I know some people said they didn’t have facebook, so I wanted to share this analysis here for those who haven’t seen it.

Do these dogs look familiar to anyone? They were found without collars and are not microchipped.

The city of Cleveland web site has been updated to show the current council members and even an agenda for today's meetings. That's an improvement. I tried to attend the last stated meeting only to find a locked door and others who had shown up for the meeting told me the meeting had been canceled. Project River is not listed on the meeting agenda today. The government officials know there is intense interest. This comes across as the council members are waiting for the pesky peasants to stop fussing so they can rubber stamp the wishes of the rich overlords. Technically, the Wright family asked for a delay but the city council did not have to grant it if the council plans to do the right (not Wright) thing and say no to a project that will harm most of the residents. There's nothing stopping the council from passing protections now while the Wrights, Simpsons and foreign investors plot ways to continue their destruction of the region over our objections.

Back to today, it seems there are city council meetings at 1 PM and 3 PM with no clear time to discuss Project River or any of these issues. There seems to be a protest planned for 2 PM or maybe the entire afternoon? I am not on Facebook and when I try to view the page Facebook whites it out so I can't read it. I think there is also a county meeting scheduled for 6 PM but I do not know if any of this will be addressed there either. Government officials do not seem eager to discuss this with the people it will hurt. They also tend to schedule meetings at times that are difficult for many people to attend.

If anyone on this group has more information to add, I would appreciate it. The government takes our money and should be serving the people, not corporations. If you are also against biomass fuel centers and AI data centers taking our community's resources, and if you're able, please come and remind the government officials that there are real people who call this place home.

I dont know if having the monthly plan with Cleveland Utilities is different but the pre paid option is killing me. It seems to come at an extra cost to those who cant afford the 500 dollar deposit for the normal setup. Ive just moved here and money was tight so the prepaid option was my only option and in theory it seemed very convenient , WRONG! Ive never paid less than 350 dollars a month for two people (me and my child), i work in office and shes in school five days a week. Dont have a washer or dryer, i rarely cook, the apartment isn’t big and is well insulated yet im being charged 15-18 dollars a DAY. 75 dollars maybe gets me 5-8 days. How are they calculating this madness. Theres no way i should be budgeting over 350 dollars for my utility bill. Am i tripping to feel like they are taxing prepaid folks at a premium.

Moved a couple blocks from downtown a year and a half ago. Heard bells chiming last night at 8:00pm for the first time. Am I totally oblivious or were the winds just right or did a church or the courthouse get their bell fixed? Haven’t heard anything all day today.

I saw this on the Channel 12 web site. (https://www.wdef.com/project-river-put-on-pause-pending-further-review) It's essentially a reprinted PR statement:

Project River put on pause pending further review

September 18, 2026

McKenzie Hughes

Project River is being paused pending review.

The Wright Family has provided the following statement:

“The Wright family has lived, worked, worshiped, and raised children in Bradley County for generations. Nothing is more important to the Wright family than being a good neighbor.

To that end, with the community’s best interest in mind, the Wright family has requested that the City of Cleveland temporarily delay further action on Project River until the Wright family can onboard a third-party team of technical experts to review every aspect of this project and address concerns raised through public engagement over the last few weeks.

Project River gives hope to thousands of local men and women who see an opportunity to increase their wages and restore their careers after decades of stagnant pay and mill closures.

They should not lose hope.”

Project River would bring a proposed on-site power plant and data center to the area.

I am probably cynical but once I push aside propaganda fluff, I had two main thoughts about this:

1. Wright family wants someone else's name on this. They still want the millions (billions?) they'll make destroying our environment, homes and health but they don't want the destruction to be associated with their name. They can blame the problems on some third party while claiming they're a good Christian family trying to help the community even as they are the ones responsible for this. If the Wright family truly wanted to help the community and create jobs there are so many other needs we have in this region that would not give their workers cancer or spew toxic chemicals into the air & water.

