PART 5 of 7
By
Kelleigh Nelson
July 17, 2012
NewsWithViews.com
On March 17, 2010 a letter was sent from Piperton, TN, signed by the City Manager, Stephen Steinbach. It was sent to Adair, Woody, the construction company Adair had hired, the Mayor of Piperton, the City attorney, and the engineer of Piperton. The letter was a "Cease and Desist" letter stating the WWTP was too close to the airport.
It didn't end there, however. The Mayor called Woody and said Adair told him he had it all worked out with the airport owners. Woody informed the Mayor there was nothing worked out. Adair had informed the Mayor they'd moved the WWTP far enough away, but they hadn't, and the Wolf River Airport was being flooded. They were still building in the same locale and the WWTP was still not 5,000 feet away from the airport. When the WWTP site was inspected to see exactly how far away from the airport it was, the inspectors found that Adair was having it built on the wrong site, on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. The Mayor of Piperton ended up calling other local landowners in an attempt to acquire access to other potential sites for the project, reportedly yelling at some property owners, to no avail. They didn't want a WWTP in their backyard.
June 20, 2010, Woody and Reg had met with Adair several times and Woody was actually working with Adair's partner at the time, in Tyler, Texas, Pierre DeWet, who among other investments, owns an event center and recording studio. With Woody's extensive background in music, he and DeWet hit it off, but the studio personnel couldn't etch the sound they actually wanted. So Pierre tells Woody he'll finance half the money they need for marketing and recording the music. Then he told Woody that he’d “have to go see William” (Adair) to get the rest of the money. By this time, Woody did not have a favorable opinion of William, as he and Reg knew Adair’s statements had not been consistent with his actions at all. So, to take the advice of DeWet, Woody conceded to visit William Adair.
He met with Adair on July 20th, 2010. Adair was still hopping mad about the "Cease and Desist" letter, and that's all he could talk about. Adair told Woody “you should have come to me first,” to which Woody replied, “I did come to you, William. We’ve talked about it three times now.” Woody told him he could have lost his airport license had he done nothing, as addressing WWTPs are specifically charged in FAA advisories. Adair told Woody he'd think about giving him the rest of the money for his recording and Woody told him, "No thank you," he wasn't selling out the airport and his family for recording money.
To top it all off, Adair says, "My stock here will never be higher. I've got all the mayors of all the surrounding areas in my back pockets, from Rhea Taylor in Fayette County on down. So, you and your brother get yourself a list together as to what you need and we'll get started on the political side." Although Adair consistently stated he'd address the water issue with them, he never did. Repeatedly, Adair summoned Woody and Reg to his office for meetings and discussions, but it became simply a broken record of Adair's self-aggrandizement. He constantly reiterated all of the great things he was doing and how wonderful this would be for everyone. Yet, the airport flooded. The only request Woody and Reg ever made to William Adair was to not be flooded.
Woody and Reg ended up telling Adair in a meeting on September 1, 2010, that they wanted the WWTP moved and the water issues and pollution allegedly caused by the rail development to be fixed. They told Adair they had a five and 10-year business plan and they were under review based on everything happening. They simply couldn't move forward with their own development plans, because they first had to know the water problems were going to be fixed and no flooding would occur.
On September 22, 2010, Woody's attorney, Elizabeth Murphy and a hired engineer, Ron Hale, drove from Nashville to meet them in Memphis. They had a meeting scheduled with Adair, but he was a no-show, and instead sent his personal engineer to meet with them. They went and looked at streams five and six and were shocked. Both Woody and Reg have taken pictures exposing the entire mess, from the very beginning. In January of 2011, pictures were taken from the air of the entire area and what they were doing. The development was disturbing many more acres than they were allowed to be disturbing.
On July 29th, 2010, to allay their frustration, Adair told Woody and his brother that he'd give them enough dirt to raise the airport four feet. Adair said at the time he was moving 5.2 million yards of dirt for the rail yard, because when he cut the deal for the rail yard, he cut two other deals with it. He was hired to do all the dirt work on 300 acres of sloped property that needed to be leveled. He also said he'd supply the diesel to the trains because the railroad is not allowed to keep 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of diesel fuel on the site. Reg then advised Adair that he could utilize river barges to bring the diesel from New Orleans, and save as much as 25 cents per gallon. In the subsequent meeting, Adair stated that he had checked on Reg's advice and could save as much as 32 cents per gallon with the quantity he anticipated. Woody and Reg were well informed about the intermodal project while these discussions with Adair were taking place. During that time their attorney, Elizabeth Murphy, sent an environmental conservation group to look at the situation and they advised that the developers shouldn't be able to do what they were doing with regards to the water. They stated it posed a significant danger to the airport.
