Travis County Commssioners Court
February 4, 2003
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Citizens Communication
Citizens communication is next. We have signed in joyce best mark macafee. Zora williams, the first three.
>> good morning.
>> good morning.
>> my name is joyce best, I live in northeast Austin. I would like to ask some questions regarding the recent inspection of the closed Travis County landfill that revealed a number of leachate seeps on the site that will require attention. Since county has already spent a great deal of taxpayers money to install a leachate collection system to pump out the excess leachate, will the county investigate the possibility that the leachate may in fact be coming from either the unlined phase I site or the unlined closed industrial site at the wmi landfill immediately to the north? Is there a possibility that as the current east cell at wmi grows higher near the closed Travis County landfill that the head pressure from the wmi site is forcing leachate to escape from the county landfill. Is it possible that the horizontal methane wells being used by wmi open a pathway for leachate to escape into the county landfill? Because of the presence of these leachate seeps, will the county test their wells for hazardous constituents in addition to the tests tceq requires for municipal solid waste? I believe all of these questions must be answered before the county invests more taxpayer's monies in a problem that may not be of its open making. Thank you for your time.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> good morning, judge, commissioners.
>> good morning.
>> my name is mark macafee. As we have been saying now for quite some time, there is a large and growing problem in northeast Austin. The residents and property owners have been trying to get public agencies and public officials to address it. And to no avail. The problem is surfacing. It's been surfacing for quite some time. All over in the area. I understand that the did -- that the county is now being cited for problems that have been found at waste management constantly for the last two and a half decades. My guess is that big problems downstream have either already been detected or are anticipated and the county is being set up to be framed as part of the problem. It's from waste management's suggested about 20 years ago I believe it was suggested building a separating wall between the county landfill and the old nine acre industrial waste unit. Was this to keep the county's trash from getting into their toxic landfill or vice versa? I think vice versa. Did they build the wall? Of course not. That would cost money and be prudent. They have always chosen profit over doing the right thing. As you know, there were an estimated 5 million gallons of industrial and hazardous waste dumped next to the county landfill. Approximately three-quarters of this was never contained in barrels, it was just poured into open acid pits. The presence of these toks sent -- some experts believe that the prepares of these toxics have compromised the compatibility of landfilling in this area by eating away at the organic material in the clay which was supposed to contain these toxins. Benzene which has been detect understand large quantities in the area is known to compromise synthetic liners in about five years. This -- this area is a gigantic, ticking time bomb. When it goes off, it will go off, waste management doesn't want to take the fall for their own past behaviors. Last night, I -- I was buying bread and I was tickled to see I believe it was an iroquois statement on the bread label. It said that everybody that -- everything that we do we must take into consideration its effect on the next seven generations. Waste management doesn't take into account what's going to happen in the next seven weeks when they make decisions. In a -- and it's very hard to -- to pin a certain health problem on a certain causeiation. But I will relate to you something that I just the other day I was talking to a woman who was in this area, who lived in the neighborhood when they began and when they did all of this dumping of toxic waste. I asked her how her health was, she said, "well, i've been fine. But my first husband died." I said, "oh, really, of what?" Cancer. I went on to say do you know anybody else who had cancer, at one time, five houses on my street, all five houses had cancer at the same time. Different types, but, you know, there is a problem out here. We have got to look into it. It's going to surface, it's going to be a bigger problem the longer we wait.
>> thank you.
>> thank you, mark.
>> good morning.
>> good morning.
>> good morning, judge, commissioners. My name is zora williams, I am from the l.b.j. Neighborhood. As mark was indicating, we do have a ticking time bomb that is just waiting to go off. By all means, you know, you simply cannot ask the taxpayers to carry the burden to -- to correct this problem that may be caused by either/or both landfills. It's just simply not fair, and because of it, our quality of life is at stake. Not only our generations, but the again rages to come. Generations to come. I thank you for allowing me to have my comments.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> trek english is next. Should be followed by sue ann campbell. And those are the only ones that I have signed in today. If you are here for citizens communication but have not signed in, please come forward.
>> good morning, judge Biscoe and commissioners. Thank you for having me here today. I'm just coming to ask a question. Two weeks ago the Austin liberty preservation resolution was presented to the court. We were just wondering when that would be voted on. We thought it might be voted on today, but we weren't sure.
>> I had told alex that if he would bring me the material that he said that he was going to, that I would discuss it with the court. And I have -- I have not gotten anything from alex.
