” Kittle, Posey and Carol Pennington also said that they and up to 30 other adjoining property owners hadn’t received the mailed notice of the project required by law, and Posey couldn’t find TDEC records of certified mail being sent out.

“This commission cannot rezone the property or approve a Planned Unit Development unless and until the statutory notice requirements related to the… land-use restrictions have been complied with,” she said.

Other public commenters recalled the harm done in the 20th century by the chemical plants that once dominated Maury County’s economy. Some were told as children specifically to avoid playing in the bodies of water on or leading away from the chemical companies’ properties. Others recalled watching the generation who had worked at those plants suffer and die early from diseases with likely chemical causes. Amy White of Mount Pleasant said her husband’s old employer tested for heavy metals in parts of the Monsanto property years ago, and found cadmium, lead and other substances; she didn’t see tests or results for these in Barge’s reports.

“It is impossible to filter all that phosphorus out of there… and the fact is that the slag is radioactive,” said Kathy Overstreet, who grew up next to Staufford Chemical plant in Mount Pleasant. “It had radium… barium and uranium in it, and those last for a thousand to a billion years.”

“These chemicals [are] going to outlive us,” said Stephanie Sparks Newland, a local environmental activist, speaking of the flammable elemental phosphorus, radioactive slag, and barrels of chemical warfare agents and pesticides produced, and possibly still present, on the Monsanto property. “Maybe it isn’t all in pond 15, but when… you start [developing], it’s all going to mix together.”

Colin Haines, a student at Columbia Central High School, recently performed an award-winning science project on the outskirts of the old Monsanto property. He found elevated pH levels in the soil there, which if introduced to the Duck River might cause toxic algal blooms.

“If this is what I, a teenage researcher, found on the [edges] of the Monsanto property, what have [independent researchers] not found since we have not gone in there?” Haines asked the planning commission.

“What else was put into that pond, I don’t know,” said Pennington, an adjoining property owner, who recommended that Barge take more groundwater samples. “You need to know what you’re going to stir up.”

In response to questions from planning commissioners Tracy Seiber and Quinton Jones, Chelsea Williams explained that Barge tested for contaminants on the most traveled areas of the Monsanto property, where chemicals were most likely to have been buried or spilled. They didn’t find or expect proof of such contamination in the Crosswaters site, since the actual chemical plant was across the river.

“This is Williamson County stuff,” County Commission candidate Jordan Rouden said of the site plan for a dense residential development in the woods. He pointed out that the neighborhood also comes with restrictive covenants which ban characteristically “Maury County” activities, from holding garage sales to displaying guns in public. “The people [planning this] clearly have no idea who lives here.”

County Commissioner Gabe Howard pointed out that the requested zonings wouldn’t fit either the current or new Comprehensive Land-Use Plans for the area. Planning Commissioner Harold Delk agreed, and he and his colleagues voted to recommend that the County Commission deny the rezoning requests and require the developer to meet several conditions before considering the master site plan.

Columbia State Hosts Legacy Wall Exhibit (Press Release)

Columbia State Community College recently hosted a ribbon-cutting in the John W. Finney Memorial Library for the new Legacy Wall, showcasing the deep history of the college’s dedication event and early years. The project was led by the student members of Columbia State’s Eta Beta Chapter of the Sigma Kappa Delta honor society.

The museum-grade displays were created after over a year of research went into understanding the history of how Columbia State was founded. The research mainly focused on uncovering materials relating to the college’s 1967 dedication ceremony, which featured honored guest speaker then-First Lady "Lady Bird" Johnson, accompanied by her husband, President Lyndon B. Johnson. The display also highlights the first graduating class in 1968.

Sigma Kappa Delta student research, with the guidance of college faculty and staff, helped bring these historical pieces to the current display wall. 

Isadora “Izzy” Swingle, current president of Columbia State’s SKD chapter, first shared the idea with members to see if there was a way to display important relics of the college’s beginnings. SKD members then unanimously voted to design, research, preserve and display the story of Columbia State.

“I'm incredibly proud of the initiative the members of our local chapter have taken to bring the Legacy Wall from simply a crazy ‘what if’ idea to the finished memorial we honor and dedicate,” Swingle said. “The reason why we value this project so much, and the reason is that we saw this through to the end, is because we wanted Lady Bird’s legacy of higher education in Tennessee to live on forever. We celebrate this lasting legacy, an undying flame testifying to the power of higher education. A nod to the future of not only Columbia State and the many lives that it has touched, but also how, thanks to our former First Lady, higher education will continue to impact our state of Tennessee, forever. Our legacy won't begin as a conversation, a simple ‘what if.’ It stands as proof of what students can accomplish when they believe in something bigger than themselves.”