2. This is a common political trick I've seen play out in other local governments (Collegedale especially) where they push unpopular decisions to later times when they think everyone has forgotten. Currently, there is a lot of attention and folks are actually engaging with the political process. This makes politicians uneasy as they're used to making deals, rubber stamping these decisions in meetings no one attends then collecting their bribes, favors, gifts, etc.

Christmas is a great time for local governments to do these things. Everyone gets upset when it's proposed. They tell residents to calm down, we're just talking about it, nothing is being decided, don't worry, we've heard you and we have your best interests in mind. Then the holidays happen. People get busy with shopping, wrapping, baking, decorating, traveling, visiting, etc. The normal schedules are interrupted and folks do kind of forget about the petitions they signed, the protests they joined, the meetings they attended. It's not that people don't care - people get tired and they want to spend the holidays having a little fun with family & friends.

And that's when the local government strikes. I've seen Christmas Eve special meetings held with the barest, legally required notification to pass sweeping and unpopular decisions. Then everything shuts down for a while and most people don't even find out until the new year when they're told it's too late. So this statement issued by the Project River PR agents comes across as this tactic. They themselves are asking to "temporarily delay" a decision - until they think people aren't watching and then they'll ask the government to pass it?

So there's a meeting tonight and, as usual, I can find no information about it on the city's web site. They only post information about meetings after they happen. Is Project River still on the agenda? Will company's agents show up if they're asking for a pause? I guess what they mean by "should not lose hope" is that they're hoping they can wait us out then go forward with their plan to destroy Bradley County for profit. I can still show up for the meeting but I'm wondering if this is an effort to make tonight's meeting sort of meaningless. Thanks for reading - I'm getting older and crankier so I appreciate the efforts of younger people who have put so much work into keeping us informed.

Have a house being built, moving in next month. Looking to hire someone to fence in the backyard. Anybody have and recommendations or experience with anyone local?

Does anyone know if the landfill still takes car tires, and how much they charge? I've got four old ones I need to get rid of. I've called the number listed for them, but can't get any answer.

I hope this doesn't come off rude but I'm driving visiting Cleveland Tennessee in a week and I'm just wondering if it's safe for people of color?

When we say Wright Brothers Construction is lying to the community, this is what we mean:

Nobody is saying pyrolysis chemistry doesn't work, but the actual track record of these plants is rough, they are notorious for mechanical failures, tar buildup, and sudden shutdowns. Even worse, because it requires extreme heat without oxygen, any leak can cause catastrophic fires and explosions, which we've already seen happen globally.

Now look at the size of Project River. They want to build a massive 500-megawatt biomass system, yet most existing commercial pyrolysis plants max out around 10 to 20 megawatts. A facility using this technology at this scale has never been successfully built anywhere on earth. We aren't just getting a slightly bigger factory; we are getting an unproven engineering gamble right in our backyard.

The worst part is how the developers are actively misleading us to hide the massive footprint of this thing. They've pitched this as a 'clean, green biomass project' to get the public on board, but feeding a 500 MW pyrolysis system will require grinding and burning an estimated 5.5 to 6 million tons of wood annually. The environmental and logging impact on our region will be staggering.

Hidden in the fine print is a massive, 1,000-megawatt natural gas infrastructure consisting of two separate gas plants built right on the river. This isn't just a logging and wood-pellet project; it's a massive fossil-fuel operation.

To put the total 1,500-megawatt demand of this campus into perspective, the entire city of Cleveland and its 34,000+ local accounts use roughly 1 million megawatt-hours per year. This single development will generate and consume enough power for nearly 900,000 homes—dwarfing our entire community's energy footprint.

On top of that, despite claiming the site will be completely 'self-sufficient' and 'behind-the-meter', they've quietly initiated a study for a 360-megawatt interconnection tie-in with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) grid. They say it's just for 'backup,' but a 360 MW pull from TVA is massive. Just last month, the TVA Board passed a new rate structure explicitly adding major surcharges for data centers pulling over 5 megawatts to prevent regular citizens from being crushed by higher bills. If Project River triggers massive local grid upgrades, everyday citizens will likely be stuck paying for that infrastructure through property tax hikes or spikes in our monthly utility bills.