I certainly don't mean to get tedious with this explanation, but all of it needs to be exposed to understand the full ramifications of what the legislature of Tennessee tried to do in codifying the law to legalize illegal federal and state activity.
Lawsuit
Wolf River Airport went before the State Water Board in March/April 2010. The Water Board wouldn’t hear it. Then they went to Chancery Court. Chancery Court ruled, but then suspended the ruling and sent Wolf River Airport back to the Water Board. PictSweet Corporation (a farm corporation property to the East of the airport who lost flow because of the developments) is currently in front of the Water Board every 2nd Tuesday of the month. Woody's attorneys are monitoring the PictSweet strategy closely, but they're not optimistic about the outcome. Woody thinks, "A victory for PictSweet should be a victory for us due to the fact that we share that stream. It will be hard to assess damages on one side of the stream and not the other." The Wolf River Airport state lawsuit was eventually suspended in April of 2011.
TDEC left the Wolf River Airport off the lists for notifications, and denied that they had even received letters of opposition from the Wolf River Airport. Then, all of a sudden, when in court, they "found" the letters Woody stated he and his counsel had sent. The March 5, 2010 letter from Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) to the City of Piperton, sent by the State to the Mayor, stated they'd received letters from Wolf River Airport. It also stated Piperton hadn't completed all mitigation or permits, but then they ultimately excused them! This letter was signed by Vojin Janjik of TDEC!
Woody then sent a certified letter to Janjic at TDEC on March 8, 2010. TDEC is signatory to these MOU agreements and is supposed to uphold them, but was not following the law. Tennessee annotated code says they're to follow those laws and regulations, but they weren't doing it. He had even requested they rescind the permits. So TDEC sent the letter to Piperton and had them rescind Adair's local permit, but since Adair was giving them the Waste Water Plant, nothing happened. Woody even cited the Clean Water Act. TDEC has awareness on every issue and then later on they repeatedly deny it.
Neel
Schaffer Engineering was managing the deal for William Adair and was
going to talk to them about the FAA situation with the water problems.
When Woody's brother, Reg, went to meet with them, a man representing
himself as an FAA official was present. Reg became suspicious of the man's
lack of knowledge, checked him out further, and found out the man was
not an FAA official, nor did he represent the FAA.
Initially, Wolf River Airport was to be notified about the plant and was
told it was all going to be underground, but it wasn't. Vince Malavasi
of Neel Schaffer Engineering was supposed to have filed form 7060-1, but
he hadn't. He said he wasn't going to, but when you are going to affect
any water, you must file this form. So they eventually filed. Piperton's
Mayor Chambers and Adair both stated the facility was supposed to be underground.
Tiffany Hill-Heard worked for Neel Schaffer and gave the original engineering
plat files to Woody. They did not show any underground facility, but instead
showed the Waste Water Plant right adjacent to the airport, on the airport's
road, Wolfport Way. Vince Malavasi fired Tiffany Hill-Heard for doing
this.
The original plan and plat also called for Wolf River Airport's private road, Wolfport Way, to be used for access to their plant. Wolfport Way is NOT IN PIPERTON! Woody had allowed Wolfport Way to be annexed by the City of Rossville seven years prior, as the road was the dividing line between the two cities. The airport on the north side of the rail was what they wanted to annex, but they weren't annexing any other properties north of the rail, for some two miles back to the City proper. So, Woody gave them just the 50' wide road, south of the rail, and the road is now in Rossville. Now, Piperton comes back years later and documents in their plans that they're going to use Wolfport Road and it's not even in their jurisdiction!
Public notice for the Waste Water Plant was given back on February 9, 2009. Janjic referred Woody to Jo Ellen Brazil, and Terry Templeton, Manager of Water Pollution Control for the Memphis field office of TDEC and told him that all letters from Woody should be forwarded to them. The public notice meetings for review were scheduled for March of 2010, but they never happened until a year later. Link to Steven Steinbach letter, City Manager, Piperton. Jo Ellen Brazil told Woody the reason they didn't get the letter of notification was because Norfolk Southern Railroad hadn't applied for permits yet. However, Adair applied for a timber permit to cut trees and a mining permit to move and sell all the dirt. He was selling hundreds of thousands of yards of dirt to the State of Mississippi for millions of dollars.
