Upcoming Tennessee Rule Changes Will Create Clarity and Cost Savings for Managing Contaminated Soil on Construction and Development Sites

On 13 August 2025, the Tennessee Underground Storage Tanks and Solid Waste Disposal Control Board voted to adopt new regulations for managing contaminated soil at redevelopment sites. These new rules will give developers several options for reuse and disposal that may result in significant cost savings for construction and development projects in the state. Developers should start planning now to take advantage of the new regulations and potential cost savings when the regulations take effect early next year.  

Background

For years, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) did not have specific regulations for managing contaminated soils. This lack of clarity meant that anything other than pristine and perfectly clean soil was treated as a solid waste. This legal framework incentivized sending unneeded dirt to landfills as waste, resulting in considerable costs for almost any redevelopment project that required moving a significant amount of dirt. TDEC, recognizing the reality that urban environments rarely have pristine conditions and wanting to provide clarity to developers while protecting public health, created a multistakeholder working group and spent several years crafting a solution. The upcoming regulations create a streamlined process for evaluating this soil and allowing its movement and reuse. These new regulations will provide significant cost savings for developers who qualify.  

New Process

The only threshold requirement to take advantage of the new regulations is that the project must be enrolled in Tennessee’s brownfields program, which is called the Voluntary Cleanup Oversight and Assistance Program (VOAP). The new process then allows for a self-evaluation of the soil. Minimum requirements for soil testing and analysis are laid out in the rule.

Category 1

Any soil with contamination below established background levels or under the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Regional Screening Levels for both the residential soil tables and the soil-to-groundwater tables are considered “Category 1 soil.” If the soil contains volatile organic compounds, then those compounds must meet certain vapor intrusion risk levels to be considered Category 1 soil. Category 1 soil does not need to be sent to a landfill and can be used offsite without any further evaluation or approvals from TDEC.

Category 2

Soils that do not meet the Category 1 thresholds may still be used, and not sent to a landfill, after evaluation and approval by TDEC. The rule specifies that any reuse must be on either 1) a receiving site that is also enrolled in the Tennessee brownfields program, or 2) for a public need where the soil will be encapsulated. Some examples given by the rule for “public need” include airports, public utilities, and road fill.

Both the generating and receiving sites must submit soil-use plans to TDEC detailing how much soil will be moved; how it will be managed, transported, and placed; and providing certain acknowledgments. TDEC evaluates any application based on whether the requirements in the rule are met and whether the proposed use would result in unacceptable adverse impacts to public health, safety, or the environment, and TDEC may impose conditions.  

Other Contaminated Soils 

Soil with contamination levels that would make it a hazardous waste upon excavation cannot be reused and is subject to the laws and regulations for hazardous waste management. Similarly, soil with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) or PCB waste at levels that would make the soil subject to EPA regulation under the Toxic Substances Control Act also cannot be reused under these new TDEC regulations.  

When to Test Soil During Redevelopment 

This rule does not require the sampling of every shovel of soil that is moved around on a construction site. What it does require is for any soil to be tested that is: 1) planned to be excavated or moved; and 2) could reasonably be anticipated to contain a hazardous substance. The second factor is a professional judgment call for an environmental professional (usually a registered professional geologist or engineer), based on actual knowledge of the site, generalized knowledge of the area, and standard environmental due diligence (Phase I and Phase II Environmental Site Assessments consistent with the American Society for Testing Materials standards), among other things.

Takeaways 

The upcoming rules create an exemption from the solid-waste rules for soils from sites enrolled in Tennessee’s brownfield program that need to be relocated. The new rules will likely become effective in the spring of 2026, pending their publication by the Tennessee Secretary of State. Anyone planning construction or development work in Tennessee should review their environmental due diligence documents and site plans and evaluate whether these changes could result in financial savings.