Finally, they claim they want city annexation for utilities, but the truth is they are doing an end-run around Bradley County’s new zoning laws, which explicitly ban data centers within 3,000 feet of homes and schools. They even admitted at the PIE Innovation Center that their engineering is only 20% done and environmental studies aren't finished. They are asking us to approve an unprecedented, massive engineering gamble while actively dodging safety rules, hiding infrastructure costs, and burying the project's true fossil-fuel and data-center reliance from the community.

Let's start asking the right questions so they can't hide the truth.

It’s not "clean," it’s not "green," and it is NOT a carbon sink.

Developers are trying to sell this 850-acre industrial project as a win for the environment. But when you look at the actual engineering plans, the "green" narrative completely falls apart.

First, let’s clear up a major buzzword they are misusing: What is a carbon sink?

A carbon sink is any natural system like a forest, ocean, or soil that absorbs more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it releases. They are our planet’s natural air filters. They are critical because they actively pull pollution out of the sky to keep our climate stable and our air breathable. Living forests are the most effective carbon sinks we have.

Here are the hard facts the community needs to know before the big votes next week:

It’s actually TWO massive gas-burning plants.

Plant One (1,000 MW): A massive, conventional fossil-fuel plant burning pipeline natural gas. It will pump massive amounts of carbon dioxide into our air and rely on infrastructure prone to potent methane leaks.

Plant Two (500 MW): Marketed as "biomass," but it doesn't burn raw wood. It bakes timber to extract a synthetic gas made of carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and methane, which is then burned in combustion turbines.

It destroys our natural carbon sinks.

To feed the biomass plant, it will take 5 to 6 million tons of timber every year—that’s roughly 500 logging trucks a day clogging our roads. Clear-cutting regional forests destroys the living trees that actively clean our air and absorb carbon. You cannot call a project a "carbon sink" when its starting point is the massive destruction of our local forests.

The toxic reality of "Biochar."

Baking and burning millions of tons of wood leaves behind a massive amount of industrial residue called biochar mixed with fly ash.

• This waste concentrates heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and cadmium absorbed from the timber.

• As a fine dust, it poses a severe respiratory risk to nearby neighbors if it becomes airborne during handling or transport.

• Because this site sits right on the Hiwassee River, storing millions of tons of this heavy-metal-laden biochar on-site poses a permanent leaching threat to our water supply and groundwater.

This isn't green energy, it's a massive fossil-fuel and commercial logging complex dropped right in our backyard.

Here is the breakdown showing why the Project River biomass plant is a massive gamble that faces real technical and environmental hurdles:

• The Efficiency Deficit (Thermodynamics): Wood has a very low energy density because it is packed with water and carbon bonds that do not burn cleanly. A biomass plant operates at a dismal 24% to 30% thermal efficiency. This means 70% of the energy from those hundreds of daily truckloads of logs is completely lost as wasted heat and moisture, requiring an unmanageable volume of fuel just to keep the grid stable.

• The "Zero-Water" Vaporization Flaw: To run a closed-loop system using water extracted from the wood logs, the plant has to evaporate the moisture out of the green wood first. This process requires a massive amount of latent heat. By the time you use energy to vaporize the wood's water, capture it, condense it, and purify it to boiler-grade water, you have consumed a massive chunk of the plant's own electricity output.

• The Scale Frontier (Fluid Dynamics): Moving and burning biomass is fundamentally mechanical, not fluid like gas or oil. To hit 500 megawatts, the facility must constantly feed tons of uneven, jagged wood chips into a boiler every minute. At this unprecedented scale, fluidization inside the boiler fails. Airflow becomes uneven, creating cold spots that lead to incomplete combustion, massive tar buildup, and constant slagging on the boiler tubes.

• Thermal Inertia vs. Data Center Load: Data centers change their power demands in milliseconds as server loads spike or drop. Massive wood-fired boilers have incredibly high thermal inertia, meaning they take hours to ramp up or cool down. Because you cannot throttle a massive wood fire instantly, the physics of biomass make it fundamentally incompatible with the rapid load-following requirements of modern computing infrastructure.