At one point, a representative of Southwest Management showed up at Wolf River Airport and was sent to buy property so the railroad could put in one more railway. When Woody told him the land wasn't for sale, the representative got snarky with him and stated, "Well, we really don't need your participation, we can eminent domain it." [Link]
This is what our Supreme Court did to us with the Kelo decision wherein land can be taken by eminent domain to transfer property from one private owner to another to further "economic development." Certainly not what our founders had in mind. Add in "blighting" today, where local governments tell property owners to bring their property up to the standards the politicians have set for them or lose their property to the city. All of this is UN Agenda 21. Woody told him the airport was federally numbered and that he couldn't put a rail yard on his property anyway because the ground wouldn't support it. The man came back later and admitted to Woody that he was right.
When Adair got the permit with his name on it for the WWTP, the maps used showed part of the airport as a wetland area, and the streams shown on the maps haven't been there for 25 years. About seven or eight years ago the Corps of Engineers tried to put in a wildlife refuge next to the airport on PictSweet land, and they cut a horseshoe out of the Wolf River. The EPA fined them $400,000 and the farmers found out about mitigation in the State of Tennessee. A Mitigation Bank is replacing something you've torn up (i.e., the stream or wetland) with something else. The whole issue comes down to mitigation under federal rules of "No Net Loss." As I previously explained, in Tennessee, when they can't, or won't, adhere to the federal standards, they use the shady practice of "In-Lieu-Fees," so they pay the money to the bank in-lieu-of doing what is right.
When they cut this horseshoe hook out of the Wolf River for whatever reason and got fined, the Corps went to the Mitigation Bank which is either run by a non-profit or for-profit and who is supposedly restoring it to its natural state. What the Corps did was pay $40,000 per acre for ten acres and then received their wetland mitigation credits and used the credits to apply for a wildlife duck habitat and stream pond adjacent to the airport. Fortunately, the media found out about it and the proposal was dropped. Woody wrote a letter to the Corps explaining why this wouldn't work.
The Wolf River Conservancy and Corps of Engineers were saying there was no problem with putting in a wildlife preserve. They said none of the neighbors objected, until Woody raised his hand and asked about that big strip of land and all the buildings that were shown on the left side of the map being projected on the wall. They had told the audience they'd walked all the adjacent properties, but they didn't know what it was. Woody told them the land was an airport, and they couldn't put a preserve there because it's a federally numbered airport! He also stated the Corps of Engineers was signatory to a Memorandum of Understanding specifically stating they would respect the law regarding birds and airports.
The Corps was irked big time, but they stated they just didn't know about the airport, and they would delete that part of their presentation from the overall project. However, two weeks later at a presentation in Vicksburg, MS, they once again made the same presentation with the same big map projected on the wall stating they'd walked the entire property! Woody's brother Reg, and Mary, the third owner were at the meeting and again raised their concerns. The Corps lost their battle in Vicksburg, Mississippi. A wildlife refuge next to an airport is specifically addressed in the MOU. Something like this is never to be established next to an airport, because birds near an airport are dangerous.
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When Woody called the Director of the Corps of Engineers in the Vicksburg office later the next week, he told Woody to "go to hell," and that he'd "build the wildlife bird habitat next to the airport no matter what the FAA thinks about it." This was said before Woody could even introduce the other parties to the conference call, one of whom was the Regional Director of the FAA in Atlanta, Georgia. The other was an FAA liaison out of Memphis, Diane Gusky. They were very unhappy with the comments they'd heard from the Corps official. The next year, the Corps of Engineers in Vicksburg was cleaned out. Now, seven years later, Woody is again having to make it clear to Adair and Norfolk Southern that standing water cannot be within 5,000 feet of an airport according to federal advisories and regulations.
Click here for part -----> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
© 2012 Kelleigh Nelson - All Rights Reserved
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Kelleigh Nelson has been researching the Christian right and their connections to the left, the new age, and cults since 1975. Formerly an executive producer for three different national radio talk show hosts, she was adept at finding and scheduling a variety of wonderful guests for her radio hosts. She and her husband live in Knoxville, TN, and she has owned her own wholesale commercial bakery since 1990. Prior to moving to Tennessee, Kelleigh was marketing communications and advertising manager for a fortune 100 company in Ohio. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, she was a Goldwater girl with high school classmate, Hillary Rodham, in Park Ridge, Illinois. Kelleigh is well acquainted with Chicago politics and was working in downtown Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention riots. Kelleigh is presently the secretary for Rocky Top Freedom Campaign, a strong freedom advocate group.
Website: www.rockytopfreedom.com
E-Mail: Proverbs133@bellsouth.net
