On Monday evening, June 15, the Maury County Commission will convene at the courthouse on the square in Columbia and take up one of the most consequential land use decisions in the county's recent history.

The item on the agenda is a rezoning request. What it actually is, depending on who you ask, is either the county's best shot at economic revival or the most reckless gamble anyone has proposed with the Duck River since Monsanto itself left town.

The Muletown Journal is publishing this piece before the vote so that Maury County residents understand what is at stake, who is saying what, and what questions have not yet been answered. A follow-up report will cover what happens in the room Monday night.

What Is Being Proposed

Crosswaters Reserve LLC, represented by the engineering firm Barge Design Solutions, is seeking to rezone approximately 1,339 acres at 2200 New Highway 7 in Santa Fe, on the former Monsanto Chemical Company campus. The site sits five miles northwest of downtown Columbia, between the Duck River and Williamsport Highway, on land that most longtime Maury County residents know simply as the old Monsanto property.

The proposed development would include 1,313 residential units, consisting of 975 single-family homes, 188 townhomes, and 150 multi-family units, along with 150,000 square feet of commercial space, a 36-hole golf course with a 25,000-square-foot clubhouse, and a 400-room hotel. The centerpiece of the entire development would be Tailings Pond 15, a 325-acre body of water that has been known locally for years as Monsanto Lake, rebranded in the development plans as a recreational reservoir.

The developer estimates a 20-year economic impact of $5.1 billion, the creation of 1,500 jobs paying a combined $932 million in wages, and tens of millions in development fees and tax revenue for the county.

What This Land Has Been

To understand what is being proposed, you have to understand what was here before.

The Monsanto Chemical Company operated on this site for decades, mining phosphorus, manufacturing fertilizer, and for a period producing chemical warfare agents for the federal government. Generations of Maury County families lived close enough to the plant to smell it on certain days and to watch the lights of it burning through the night. When it closed, it left behind a federally designated Superfund site. The past use of the site resulted in contamination by hazardous substances, and the properties remain subject to land use restrictions to this day.

This is not the first time someone has tried to do something with this land since Monsanto left. In 2022, a Louisiana-based company called Trinity Business Group proposed a large-scale waste processing plant, tire shredding facility, and incinerator on the same property. Maury County residents packed the courthouse on the square in unified opposition. The commission voted 21 to 0 to adopt the Jackson Law, giving local government authority to block such facilities. Trinity sued the waste planning board, and that litigation remains pending in 2026.

The same engineering firm that designed Crosswaters Reserve, Barge Design Solutions, previously sought to put a landfill on the same property. Maury County rejected that too.

Crosswaters is the third major attempt to develop the old Monsanto site in recent years. Each time, the community showed up. Each time, the answer was no.

The Central Question: Is the Pond Safe?

Crosswaters Reserve centers its entire concept on Tailings Pond 15. The developer calls it a recreational reservoir and a potential drinking water source for the development. The opposition calls it a repository for industrial waste whose contents have never been fully investigated.

At the May planning commission meeting, attorney Reed Martz told commissioners that the only thing in Pond 15 is washed dirt. Barge engineer Chelsea Williams agreed, saying no slag went to Pond 15. Their position is that the tailings accumulation is not an environmental concern but a structural one, and that decades of dewatering have produced a safe, stable consistency.

Barge's concept plan states that no significant findings were discovered after extensive site investigations, property evaluations, and environmental sampling. The plan claims that Monsanto Lake has lower concentrations of metals and suspended solids than the EPA allows in tap water and that the water quality of discharge from the reservoir is equivalent or superior to the quality of the Duck River itself.

TDEC accepted those findings. The agency lifted its land use restrictions on the Tailings Pond 15 parcel in 2024 after Barge tested the soil and water and entered into a brownfield voluntary agreement with the developer.

But a letter from TDEC's own deputy director, sent to Commissioner Mike Kuzawinski in 2025, raises a question that has not been publicly resolved. Deputy Director Evan Spann explained that Monsanto only investigated pollution in the acreage south of the Duck River, not the 1,339 acres north of the river set aside for Crosswaters. Monsanto Lake was known to be a tailings pond but was never included in the original contamination investigation.

In plain terms: Barge says it tested the site and found it safe. TDEC's own letter says this parcel was never investigated in the original Monsanto cleanup. Both of those things cannot be entirely true at the same time. That gap has not been publicly explained.

