Even environmentalists acknowledge that the site, in Perry County, is in many ways ideal. Most of the problems from coal ash, which contains toxins like arsenic and lead that have contaminated the water supply at more than 60 sites nationwide, come from wet, unlined ponds like the one that ruptured in Tennessee. It is far better, environmentalists say, that the ash should go somewhere like Arrowhead, a dry storage site dug into a nearly impermeable bed known as the Selma chalk, some 600 feet above the water table, lined with clay and polymer and equipped with a leachate collection system to suck up any water that filters through the ash and dislodges contaminants.

Image The fears include contaminated catfish ponds. Credit... Meggan Haller for The New York Times

But in Perry County, a lack of trust has permeated the debate. Residents said they feared equipment failure, flooding, tornadoes or lack of oversight at the landfill, where the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, whose notably lax regulation of coal ash permits most landfills to use it as a cover material for other waste, will be responsible for enforcement.

Many said they did not believe the assertions by local officials that the ash was perfectly safe, particularly after one councilman insisted, contrary to widely publicized test results that showed dangerous levels of arsenic, that it contained no arsenic whatsoever.

“I won’t feel comfortable,” wrote W. Compson Sartain, a columnist for The Perry County Herald, “until I see a delegation from E.P.A. and T.V.A. standing on the courthouse square, each member stirring a heaping spoonful of this coal ash into a glass of Tennessee river water this stuff has already fallen into, and gargling with it.”

Robert Bamberg, a white catfish farmer and the organizer of Concerned Citizens of Perry County, a biracial group of landfill opponents, said the group had identified 212 residences within 1.5 miles of the site. “We’re being taken advantage of by several groups of powers that be,” Mr. Bamburg said. “There’s a sense among the population that we’ve been thrown under the bus.”

It has proved difficult for the voters to exert their influence. Even before the coal ash came to town, two pro-landfill commissioners were voted out of office on a tide of anger from residents who felt that the 1,400-acre project had been shoved through with little public comment.