>> okay. He must have been too busy to do that and I -- I have not communicated with him for two weeks. So I will try to help that happen for you. Thank you very much.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> good morning.
>> [inaudible - no mic]
>> that one should pull right off.
>> can you hear me?
>> uh-huh.
>> good morning, my name is trek english. I'm here to speak on item 41, which you are going to take in to executive session, I don't know if you were going to discuss it or allow discussion prior to it. So we decided to come at commissioners -- citizens communication and tell you what we feel may be the problem. Having reviewed these records over and over and over and the county having had these leachate problem in the past, I can see where there's a concern, but -- but what the county has failed to do over and over is just to address where this -- where their problem is coming from. We have three landfills here. This is a county landfill right here at the bottom with a -- with a flea market right here. Here is the -- the waste management landfill, ears the bfi landfill. The b.f.i. Landfill in this area here has no liner, no -- does not meet subtitle d regulations, so you are talking about a -- basically a clay liner in this area, presubtitle d. All of this area here, this area here which is now being landfilled again by waste management. And all of this area here, which is phase 1, and this area here, which is the industrial unit. All of this is also presubtitle d. And there of course you have the county landfill. The county landfill is only 148 acres. I have a hard time believing that you are making -- there's so much leachate here and the problem is non-existent here and non-existent here. I submit that it is existent, all three landfills, and that these two landfills having had more garbage are incurring a lot of leachate that you are incurring in this area. This landfill here drains right here, right into this area. This is a creek bed and if you look at all of the maps you will see that it runs down here, all the way to the county. Phase 1, also had tremendous amounts of leachate problem and seeps. That are directly draining into the county. I want to show you another map. Right here is the county that seeps right here, but waste management seeps right here and it had -- this map is from -- from carter burgess report which is only about three or four years old. And they -- that's what I was telling you before, this area, this area and this area have no subtitle d liner. Therefore are probably all contaminated. [buzzer sounding] this seep here -- have you ever tested this area in the creek bed to see that the -- that the industrial unit contamination is now migrating down and coming into the county. I know that you have other leachate seeps, but this area of -- of phase 1 actually runs this way and enters the creek this way. I'll show you another map. This is the waste management site. I gave you this map two weeks ago. In 2001 and 2002, waste management and leachate seeps all over this. This is their own maps, their own internal records showing leachate seeps all over the place up to here. This is the industrial unit map. And the root here the creek bed, drainage ditch, what they call the drainage ditch an old creek bed. This is phase 1. It consistently has had problem with -- with leachate seeps and liquids and rusting spots that are -- that are rust colored that are indicated in this area. This is a -- the old wet weather area which was also contaminated. This area here had a permit to take in class 1 industrial hazardous waste. You are talking about enough [inaudible] hazardous waste which may be draining into the county landfill which you are cleaning up for them. I'm going to ask you if you are going to spend the money that you have to spend I guess to address the leachate, the notice of violation that the tceq is giving you, that perhaps some money could be spent to address what the source he is. Because I think there is a great possibility that you are inheriting a lot of the problems that the other two landfills are creating. It's real easy to point a finger at you and say clean it up. First of all, why is it that tceq is finding all of these problems here but they never found those leachate that are recorded in their own records. I have a hard time believing tceq suddenly comes and finds all of these problems here, but never on their own landfill when you have 21,000 barrels right above them. I think these leachate seeks are far more serious than the ones in the landfill. The leachate. I would ask to do the same thing that they are doing to you, ask questions of the agency and find out how much contamination is going into your landfill because their boundary wells, which are here, they have one boundary well right here, right here.
>> you have about two minutes over ms. English.
>> I want to let you know that the boundary wells here under subtitle d and if the leachate seeps are coming here, they are not catching them and you are. You are catching all of the con comation -- contamination. Their wells here are not testing for a lot of the constituents are here. That's it.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> anybody else for citizens communications?
>> judge, could I ask trek, are you all -- I know that the committees have just been put together over in the last week at the legislature, are you all planning on going and making these kinds of presentations to the state legislature?
>> yes. Definitely.
>> okay. That's good. Thanks.
>> thank you.
>> we have been asked to grant a moment of silence for the astronauts of the shuttle columbia who lost their lives a few minutes ago when we lost the space ship. (silence). Thank you very much.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 2, 2003 10:25 AM