By Tabitha Evans Moore | EDITOR & PUBLISHER
LYNCHBURG, Tenn. — It was pitched as a green energy breakthrough. Now it smells like an open sewer.
In Lynchburg, where the sweet scent of sour mash once defined the air, residents say something new is wafting across the Hollow – rot, gas, and a whole lot of questions. At the center of it all is a renewable energy project that was supposed to solve two problems. Instead, it’s creating one big stink.
In 2022, Jack Daniel’s – facing repeated production shutdowns due to natural gas shortages – announced a partnership with a Michigan biofuel company to install an anaerobic digester in Lynchburg. The project had two goals: to create renewable natural gas (RNG) onsite to buffer against gas supply interruptions and digest and break down the spent distiller’s grains – also known colloquially in Lynchburg as slop – piling up as a byproduct of increased whiskey production.
It sounded like a win-win: greener energy, less waste, and uninterrupted whiskey flowing through the Hollow. 3 Rivers Energy Partners also promised to partner with local farmers, turning the byproduct into land applied fertilizer and closing the loop on the corn economy.
It felt like a small olive branch to the local agricultural community after the distillery announced just months earlier that they’d be phasing out the Cow Feeder Program – a symbiotic relationship that existed in Lynchburg between the distillery and local farmers for decades.
Pushback came fast. In response, distillery officials announced in May 2022 that they’d continue offering slop to existing farmers – at current capacity – until the digester came online. After that, supply would be cut in half until their second still, JD II, came online.
Then 2024 happened. Maybe it’s a hangover from tariffs, changing in consumer preferences, or perhaps just good old-fashioned competition, but fewer consumers are buying our local product. It’s a new trend that showed up on balance sheets beginning last year.
Whatever the reason, right around the time that the anaerobic digester, called Lynchburg Renewables, started to come online, whiskey sales dropped and the distillery slowed production back to pre-Covid volumes.
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The Push Back
Fast forward to now: the plant is coming online – and Lynchburg residents say the air reeks of rotting sludge and gas. The smell isn’t subtle. It drifts into town. It lingers. It gets on your clothes. You smell it when you open your front door. It fills the MCHS Gym, which is located less than two miles from the digester as the crow flies.
Things went from side eye to full on concern last week when residents started smelling a foul, pervasive stink in Moore County from the facility to Tanyard Hill and downtown Lynchburg. On Tuesday, The Times posted a question on social media asking locals if they’d experience a foul odor coming from the digester at their homes. Within a couple of hours, it had over 150 responses.
Multiple locals reported that the stench smelled so strong at last week’s home basketball games that they felt embarrassed and sorry for both the home and visiting team’s players.
“The visiting team made many comments about how bad the smell was,” one reader who was there told us.
Locals are not happy.
The Science
Anaerobic digesters can be a sustainable solution – but they’re also known for producing hydrogen sulfide, volatile fatty acids, and other sulfur compounds. If not properly scrubbed or flared, these gases can leak into surrounding communities.
Chronic exposure to these gases – especially in high concentrations or poorly ventilated areas – can affect air quality and public health. It could also create a PR nightmare and potentially disastrous situation for distillery officials and our little tourism town at large. If the digester smells this bad in the middle of winter, what’s going to happen in the peak of summer with 90 degree temps and tourists buzzing around the square?
The odor, according to local environmental engineer, Tony Grow, who is overseeing the Silicon Ranch Solar Farm Project of Highway 55 from Metro Moore County, is specifically caused by hydrogen sulfide – the same compound responsible for the rotten-egg smell. He describes the issue as a nuisance rather than a public health threat, noting that the bigger environmental risk at a facility like this would be an accidental discharge into a nearby stream. He also emphasized that oversight falls under TDEC and the EPA, and recommended the county continue meeting with 3 Rivers and Jack Daniel’s to track corrective progress.
Who is 3 River Energy?
Lynchburg Renewables is just one of two recent forays into the anaerobic digester world for 3 Rivers Energy Partners. They also own a digester in Boston, Kentucky near the Beam Suntory Booker Noe Distillery. Like Lynchburg, they are a small rural town that exists as the home to one of the largest distilleries in the nation. That project also promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide a substantial portion of the distillery’s energy needs through RNG.
So far, neither project has gone down easy for 3 Rivers Energy.
The two projects basically came online in tandem. Jim Beam’s project in Boston, Kentucky was first announced in 2022 with a projected 2024 operational date. In August of 2025, Boston community forums and social media group pages began to fill up with residents concerned about the smells wafting from the facility
The Lynchburg project broke ground in early 2023 and came online after that.
In September 2024, it experienced a significant tank rupture during a test – spilling 2.2 million gallons of lake water across Goodbranch Road. Local officials likened the scene to that of a natural disaster.
“It looks like a tornado came through,” Moore County Mayor Sloan Stewart stated at the time. “It’s a muddy mess. One of the tanks is in the road and power lines are leaning.”
It took days to clean up and re-open the road. It also left residents and public officials with lots of questions and concerns. What if there had been organic materials in that tank? What if it spilled into the nearby East Fork of the Mulberry Creek?