Finney Library Director Anne Scott and Librarian Kyle Avirom worked with SKD Lead Faculty Sponsor Dr. Jessica Evans, associate professor of English, to make this project a reality. They decided to make the Legacy Wall displays multimedia-focused to tell the college's important history, while also allowing students to think about their stories and how the college has impacted them.

The Maury County Archives also served as a foundational partner in the creation of the display.

Approximately 50 documents were uncovered, chosen and scanned from the archives.  

“It is important for history and its artifacts to be both preserved and shared,” Evans said. “We conducted thorough research on the best archival methods, and thanks to the generosity of the Finney Library and President Smith’s approval, we were able to purchase museum-grade-quality display materials. This is a project that benefits students, faculty, staff and the community itself.” 

In addition to documents and artifacts featured from the county archives, Columbia State’s library archives can also be found on display. Some of those items include a 1967-1968 Columbia State Catalogue signed by both Lady Bird Johnson and President Johnson, a presidential seal envelope and a congratulatory letter by Lady Bird to one of the first graduating students of Columbia State, and even the pen that was used during the first class registration.

The display features several historical documents that can be read, as well as multi-media features such as the documentary of Columbia State’s dedication, “Red Letter Day in Maury County,” an audio diary of Lady Bird Johnson, the documentary “I, Leonardo da Vinci” (a gift to the college from the Johnsons), and links to online archival photographs and documents. Students and library visitors can scan a QR code to watch, listen or read these as well as other resources.  

“What you have done is just a pure example of that excellence, of who we are as an institution, of who you are as students and of the character that you are building, of who you will be in the future,” said Dr. Janet F. Smith, Columbia State president. “So, I think that this wall has been built on legacy. Yes, it does address the legacy of Columbia State being dedicated by two individuals who are very much proponents of education, but not just proponents and believers, believers in what it gave each individual who walks through the doors here. So, as we look at this legacy, I hope we do not look at it just as the legacy of Columbia State, but it's the legacy of every individual who takes advantage of what Columbia State has to offer.”

The Legacy Wall is located on the Columbia Campus on the second floor of the Finney Library next to the Reader’s Theater. The display can be visited during regular library hours Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

Mt. Pleasant Students Build Lifesize Operation Game for Farm Bureau (Press Release)

Students in the Advanced Manufacturing class at Mt. Pleasant High School have completed a year-long project in partnership with Farm Bureau Health Plans, designing and building a life-size version of the classic Operation game for use at promotional events across Tennessee.

The project led by Mt. Pleasant High School teacher, Seth Woodard, gave students hands-on experience in manufacturing, design, fabrication, and problem-solving while working to meet real-world client expectations. The oversized interactive game will be used by Farm Bureau Health Plans as an engaging tool at community events and outreach efforts across Tennessee.

“This project is a great example of how career and technical education prepares students for high-demand careers,” said Amy Roberts, Career and Technical Education Director with Maury County Public Schools. “Manufacturing programs like this not only teach technical skills but also emphasize teamwork, creativity, and communication.

“Partnerships with organizations like Farm Bureau Health Plans are critical because they give students real-world experience and show them the value of their work beyond the classroom,” said Tristan Brown, CTE College and Career Coordinator with Maury County Public Schools.

Students spent months planning, engineering, and constructing the game, applying skills such as precision measurement, electrical components integration and quality control. The collaboration reflects a growing emphasis on experiential learning within the Maury County Public Schools’ CTE programs.

To support the program and recognize the students’ work, Farm Bureau Health Plans presented a $5,000 check to Mt. Pleasant High School. The funds will help enhance classroom resources and expand future project-based learning opportunities.

“We are incredibly proud to partner with the Mt. Pleasant High School engineering program on this unique project,” said Tracy Ring, Chief Marketing Officer with Farm Bureau Health Plans. “Seeing these students apply complex skills like circuity and 3D design to create something that comes to life in a way that directly benefits our organization’s outreach is inspiring. Supporting the next generation of innovators is at the heart of what we do, and we can’t wait to see what they achieve next.”