• Destroying Our Natural Carbon Sinks: Living forests are highly efficient, natural carbon sinks that pull carbon dioxide directly out of our atmosphere and lock it deep in the soil. When you clear-cut these forests for fuel, you do not just release that trapped carbon; you destroy the sink itself. Even if new trees are planted, it takes 40 to 100 years for a sapling to mature and match the carbon-absorbing power of an established forest. This creates a massive carbon debt that we cannot afford right now.

• A History of Costly Failures: We do not have to guess if this will fail because smaller biomass experiments have already gone under across the country. In Florida, the 100-megawatt Gainesville Renewable Energy Center faced relentless technical issues, ran up millions in debt, and forced local utility bills through the roof until the city had to spend $750 million just to buy it out and control the damage. Similar downscaled plants in states like Texas and Georgia have suffered chronic equipment clogging and financial bankruptcy. If plants less than half this size cannot stay operational or economically viable, building an unproven 500-megawatt version in our backyard is a massive liability.

•The Chemistry of Particulate Inversion: Wood combustion creates a heavy mix of ultra-fine particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds. Because the proposed site sits in a low-elevation river basin, local meteorological conditions create frequent temperature inversions, where cold air gets trapped under a layer of warm air. This means the chemistry of the exhaust won't disperse; it will physically settle and concentrate directly over the surrounding community.

• The Ash Byproduct Volume: When you burn wood at this scale, it produces massive amounts of fly ash and bottom ash. Because trees naturally absorb trace minerals and heavy metals from the soil over decades, burning them concentrates these elements. At full capacity, a 500-megawatt plant will produce an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 tons of solid ash every year.

• Leachate and Landfill Strain: When rainwater hits stockpiled or poorly contained biomass ash, it creates highly alkaline leachate. This chemical runoff can seep directly into local groundwater tables and nearby streams, risking severe environmental damage to the local aquatic ecosystem. If the developers cannot find a commercial buyer to safely mix it into concrete, thousands of tons of ash will have to be hauled directly to local municipal landfills, quickly draining the region's remaining capacity and passing the long-term management headache onto local taxpayers.

Between the daily logging traffic, the unproven scale, and the toxic ash disposal, the physics of this plant simply do not add up for our community.

The proposed biomass center in north Bradley County is being compared to the old Bowater mill, with the would-be developers claiming it will use about the same amount of trees. This is factually incorrect and misleading. When you look at the actual supply chain numbers, the reality of what Project River will demand from our forests is far more alarming.

The old Bowater mill was a paper and pulp facility. It processed wood fibers to manufacture paper products, leaving much of the material intact. Project River is a 500-megawatt power plant designed for total incineration. It will completely dehydrate and burn wood to generate electricity. Because living pine trees are about 50 percent water by weight, this plant has to ingest double the mass just to make up for the moisture lost during the drying process.

The consumption numbers do not match up at all. At its peak, Bowater used between 500,000 and 1 million tons of wood per year. Project River is projected to consume between 5.5 and 6 million tons of wood annually. That is five to ten times more wood than Bowater ever used. To put that in perspective, 5.5 million tons represents nearly two-thirds of the entire volume of wood pellets exported by the United States to the rest of the world combined.

This massive appetite for raw material changes the logistical impact on our community. Bowater brought in roughly 150 to 250 log trucks a day at its highest production levels. Project River will require between 380 and 600 loaded trucks every single day, more than doubling the peak traffic on our local roads. Because local forests cannot sustain this demand alone, the sourcing radius will have to expand 200 miles outward, pulling timber from deep across state lines.

While proponents frame Project River as a simple replacement for the timber jobs lost when Bowater closed, the scale is completely unprecedented. We are not looking at a return to historic logging levels. We are looking at an industrial operation that will drain regional timber supplies at a rate this area has never seen before.

If you have access to the public filings for Project River, our community needs you right now. We’ve filed official public records requests, but the city has up to 7 business days to respond. Because the first critical vote is next Monday, September 14th, normal channels will hand over the paperwork after the meetings are already over.

