Tinsley Sand & Gravel, LLC, has purchased a 150 acre tract of prime farmland on Hwy 156 Jumpoff Road.  The site is along a residential corridor of homes, farms, and pristine natural areas. There are no other heavy commercial or industrial businesses in this area.

Sand and other aggregates are necessary components for a lot of important products used in construction and infrastructure projects that we rely on every day. But sand quarries are heavy industrial enterprises and do not belong in residential corridors sited next to people’s homes, farms, and protected natural areas. Sand and rock quarries should be sited near other industrial and manufacturing facilities, not where children wait for their school buses and fire trucks and ambulances have to get to emergencies.

Franklin, Grundy and Marion County residents already have experience with sand and gravel plants and have many serious complaints. Existing plants use explosives to blast through the earth. The blast is not only extremely loud, but it shakes homes with such force that it can cause damage to the integrity of walls, ceilings and foundations. 
Blasting can also affect water quality in nearby wells. Many residents in unincorporated rural areas do not have access to other sources of water, like people living in cities. If our wells are damaged, we won’t have any water and our properties become worthless.

Maybe, but there are substantial costs to putting a sand quarry on a rural tract of pristine land near homes and farms.  
Sand plants require heavy trucks for transport. When fully operational, the sand and gravel plant will generate an ADDITIONAL 100 TRUCK TRIPS PER DAY on Highways 156 and 41A. Our narrow rural and mountain roads weren’t built to take heavy industrial truck traffic. There are no shoulders along most of Highway 156 and road sides will crumble from repeated heavy traffic. Our tax dollars will go towards rebuilding roads damaged from  heavy truck traffic. 
Mining sand and gravel will require clearcutting and blasting this farmland tract, destroying existing wildlife habitat. Pollutants generated from the clear cut and the quarry operation will run off into the Jumpoff Creek watershed and beyond (all the way down to Battle Creek in the valley and then into the Tennessee River, which may violate the federal Clean Water Act). 

The County Powers Act is a tool available to county governments in Tennessee to regulate businesses in unincorporated areas that may pose a threat to human health and safety or infringe on homeowners’ property rights. The Act cannot be used to regulate agricultural activities–agriculture is a specially protected sector in Tennessee, as it should be. Grundy County was smart and adopted the Act in 2019. This enabled Grundy County to challenge a sand quarry at the Clouse Hill site, thereby protecting county residents from the harmful effects of a quarry operation in close proximity to homes and schools. 

• Stay informed about, and attend public meetings related to this quarry. We will update the community with date/time/location as meetings are scheduled.
• If you would like to connect to other volunteers, and have time, or expertise (e.g. legal, engineering, environmental, website, etc.) to contribute to this effort, please reach out and let us know by sending an email to [email protected]  and request to be added to the Google Group. 
• Share this website and information about the campaign with friends and family in Grundy, Franklin, and Marion counties.