It also happened at around 8:30 p.m. By morning, metal debris from the rupture sat all along Goodbranch leading local parents to ask, what if my kid’s bus had been driving by at the time of the event?
3 Rivers officials say it’s temporary
We spoke to officials at both 3 Rivers Energy and Jack Daniel’s Distillery and they both stated that they have every intention of being a “good neighbor.”
Officials at the digester admit that the odor is real and coming from the Goodbranch Road facility but insist it’s temporary.
“As we continue to ramp up toward normal operating levels and complete the mitigation steps underway, we do not expect odor to be an ongoing issue,” said SVP of Marketing Kegan Rivers.
3 Rivers Energy confirmed the odors are tied to the facility’s startup phase and stem from the stillage reception tank – not the biogas system itself. They outlined multiple steps being taken to neutralize the smell, including chemical agents, mechanical systems, and procedural changes.
They say no malfunctions were reported, and the company emphasized that the facility is in full compliance with its state air permit, which includes monitoring and reporting to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC).
While no formal odor impact assessment was required prior to construction, 3 Rivers says it has kept local officials informed and is working to resolve the issue by the end of next week. Residents can submit complaints or questions via the company’s website.
“Several county officials have visited the facility to observe operations and review the mitigation measures being implemented,” Rivers says. “We have also received feedback from residents noting periods of improvement. This is a temporary problem, and some solutions we’ve looked into take time to develop due to their technical nature, but we have been working diligently to resolve the issue.”
The Times also reached out to Jack Daniels officials regarding the odor complaints, and they told us they are both aware of them and taking them very seriously.
“Being a good neighbor is a core value at Jack Daniel’s,” said Jack Daniel’s SVP General Manager Melvin Keebler. “While the facility is owned and operated by 3 Rivers Energy, we are in consistent communication with their team and are actively supporting them as they work to identify and resolve this issue.”
In 2022, officials from both camps told the crowd at a town hall that the digester needed a minimum amount of spent distiller grains to function. The agreement between 3 Rivers Energy Partners and Jack Daniel’s came at a time when production was booming at the distillery. So now that production has returned to a lower level, could it be that the distillery can’t provide the digester with enough slop to function properly?
Keebler says, that’s not an issue.
He explained that whiskey production levels naturally fluctuate based on both global demand and inventory needs. While production has returned to a more stabilized pace following a period of significant growth, Keebler says, “there has been no impact on the operations of the digester.”
“We remain committed to providing the necessary spent grains for the digester to operate efficiently,” he says.
He also acknowledged the potential to adversely affect the “visitor experience” here in Lynchburg and assured us they aren’t content with some kind of new normal.
“We are supporting 3 Rivers Energy to ensure that the air quality around the town and the distillery meets the high standards our guests and residents expect,” he says.
How did we get here?
In 2022, getting approval to move forward with the anaerobic digester project wasn’t easy for 3 Rivers Energy. The process required a town hall, a public hearing, and eight rounds of roll call voting at three separate Metro Council meetings. Then on Tuesday, August 16, the Metro Board of Zoning Appeals approved a special land use exception application – essentially giving them the green light.
It was a move the Metro Planning Commission originally recommended to the Metro Council during their June 2022 meeting. In the July meeting, the Council approved the second but not the third required vote on the land use exception. In August, the Council approved the third of three required readings of a resolution adding a land use exception to the Metro Zoning Ordinances allowing a “distillery by-products processing facility” on land zoned A1 (agricultural).
Local officials chose the agricultural exception as opposed to an industrial rezoning to ensure that if the AD Plant were to ever be decommissioned, an industrial project could not take its place.
3 Rivers offered odor assurances
During the town hall, officials with 3 Rivers Energy passed around a small container filled with a sample of the organic material that would be used at the AD intended to give locals an example of the smell the digester would eventually put off.
It smelled sweet, and earthy – very similar to smells at a local farm.
At the time, the application included detailed information about ingress and egress into the property, fire risk, traffic safety, water pollution and air pollution risks, loading and unloading at the site, as well as any potential noise, glare, or odor.
It also explains that the natural gas storage tanks are 90 percent water and only around 10 percent methane with no oxygen present that could “allow it to burn.” Local officials were told that any methane leaks would vent to the atmosphere and be immediately noticeable due to odor. During the town hall, 3 Rivers Energy’s David Johnson stated that the company was incentivized to catch leaks immediately because “if we’re losing gas, we’re losing money,” – a statement he later repeated in the July 2022 Metro Council Meeting.
The application also addressed both potential water and air pollution from the AD. It explained that natural gas is considered an improvement to air quality because it reduces the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
“In addition, a flare is used to burn any methane that cannot be injected into the pipeline. The facility will be required to obtain a State Air Construction permit to construct the facility followed by a State Air Operating Permit for continued monitoring to ensure that the facility is operated in compliance with air protection regulations,” the application stated.
