We have been delighted to read your feedback about the NashVillagerin our recent reader survey, and we wanted to share some of the highlights here.

🌟 77% of you said you enjoy the variety of authors across the week. “It feels natural, conversational, and so very local,” one reader wrote. Another wrote: “It comes across as a fun outlet for your team,” which is accurate. My favorite comment was that we use “decent grammar and vocabulary, not too frilly, easy reading level.” This is what public radio dreams are made of!

🍟 81% of you said the length feels right. You praised the “quick read,” “small tidbits,” and “wide lens,” and you called it a “quick and easy way to stay informed about what’s going on locally.”

🫂 95% of you said you would recommend the NashVillager to a family member or friend. Wow! PLEASE DO! We would love to double the size of our newsletter audience.

Here’s my personal request: Please forward one of the newsletters this week to a friend who you think would enjoy some of the content, and send them this signup link.

Thank you to all who participated! Your feedback and suggestions will be integrated into future editions of the newsletter.

🛍️ And a special congrats to Amy, the lucky winner of our random drawing for a swag bag of Nashville Public Radio goodies!

WHAT TO KNOW

A Republic Services trash truck drives over the summit of Middle Point Landfill in Murfreesboro in January 2025. Credit: Pierce Gentry / WUOT (file)What are we supposed to do with all our trash?

This is a question that has plagued Middle Tennessee, probably for decades, but certainly in recent years as Middle Point Landfill in Murfreesboro approaches its capacity. Middle Point accepts trash from about a third of Tennessee counties, including Davidson.

Now, the city of Murfreesboro is calling attention to several environmental violations at Middle Point Landfill, calling them “indicative of poor operation and maintenance.”

WPLN’s Caroline Eggers reports thatMiddle Point Landfill received seven violations from the state this year related to litter and liquid runoff. In March, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation noted “major violations” in an inspection, due to poor maintenance of a system that handles leachate, the liquid byproduct from landfills that can be harmful, as well as litter control.

The city of Murfreesboro also issued violations in September for air and water pollution. And over the last two years, a consultant group measured high readings of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Middle Point described the city’s efforts to share this information publicly as “grandstanding,” saying in a statement that the TDEC inspection “did not include any enforcement action.”

This conversations will likely exacerbate the region-wide dilemma of where to put trash. In the past, the company that owns Middle Point has proposed expanding the landfill, on the condition that Nashville will no longer be able to throw its trash there. But Nashville has not announced a backup plan for how to handle its waste. 

Caroline talks about some potential options for Nashville’s trash — and why it might be harder for municipalities to block the construction of new landfills.

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🎙️ On today’s episode of the NashVillagerpodcast 
with host Nina Cardona 🎙️ 

For Veterans’ Day, the story of a monument to everyone who fought in the bloody Battle of Franklin, both Union and Confederate. Plus the local news for Nov. 11, 2025 and small town versus a cryptocurrency mine.

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MORE TO KNOW

• WPLN’s Paige Pfleger has spent more than two years investigating domestic gun violence homicides with ProPublica, working to understand the barriers that keep victims from being able to protect themselves. Paige’s newest investigation has found that roughly 1 in 4 of domestic violence homicide victims in Tennessee’s five biggest cities were allegedly shot by someone who was legally barred from having a gun. Some of those victims were allegedly killed by a suspect who was also under supervision by Tennessee probation officers who are tasked with closely monitoring high-risk offenders to ensure public safety.
  • When a probationer violates probation by committing a new crime, a warrant can go out for their arrest. But until that warrant is served, all face-to-face supervision stops. Sometimes that supervision gap is a few days long. Other times, it lasts more than a year. WPLN and ProPublica found that six young Black moms were killed in that supervision blind spot. Their deaths left 12 children without their mothers. Read the full investigation now.
     
• As nearly one in 10 Tennesseans have lost their SNAP benefits during the government shutdown, food banks are seeing the strain. Gov. Bill Lee authorized a withdrawal of $5 million from its savings to give food banks, an average of about $7 per SNAP recipient. By comparison, Tennessee’s total monthly SNAP benefits cost the federal government $145 million. WPLN’s Catherine Sweeney reports this $5 million comes from a fund tied to TennCare. The state has a special deal with the federal government: if it keeps TennCare costs down, it can keep and redistribute some of the savings. So far, Tennessee has gotten about $1 billion in those payments. They’ve spent it on things like rural health workforce initiatives, Hurricane Helene relief, and now food banks.
   
• The Tennessee Valley Authority is targeting up to 1.5 gigawatts of battery storage by the end of 2029 — the equivalent of one its largest gas plants under construction. “We’re trying to drive a sense of urgency with these assets,” a TVA executive said during a board meeting last week. WPLN’s Caroline Eggers reports battery storage can strengthen power grids, whether systems are dominated by fossil fuels, like in Tennessee (where more than half of the energy comes from goal and natural gas), or have high levels of renewable energy like in California and Texas. In TVA’s last longterm plan in 2019, it considered as much as 5 GW of storage, but the public utility ended up adding about 0.4 GW between 2019 and 2025. 
   
• The legendary Red Grooms Fox Trot Carousel may finally come back to life. The Tennessee State Museum is asking for proposals to restore and operate the merry-go-round through a public-private partnership. The iconic carousel was created in 1998 by artist Red Grooms. Instead of horses, there are 36 characters taken from the state’s history, such as Andrew Jackson and Olympian Wilma Rudolph. As Curious Nashville discovered back in 2019, the carousel was previously located at Riverfront Park but went into storage in the early 2000s at the state museum after ridership tapered off. 

FROM THIS IS NASHVILLE

Bill DeMain has been creating and evolving for decades. A prolific songwriter, music journalist, walking tour guide, and one half of the pop duo Swan Dive, he’s still not slowing down. In fact, during the pandemic, he added yet another career to his résumé: cartoonist. Bill tells us how it all started, why he continues to try new things, and his thoughts on the untimely death of his friend and co-writer, Jill Sobule.

We want to hear from you, our listeners and community. Call (615) 751-2500 to give us your thoughts or feedback. Submit your idea for a show through our Pitch Form, or email us at thisisnashville@wpln.org.

Stream This is Nashville podcast with host Blake Farmeron YouTube, or listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.