A looming county vote on nuclear technology company BWXT’s request to rezone over 50 acres of its property for refining high purity depleted uranium has driven neighbors of the facility to retain legal representation and file an ethics complaint in an attempt to swing the outcome in their favor.
A letter was delivered to the Washington County Commission on March 13 from William Nunnally, a Greeneville-based attorney who says he represents thousands of local citizens who oppose BWXT’s pending rezoning request. In it, Nunnally asserts that the county’s own zoning laws should prohibit commissioners from approving the project.
Nunnally claims BWXT’s rezoning conflicts with multiple county laws regulating industrial development, including the lack of access to a public sewer system, an arterial road connection and its location on a FEMA-identified flood plain over Little Limestone Creek.
“Even if debatable, the most restrictive interpretations [of the law] must apply for the protection of the community and the general welfare,” Nunnally writes. “It is arbitrary and capricious if a county does not follow the content of its own zoning laws.”
Since November, over 6,000 people who live in and around Washington County have signed onto a petition urging their elected officials to vote BWXT’s rezoning down. At issue are the company’s plans to expand their existing facility to process high purity depleted uranium – a key ingredient in nuclear warheads – for the federal government.
As locals continue to flood courtrooms during county commission meetings about the issue, some commissioners say they are still divided on the matter. That’s despite a recommendation to reject BWXT’s rezone request delivered by the county regional planning commission in January.
“We write to the commissioners,” said local resident Mike DeUrso. “I've emailed all of them, and you don't get a response.”
DeUrso isn’t alone. Several other residents have expressed frustration with their commissioners, saying they send emails or leave voicemails urging them to vote against BWXT’s rezone request and almost never get a response. That prompted the retention of Nunnally, who now asserts the commissioners are bound by their own laws to vote against BWXT’s request.
In addition to a lack of required infrastructure, the attorney says he can find no record of BWXT’s ownership of the property at the county courthouse, something he told WUOT News is “almost unheard of.”
“Not only is it not common, it would be very rare,” Nunnally said in an interview. “Perhaps it’s an oversight. Perhaps they just didn’t get around to doing it yet. I don’t know. All I know is that’s one of the things I looked for is to see who owns this property. And I was expecting to see some sort of an instrument transferring title to BWXT. Not only did I not find that, I did not even find evidence of a written lease.”
In a press release, BWXT says it purchased the existing munitions facility off Old State Route 34 near Jonesborough early last year from L3Harris Technologies, a manufacturing company that had owned the plant since 2023, though it was first built in the 1960s. The company did not respond to a request for an interview about the issues raised in Nunnally's letter.
The county’s zoning and planning director, Angie Charles, also did not respond to a request for comment about the letter. Despite the planning commission’s vote to recommend denying BWXT’s request, Charles and other planning staff at Washington County remain in favor of the rezone.
That’s raised tensions between constituents and their elected officials. Commissioners say they’re doing their best to make an informed decision according to their principles and what the law requires of them. Voters say they aren’t being heard.
Those sentiments came to a head in a February meeting of the County Commission, where Commissioner Richard Tucker of the county’s first district made a motion to delay the vote on the BWXT rezone by one month so it wouldn’t fall on a Wednesday night, an evening he said was typically reserved for church events. The motion carried, and the vote was delayed by over a month, to a Monday night in March.
After the meeting, Jonesborough resident Kevin Hendricks approached Tucker and told him he was disappointed in his decision to delay the vote. According to Hendricks, Tucker, who does not represent his district, replied with threatening language.
“I had turned my back, I was leaving, and he pointed his finger and he said ‘I’ll get you one of these days,’” said Hendricks. “No citizen should have to go through that. I mean, all I did was express an opinion.”
Records show a Washington County Sheriff’s deputy separated Tucker and Hendricks, and corroborated the Jonesborough resident’s account in a police report filed the following morning. To Hendricks, the incident is illustrative of a larger issue in local government: elected officials have lost respect for the people who put them in office.
“A good commissioner should be accessible to the people he represents,” Hendricks said. “He's ultimately answerable to them, and he should be erring on the side of the constituents, the voters, the average rank and file people.”
Hendricks has filed an ethics complaint with the Washington County Ethics Committee, which will be heard at its March 23 meeting.
Tucker told WUOT News he did not want to comment on BWXT or the ethics complaint filed against him. The vote on the company’s request to rezone 56 acres of its property from agricultural to high-impact industrial is currently set for March 23.