They also stated that they did not anticipate any unpleasant odor because, “all the processing is done in a completely enclosed environment, ensuring odors do not escape into the community and animals such as rodents and birds are not attracted to the facility.”
Local officials’ response
The Times reached out to several local officials to get their take on Lynchburg’s latest development controversy.
Local Metro Council member Shane Taylor, who voted against the special land exception twice, told us that Moore County is accustomed to farm smells but that what’s coming out of the digester seems to be different.
“Let’s face it, cows eat slop, and produce the same bi-product, but it is far less concentrated and spread out from farm to farm. This plant produces millions of gallons of organic waste, and it is stored in one big lagoon that is nestled right under our noses and in the heart of our city where people from all walks of life visit are exposed to it,” he said. “We used to brag about and enjoy the scent of the sour mash, and now that has been replaced with the scent of an open septic system.”
Taylor and other Metro Council members told us that multiple constituents have reached out to them over the past several weeks to complain not only about the smell but also about concerns about a second tank eruption.
“Moore County does not have the manpower, or equipment and hazmat responders it would take to deal with a major spill should it happen,” he said. “I asked the question directly in the town hall meeting early on and was not given a clear answer as to who or how these things would be handled.”
During the May 2022 town hall, when an audience member asked if the company planned to help train local first responders to deal with both a stillage spill or a fertilizer spill, CEO John River responded, “Yes, absolutely.”
We reached out to Metro Moore County EMA Director Jason Deal to ask if 3 Rivers had ever proactively contacted local officials to organize said training. He told us that he’s aware of a single training session and walk through of the facility organized by former fire chief.
Taylor also expressed concerns about the transportation of fertilizer to area farmers. Originally, 3 Rivers Energy said they intended to use “lay flat” hoses similar to fire hoses to pump the material to as far away as Elora.
“I do not see this working,” he said. “The other issue this will create, is that the pipe will need to cross roadways, farms, and creeks. The other alternative is to possibly truck the product, which will increase traffic and ruin our rural roads. I see no benefits at all to our county.”
Planning Commission ChairDexter Golden said officials were originally assured there would be no odor from the digester.
He confirmed receiving multiple odor complaints from across the community, including concerns about students and indoor air quality at school events. He told The Times he has not received any air quality statements or odor mitigation plans from 3 Rivers Energy and believes responsibility for resolving the issue rests first with the company, and then with Metro government if concerns aren’t addressed promptly.
He also noted that Lynchburg is experiencing rapid growth without the staffing or expertise to evaluate complex industrial projects at this pace, saying, “No one knew what a digester was or how it would operate or what questions or concerns we should have during the process.”
What did the county get out of it?
Taylor’s not alone in asking if the return on investment is worth the hassle for Metro Moore County when it comes to the digester.
Theoretically, it will provide a reliable natural gas source to both Jack Daniel’s and the city of Lynchburg. It’s no secret here in Lynchburg that in that past, the distillery needed to temporarily halt production due to shortfalls. It’s one of the reasons the project appealed to them.
During very cold winters or other situations where the supply gets disrupted nationally, Jack Daniel’s won’t get curtailed. The AD plant will be able to supply all the renewable natural gas that both the distillery and the town needs.
{Editor’s Note: ATMOS Energy did not immediately return our request for a total count of non-distillery natural gas customers in Lynchburg.}
If the land applied fertilizer byproduct – which 3 Rivers originally stated would be given to area farmers for free – can be safely delivered, there could be some agricultural benefits such as increased hay or corn yields. However, one local farmer we spoke to said he tested it and wasn’t impressed. He told us it was so diluted the acreage needed to apply it wasn’t cost-effective.
According to local Property Assessor Shaun Sherrill, 3 Rivers Energy Partners real property and personal property have been added to the 2025 tax rolls. According to public records, they currently owe Metro Moore County $6,985 in personal property tax. Sherrill also told us that the anaerobic tanks are currently in the process of being added with assistance from the state.
According to the Moore County Property Assessor’s 2026 tax records, Lynchburg Renewable Fuels, LLC holds at least two industrial parcels assessed at a combined marketvalue of $948,100, with a total taxable appraised value of roughly $847,400. These parcels were originally zoned for agricultural use but were reclassified as industrial after being sold to the biofuel company in 2022 and 2023.
The shift from agriculture to industrial classification means these properties are now taxed at 40 percent of their appraised value, compared to just 25 percent for agricultural land. That translates into an increase in annual tax revenue for Moore County, with Lynchburg Renewables now contributing an estimated $12,000–$15,000 per year in property taxes, depending on the local tax rate. Previously, officials stated that the AD would add around 10 local, permanent jobs to the economy.
While those number may grow if infrastructure expands, some locals say it’s a modest return compared to the scope of community impact residents are reporting.
If you’ve experienced and would like to report foul odors related to the digester or if you have questions, you can reach out directly to 3 Rivers Energy by clicking here.
This is an ongoing story and The Times will continue to track odor levels, public complaints, and mitigation progress at the Lynchburg Renewables facility. If you would like to contact us with your story, reach out to our Editor at editor@lynchburg-times.com. •
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