Laws Saving Paws Fundraiser (Press Release)

Laws Saving Paws (LSP), a Tennessee-based nonprofit advocating for stronger animal welfare and humane laws, is inviting the community to enjoy great food for a great cause during the organization’s upcoming Spirit Day fundraiser at Grecian Family Restaurant and Bakery on Monday, May 18, 2026 from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., 10% of all sales—including dine-in, carryout, and bakery purchases—will be donated to LSP to support its ongoing efforts throughout Tennessee.

The event will also coincide with the restaurant’s weekly trivia night, offering a family-friendly evening of entertainment, prizes, and food and drink specials. Volunteers from LSP will be onsite during trivia night to connect with supporters and share more about the organization’s mission and current initiatives.

“We’re incredibly grateful to Grecian Family Restaurant for choosing to support our work,” said a spokesperson for LSP. “Partnerships like this are incredibly meaningful because they create an opportunity to support one another. While events like Spirit Day help fund our advocacy and humane education efforts, they also allow us to encourage the community to show up for local businesses that invest back into the causes and communities they care about.”

The fundraiser will take place at Grecian Family Restaurant and Bakery in Spring Hill. More information about the event can be found at lawssavingpaws.org/grecianspiritday.

LSP is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing the root causes of animal overpopulation and neglect through education, advocacy, and policy-driven solutions.

And now, Your Hometown Memorials, Sponsored by Oakes & Nichols Funeral Home…

Reverend Talvin Brown Barner, Jr., 75, Maury County Commissioner, passed away on April 29th.

Funeral Services will take place on Friday, May 8th at 12 noon at First Family Baptist Church 2790 Pulaski Hwy.  Visitation will take place on Thursday from 5pm to 7pm at Bethel Chapel AME Church.  Burial will follow at Pinecrest Memorial Gardens.  

And now, news from around the state…

Ogles Sends Letter to President (CDH)

Congressman Andy Ogles has written a letter to President Donald Trump urging him to invoke his Constitutional authority to force U.S. Congress to pass complete funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The letter also encourages the president to use the same right to enforce passage of the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to provide a valid U.S. photo ID to cast a ballot in federal elections.

“For more than two months, critical components of our homeland security infrastructure have been left in limbo,” Ogles said in a May 4 news release. 

“The Constitution demands that Congress remain capable of action during periods of national importance. The President has clear authority to convene both Houses on extraordinary occasions, and the current crisis — compounded by the recent assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — unquestionably qualifies.”

The SAVE Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives in April 2025 by a 220-208 vote, but has not yet been approved by the U.S. Senate

In the letter, sent April 30, Ogles says much of the alleged funding strain stems from what's considered "non-essential activities" during a time of national crisis.

"While personnel at ICE, CBP, the Coast Guard, TSA, the Secret Service and CISA continue to carry out critical missions under strain, too, many Members of Congress have departed Washington for fundraisers and other non-essential activities. This failure to remain engaged during a national security and border crisis is inconsistent with the responsibilities of a functioning legislature," Ogles said.

"Article I, Section 5, Clause 4 restricts adjournments to ensure that legislative responsibilities are not abandoned. This provision reflects the Framers’ intent that Congress remain present and accountable, especially when core government functions tied to national defense are disrupted," Ogles added in his letter.

"Your authority under Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution is directly relevant. The Constitution empowers the President to convene Congress on extraordinary occasions and to resolve disagreements between the House and Senate regarding adjournment. These authorities exist to prevent legislative inaction during moments of crisis."

In addition to resolving the funding shortfall, Ogles advises the U.S. Congress to "take up urgent measures necessary to reinforce public confidence in the integrity of our institutions."

"At a moment of heightened national strain, declining public confidence in our elections presents a serious challenge to national cohesion and to our standing as a constitutional republic," Ogles wrote.

"Agencies responsible for border security, immigration enforcement, cybersecurity, and executive protection must be fully funded and our elections must be secured without further delay. The Constitution provides the framework, and the moment requires decisive action."

Final Story of the Day (Maury County Source)

On May 24, Ryman Auditorium will host Ryman Community Day, featuring free daytime tours for Tennessee residents from 9:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. This year’s event will also feature family-friendly offerings for both locals and visitors inside the venue and directly outside on PNC Plaza, including:

On-site printmaking from the iconic Hatch Show Print

Food trucks

Games and activities for children like face painting, caricatures and music crafts from the Vanderbilt Music Cognition Lab

10% discount at the Ryman gift shop for Tennessee residents with a valid state ID

$10 guided backstage tours for Tennessee visitors

Live music both on the PNC Plaza and the Ryman stage

Tickets may be reserved at ryman.com/communityday.