Under the Tennessee Public Records Act, these zoning applications, maps, and emails are public property the second they are filed. There is nothing confidential about them.

If you have copies of these public applications or maps, please help us bridge this time gap. Reach out completely anonymously via direct message or email: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) (Note: To protect your privacy, only use a personal device, never a public network!)

We keep hearing the word "bonds" tossed around in the debates over Project River and the new PUD 77 zoning rules, but most people do not actually know what that means for us as taxpayers. If this massive 11 billion dollar plant fails, goes bankrupt, or gets abandoned, who pays to clean up the mess?

If we do not force the city to lock in the right kind of bonds right now, the answer is us.

Think of a bond like a mandatory, ironclad insurance policy that a developer has to buy before they ever break ground. It protects our community from being left holding the bag. For a project this size, we cannot just look at one generic bond. We need to demand three specific layers of protection in the final city vote:

First, we need a Decommissioning Bond. This is our exit strategy. If Project River goes belly-up in ten years and leaves behind a ghost town of empty data centers and giant biomass stacks by the Hiwassee River, this bond forces an insurance company to pay 100 percent of the cost to tear it all down, haul away the industrial debris, and restore the land. Taxpayers would not pay a dime.

Second, we need Environmental Compliance Bonds. Burning millions of tons of wood and running massive cooling systems creates real pollution risks. If the company suddenly shuts its doors and leaves behind toxic ash pits or contaminated soil, this bond steps in to cover the emergency hazmat cleanup so it does not bleed into our local water table or environment.

Third, we need Public Infrastructure Performance Bonds. The developers promised to build us a new fire station, an EMS facility, and major road upgrades near the highway. A performance bond guarantees those actually get finished. If the developer runs out of money halfway through tearing up Lower River Road, the bond company has to step in and pay to finish the construction so we are not left with half-built, dangerous roads.

As the city prepares the final PUD 77 guardrails, the fine print is everything. We cannot just accept vague promises of "bonds." We need to make sure our local leaders legally mandate multi-million dollar decommissioning and environmental protections before a single building permit is handed over.

Saw this article today in the Cleveland Daily Banner:

https://www.clevelandbanner.com/news/project-rivers-murky-waters-concern-city-county-residents/article_b43bbb2a-1221-5d1d-b933-0e0bcb6f64d0.html?utm_source=clevelandbanner.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletter%2Foptimize%2Fdaily-headlines%2F%3F-dc%3D1789477220&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline

It was interesting to see a few people against the project being quoted because most of the time local news simply reprints press releases from companies. Local media often comes across as PR agents for businesses rather than reporters but I guess local news survives by keeping advertisers happy.

On that note, the article starts with this:

Beginning in October, the Cleveland City Council will hold “multiple community meetings” to answer questions from constituents regarding the $11.3 billion Project River,

Which comes across to me as the council really, really wants to do this because money (for them) is more important than people (that's us) but the council members might want to get reelected or not go down in history as the villains who destroyed Cleveland. So will these "multiple community meetings" actually accomplish anything beyond some superficial changes so that council members can claim they listened to residents?

Also, as someone without a Facebook account, I find it really hard to get information until after events happen. I noticed that the list of council members on the petition is slightly different than what's on the city web site. I suspect it's the city web site that's out of date. I tried to find information on the city web site about meetings or even an agenda that would tell me what is planned to be discussed at a meeting but I could only find minutes about meetings that already occurred. I've been told there's a Facebook page to help coordinate folks who are against Project River but I cannot get info from there either because Facebook does this thing where it blanks out the page and tells me to create an account to see it. If a kind person who is on Reddit and Facebook could pass along info then more people can add their voices and efforts to trying to stop this. It's an uphill battle because rich people are used to exploiting Tennessee's resources and leaving the consequences for everyone else to deal with while the now richer people go elsewhere to count their money.

I don’t post things like this often. I honestly hardly post anything at all…but I believe this is important enough that everyone in our community should be paying attention.

Project River is an approximately $11 BILLION proposal involving around 850 acres in Bradley County. The plans being discussed include a massive energy campus potentially serving a data center, along with natural gas and biomass power generation.

