Hundreds of residents in Hardeman County stand together against rezoning in their community

After an overwhelming “no” vote by the Hardeman County commission in December to rezone the area on state route 138. The vote comes back up on the agenda for next week’s meeting. Now community members are concerned and have a lot of questions.

“We feel like our voices did not matter in that meeting, we feel like our commissioners and our Mayor is not listening", says a concerned community member.

In early December the Hardeman County commission voted no to rezoning land that is currently zoned for farming, agriculture, and residential.

About 50 people in the community showed up to that meeting to appose the rezone vote, 12 stood up and spoke.

A week or so after the no vote, it was released in the local newspaper that the land rezoning will be on the agenda again.

I spoke with community members who wanted to stay anonymous, they said if the proposed land is rezoned for industrial use Royal Oak Charcoal may be the company moving into their community.

“There is no industry out here anywhere and we respect our farm lands, our communities, our homes and we want it to say farm land, agriculture, and residential and not zoned into industrial", says another concerned community member.

I even spoke with a county commissioner that was not sure why the vote was back on the agenda.

One community member added, “It makes us feel very uncomfortable, it makes us feel very uncomfortable. We’ve been told their will not be any chemicals, there will not be any dust, there will not be any smoke, but yet the general description of this specific zoning and it says that.”

They say the rezone could bring more traffic to their area and even pollution in the air and nearing Hatchie River.

Hundreds of community members are working together to try to stop this vote again at the next county commission meeting.