Swain County’s municipal land-clearing inert debris landfill has been closed since July 2 while the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality investigates allegations of illegal dumping. 

“We are currently dumping brush over the spot, and requirements of the landfill will further complicate the DEQ job of investigating the allegation,” said County Manager Tommy Dills. But while the landfill is closed, no waste placement is available, meaning residents must hold onto their land-clearing debris.

It’s a fair assumption that some may dump elsewhere in the duration. The Smoky Mountain News in 2017 reported that after the county’s waste transfer station cut its hours, illegal dumping directly outside of the facility became a “serious problem.” 

County officials also said there was no word as to when the LCID facility would reopen, as it is dependent upon the investigation’s timeline.  

Meanwhile, Dills cautioned against playing into rumors about what went on.

“I promise you, when this whole thing’s done, we’ll have a clearer picture of what has actually happened, and I will report it in its entirety,” he said.

The case takes on additional weight because the LCID site is located on the same property as a pre-regulatory landfill in operation from 1967 to 1980 and another closed county landfill active from roughly 1980 to 1995. 

A “pre-regulatory landfill” designation applies any North Carolina land area that accepted municipal solid waste prior to 1983. Often, landfills were unlined and contained harmful materials such as lead and asbestos. The state’s Pre-Regulatory Landfill Program began in 2007 and still conducts site assessment and remediation. 

Swain County’s pre-regulatory dump is ranked 251 on an April 2026 state priority list of 625 hazardous landfills. 

While the LCID site does not overlap the pre-regulatory landfill, is located on U.S. Forest Service land within 500 feet of the Tuckasegee River. According to agency-provided documents, the USFS in late April 1994 issued a special use permit requiring the second, now-closed landfill be used as a sanitary, or solid waste, landfill until Oct. 31, and authorizing today’s site — a demolition, or sanitary-turned-LCID, landfill — until Dec. 31, 1997. 

A 1998 permit authorized operations until Dec 31, 2002.

The county’s 2001 landfill operations manual allows the site to accept land-clearing waste while prohibiting the following types of waste: liquid, municipal solid, construction/demolition, PCB, asbestos and white goods.

“Solid waste disposed of at the facility shall be restricted to the smallest area feasible that provides a safe operation. The waste shall be compacted as densely as practical,” the document reads.

In 2003 and again in 2013, Swain County received two decade-long use authorizations.  Though the facility’s NCDEQ permits are currently up to date, starting Jan. 1, 2024, its USFS permit was not. Ironically, that fact emerged due to inquiries from county officials obtained through a USFS public records request.

“I am looking for the [memorandum of understanding] between Swain County and Forest Service for our landfill.  I can’t seem to find a signed copy. Can you please send me one?”  wrote former Clerk to Commissioners Cyndi Woodard to Forest Service Realty Specialist Julia Sparks in June 2024.

Sparks replied that the permit had expired at the end of 2023 but that her colleagues were working with former Swain County Manager Kevin King to reissue another. Unbeknownst to her, King had  left his post several months earlier to take the same position in Jackson.

“If possible, I’d welcome the opportunity to discuss this permit in more detail,” Sparks wrote. Woodard didn’t respond.

In May 2026, Clerk to Commissioners Cyndi Jenkins also requested a copy of the permit.

Sparks noted that the document had expired, and the county needed to pursue a re-issuance process, attaching a blank application to the email. Jenkins forwarded the correspondence to former County Manager Lottie Barker.

Barker said she’d reviewed the attachments and asked a second question: “Also if we are wanting the site to be considered for another use, currently the thing in question is a shooting range, do we use that same form to ask for that?”

Sparks said she’d be happy to meet Barker onsite to discuss its current status.

“Regarding the shooting range, I believe the next best step would be to arrange a time to meet to discuss what Swain County has in mind in terms of a shooting range. These types of endeavors are typically complicated and require significant planning and coordination with state and federal entities,” she wrote.

Discarded ammunition from outdoor shooting ranges routinely causes lead-based contamination requiring years of remediation. These effects would be compounded by pre-regulatory landfill heavy metals that have corrupted the soil.

Plus, a February 2026 USFS monitoring report made the following LCID-area observations: “Gate cannot be accessed by forest service. Signs on forest land. Lots of debris along the entrance, needs to be cleaned up. Vehicles being stored on forest land, skid steer and bulldozer.”

It noted that, despite excessive amounts of kudzu posing a “fire safety hazard,” the landfill was generally in compliance with special use provisions. 

Capacity problems

The LCID landfill should be already out of commission, according to the 2001 operations manual.

“Assuming a compacted density of 800 pounds per cubic yard, this results in a total capacity for the LCID Landfill of approximately 25 years,” it noted, adding that the average annual waste tonnage was 200 then and, over the life of the facility, would likely rise to 335. Either the authors overcalculated or didn’t factor in future state regulations.

NCDEQ approved a 2025 permit dictating an annual disposal rate of approximately 300 cubic yards, or 120 tons. And just two years earlier, the landfill had a promising 5,400 cubic yards of waste-placement airspace available.

Indeed, the facility most struggling with space is the waste transfer station neighboring the landfill.

On July 7, Jenkins outlined the scope of the problem.

To remain compliant and prevent the site from becoming a leachate pond, he said, the transfer station must store filled trailers within a small shed that can only fit three at a time.  “I mean, [leachate] eats concrete; it’s some bad stuff, and if the state ever catches any of it on the ground, they’ll make you dig it up, contaminate the dirt. You’d have to go through and go through a big process with that,” he explained.

The mandatory storage has resulted in periodically turning away commercial haulers, though Jenkins said a site contractor had purchased another trailer to store in his yard, allowing the transfer station to accept more garbage.

Even still, the county faces a larger problem.

“We’re going to outgrow that site. We basically have already,” said commissioner Bobby Jenkins.

Jerry Jenkins suggested that some trash was coming from outside the area. While he couldn’t prove this claim, he said, that the Swain landfill has lower fees than neighboring counties makes it an attractive option.  

Another culprit could be the county’s not-so-distant tourists.

“There are 157 boat houses in Swain County. Only 20 of them are billed to 28713 The rest of them are billed to people who are out of here. They’re not bagging up their trash on Sunday evening and driving it back to Haywood County. They’re getting rid of it at the dump here in Bryson,” said one member of the audience.

The county might be due for an expansion — and there’s no clear way to finance such a project.

Commissioners suggested modifying the fee schedule both to prepare for future growth and dissuade out-of-county dumpers.

“You can’t fund something from nothing,” Dills said.

A previous version of this story incorrectly said that the LCID site is located above the pre-regulatory disposal area and that the sanitary and demolition landfill were one in the same. It also incorrectly said that the pre-regulatory landfill operated from 1967 to 1998 with no mention to the second landfill. The LCID site sits on the same property as previous dumping areas, but it does not overlap either landfill. The pre-regulatory landfill operated from 1967 to 1980 and was followed by a second closed landfill active from roughly 1980 to 1995. The story has been updated with the correct information.