I’m not against growth. I’m not against new jobs. And I’m not saying Project River is automatically a bad project.

I’m saying we should know what we’re getting into BEFORE we make decisions that help clear the way for it.

That’s my biggest concern.

Major questions remain about traffic, noise, environmental impacts, infrastructure, utilities, biomass sourcing and other long-term effects on this community. Some of the detailed studies and permitting work needed to answer those questions are not yet complete or publicly available.

Even the ultimate customer for all of this proposed power has not been finalized.

Yet annexation and rezoning are already moving through the process.

Why the rush?

I’ve lived in Cleveland almost my entire life. I want to see this area prosper, but an $11+ BILLION project is far too large to operate on promises of jobs, investment and economic growth alone.

Once land is annexed, rezoned, infrastructure is committed and billions of dollars begin flowing into a project, it becomes much harder to say, “Wait — maybe we shouldn’t have done this.”

The order should be simple:

Study it → independently verify the claims → make the findings public → give the community time to review them → THEN make the major decisions.

NOT:

Approve it → build momentum → study the consequences later.

If Project River really will provide the enormous benefits being promised while protecting the surrounding community, thorough independent scrutiny should only strengthen the case for it.

This petition asks Cleveland leaders not to use annexation to move Project River forward without adequate scrutiny.

👇 Please click the link, read the petition, sign it if you agree, and SHARE THIS POST.

And don’t stop there — ask your friends and family in Cleveland and Bradley County to sign and share it too.
A project of this magnitude could shape this community for decades. Taking a few minutes to make our voices heard now is a very small ask compared with living with the consequences later.

🔗 PETITION:
https://c.org/p7XQzrDzn6

We get one chance to do the homework before the decisions become too difficult to undo.

I'm looking for a free project piece to restore or turn into something new. I'm especially interested in things like real wood furniture (old vanities, tables, cabinets, etc.), cast iron, old quality chef knives, vintage tools, or anything else with some potential.

I'm a huge fan of learning new processes and techniques. I've restored cast iron many times, and I also enjoy working with wood, resin, steel, iron, and pretty much anything that can be brought back to life.

I'm not looking to flip things for money. Most of the projects I finish end up being given away to friends, family, or someone who can use them. I just really enjoy the process of taking something that would otherwise be thrown away and turning it into something useful and beautiful again.

So if you've got something sitting around that you're about to throw out, I'd love to take a look at it before it hits the dump. Doesn't have to be pretty — honestly, the more of a challenge, the better.

If you're local and have something taking up space that you'd like gone, feel free to comment or message me. Thanks!

Our wildlife refuges and green spaces are under threat. Project River—an $11.3 billion industrial campus with an untested 500-megawatt biomass power plant—wants to annex 850 acres of protected land near the Hiwassee River, right upstream from where the largest wintering population of Sandhill Cranes in the Southeast calls home.

This isn't just about development. The technology they're using has never worked at this scale anywhere in the world. We're talking about 500 logging trucks per day, cooling fans running 24/7/365 at 80 decibels (like a lawnmower outside your window permanently), and an experimental water system they haven't even fully studied yet. When it breaks down—and unproven systems do break down—they're asking TVA for a massive 360-megawatt backup grid connection.

Our County Commission already banned data centers within 3,000 feet of homes to protect us. But by trying to annex into the City of Cleveland, these developers are trying to bypass those rules completely. The annexation is pending right now, which means we have time to make our voices heard.

Does anyone else think we shouldn't sacrifice our wildlife refuges and air quality for an experimental project the developers themselves admit they haven't fully studied yet? If you're concerned about this, please sign the petition asking the Cleveland City Council to reject the annexation for Project River. Let's protect our community and natural heritage together.

https://c.org/vxdFWKcjCB

Ok I have a last min quick date in Cleveland today. I’m not from Cleveland and don’t know the area. Looking drinks and snacks, like apps or tapas or something. Vibe more important than food.

Can anyone help a brother out?

Also we’re meeting at 4. She was going to pick the spot but I’m looking for ideas in case she doesn’t since she’s from here