Environmental attorney Dustin Kittle, who owns a farm on land that adjoins the Crosswaters property just outside Santa Fe, pointed out at the May planning commission meeting that former Monsanto workers have admitted they do not know where drums of toxic chemicals were buried in unmarked pits on the property. What was never mapped cannot be tested. What is not tested cannot be declared safe.

Kittle is not simply an activist. He is a neighboring landowner, a licensed attorney, and a founding member of Tennessee Land and Liberty, a Maury County organization formed specifically to protect the Duck River through legal and legislative channels. The group has announced it will be present at Monday's meeting.

The Water Question

More than 250,000 people rely on the Duck River as their primary source of drinking water. That includes families along Bear Creek Pike, farms in the Santa Fe community, households in Spring Hill and Mount Pleasant, and every resident served by Columbia Power and Water. The river that the Duck River bottomland settlers found when they came down from the Carolinas in 1805 is still the lifeblood of this county.

Columbia ratepayers are currently facing increases of up to 20 percent per year for the next five years to fund a new $520 million water intake on the Duck River, driven largely by the demands of a growing population on a river already under stress.

The developer's own contingency plan makes the water question more complicated. Barge's representatives proposed at the March planning commission meeting that, if Columbia Power and Water is unable to supply adequate water to the development, the backup source would be Monsanto Lake itself, which they claim currently holds a billion gallons and could hold up to 4.4 billion gallons with the correct modifications.

The county is being asked to approve a development whose own developer acknowledges that, if Columbia Power and Water cannot supply adequate water, the backup plan would be to draw it from Monsanto Lake, the same tailings pond the developer has declared clean based on its own testing.

The Character Question

Beyond the environmental concerns, a quieter argument has emerged in community meetings and on front porches across the county about what kind of place Maury County wants to be.

At the May planning commission meeting, county commission candidate Jordan Rouden said of the dense residential development plan: “This is Williamson County stuff.” He noted that the proposed restrictive covenants would prohibit activities common to Maury County rural life, from holding garage sales to displaying guns in public. The covenants are not incidental. They are part of the design. A development whose governing documents prohibit activities that are normal and lawful in Maury County rural culture is not being built for the people who live here. It is being built for people the developer hopes to attract from somewhere else.

Commissioner Gabe Howard, who represents District 8 and is running for county mayor, has stated that the requested zonings do not conform to either the current or new comprehensive land use plan for the area.

The Jobs Argument

The developer's economic claims deserve a fair hearing given where Maury County stands right now.

Last month this county posted the highest unemployment rate in Tennessee at 6.1 percent, a spike driven largely by the Ultium Cells retooling in Spring Hill. The structural vulnerability of a county economy tied to a single employer has been a topic of serious conversation in Columbia and across the county for months. When the developer says Crosswaters would create 1,500 jobs paying $932 million in wages over 20 years, those numbers are worth taking seriously.

That works out to roughly 75 jobs per year at an average of about $62,000 per position, covering hospitality, construction, retail, and service work associated with a resort and residential community. Those are real jobs. Charlotte Napier, a Columbia resident who told NewsChannel 5 this spring that it took her months to find work after leaving her last job, represents the kind of gap this development might help address.

The question is whether hospitality and resort employment addresses the structural vulnerability Maury County's unemployment problem reveals, or whether it deepens it. A resort economy is historically one of the least resilient economic models available to a community. The Maury Alliance's own strategy for 2025 through 2029 explicitly prioritizes higher-paying manufacturing and professional employment over hospitality and service development.

The jobs argument is real. It is not, on its own, sufficient to answer the environmental and land use questions.

What Happens Monday

The Maury County Commission meets Monday, June 15, at 6:30 p.m. at the Maury County Courthouse on the square in Columbia. The meeting is open to the public and includes a public comment period. Tennessee Land and Liberty, the Duck River advocacy group founded by Maury County residents, has announced it will be present.

The commission must decide whether to approve the rezoning of approximately 959 acres from heavy industrial to rural residential with a planned unit development overlay, and approximately 380 additional acres to general commercial with a commercial planned unit development overlay. Approval of the rezoning would also constitute approval of the preliminary master development plan.

This is not a preliminary discussion. This is the vote.

The Duck River has been running through Maury County since before there was a Maury County. Families along its banks have farmed the same bottomland for generations. Their grandchildren drink its water today. Every significant threat to that river in recent years has been fought off by residents who showed up and said no.

Monday is the next time.

The Muletown Journal will be in the room.