Travis County Commssioners Court
Ferbuary 24, 2004
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.
Item 21
21. Consider and take appropriate action on proposed agreed order with the Texas commission on environmental quality for settlement of notice of enforcement action on the Travis County 290 east closed landfill.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners, john kuhl environmental officer. Just an update from last week, when we got the direction from the court to -- to move towards supplemental environmental projects, we -- we of course made a phone call to tceq and spoke with thomas jacobs, the environmental -- or enforcement coordinator there. And -- and described the general approach that we had and they were very favorable to --
>> after this item. I'm sorry.
>> that's all right.
>> pardon me.
>> could you repeat that, john.
>> john scraik jacobs has been assigned to our coach, described the cleanup to chronic legal dump sites in precinct 1, happy to hear that. Agree that that could be worked into the -- the agreed order eventually as a set. What I wanted to talk to you about was how the time tables are affected by that. When you go in with the sep approach as opposed to writing them a check, they are automatically triggering a 45 day period wherein they redraft the agreed order. In other words the original agreed order we do not sign, we wait until approximately may 1st. We will get another agreed der that will embody the terms of the sep it will also embody the as you recall we had a concern that we would not be able to comply with the capping for approximately six months just because of the amount of time that it takes to haul that much cover and we made that clear to them as well, they will embody that into the agreed order and we will have it back about may 1st.
>> what action is required today?
>> none.
>> okay. The only other thing that I wanted to talk to you about we also visited with them about using 100% of the $1,600 towards cleanup, they were fined with that. It is just up to you guys as to how you want to do that. My recommendation would be to put the whole money towards the clean up.
>> do we have a list of the sites that -- for clean up.
>> yes, we have sort of a chronic dump site list. That actually will be embodied, candidate roadways will be embodied in the actual agreed order. The ones that we have listed for right now are -- we did not address on this yet because they are hard to find because they are sort of out in the rural area, but sprinkled roads, sprinkle cut off, old manor road, johnny morris are the one that's we discussed. They also expressed a bit of a concern you go clean those up, dumped on again the next day, what are you doing about that? We also reminded them that we do have an environmental investigator in the sheriff's department that handles illegal dumping issues and -- and county attorney's office is bringing on a new investigator funded through capco grants for this coming year. So we felt like, you know, we could -- we could hopefully handle that. > I don't know, do we actually have to wait until may 1st.
>> because April is kind of keep Austin beautiful, kind of their big push.
>> no, we don't.
>> might even get volunteers.
>> just track it and keep the landfill receipts all in one good place and we will be fine.
>> john, who is it that really find an illegal dumper. Is it tceq or Travis County or do we have a menu of violations that says if you get caught dumping this, then it's this much. Or if you get caught dumping these many pounds then it's this much and what's our record of -- of what we do to people whenever this is discovered.
>> kevin morris, county attorney's office, yes, there is a list, you can find it in -- in the -- the task force puts together many handouts, many fliers, many brochures. They are also included in the water code, the health and safety code, the natural resources code, the transportation code. Each of those has a criminal provision and a civil provision. With regard what the penalties are, they are outlined in the health and safety code, also in the water code. The criminal penalties as I mentioned last week are extensive. They can go from a $200 class c misdemeanor to a million or multi-million dollar serious felony. They are located by patrol officers or citizens on the street who bring it to the attention of those who can investigate environmental crime and bring it to the attention of authorities who will then bring it to our office or to the district attorney's office where they can be prosecuted. Civil cases can be initiated by you, the court body of the county and there are some provisions in these codes that allow citizen suits as well. So basically what happens is you got people out on the road, they see it, they bring it to the attention of law enforcement who then again to investigate if they have enough personnel and man hour time to do it, where it will come to my office or to the district attorney's office. Is that happening, yes? In the last year we got almost 700 consultations in my office alone to talk about these things. There are numerous cases on file. I have a little handout here for you that I can hand to the members of the court that will give you some kind of update on what you are doing. I hope that answer your question, Commissioner Daugherty, it's prolific, it is everywhere. If you go down any, let alone the cropg sites, you go down any lonely country road or empty stream bed in this county you will find illegal dumping. Everywhere.
>> it's all over the county.
>> it's not located in just one precinct or one area. It is all over the place.
>> all over the county.
>> how successful are we at prosecuting or getting at whatever the fine is? What percentage -- do we have a good record for that? Is it I suppose attention getting with regards to what -- what the fine is?
>> yeah, with -- with regard to that, we have -- we have an incredibly -- we have been incredibly successful. Very few people in this area of law are going to go to trial. The rope is these are strict liability crimes. You don't have to say why you did it, you just have to show that it happened. In which case these all become mostly or many of them become plea bargains. Some of these fines have been over $100,000 that we have brought in in misdemeanors. $100,000 misdemeanors fines. Yes, so does that have an impact, I don't know. I will say this much, those are small corporation that's we prosecuted, I think that it has an impac on their bottom line and budget, in that regard because of bottom lines and budget, we have fewer landfills in Texas now than we had 10 years ago. We had 4 million more people, you guys can guess where all of the extra trash is going. Is it havi an effect? I think that it is. Certainly with the limited manpower we focus on corporations, we focus on the dumps on top of the investigators desks. At any given times there are hundreds, hundreds, literally hundreds of cases in this county that could be prosecuted and forced either civilly or criminally, if not thousands. It's the tip of the iceberg what I'm going to hand you around here.
>> yes, you know, last time this issue was before us, we did get into the area of where we maybe are going to focus that money as far as cleanup. But that's not the problem. The problem is to continue illegal dumping that's really going on. My question to you is if -- if the viewing audience is looking at us today, they said look I have witnessed -- I have actually witnessed the illegal dumping, I know that it's not legal -- you know to do these kinds of things -- how would they respond to this if they actually witnessed it and got the proper identification of who is actually doing it, because we need a lot of eyes and ears out there, other than just depending strictly on law enforcement. How would they proceed in getting that information to the proper persons to take care of the problem? Or at least look into it and going in the direction as far as getting the person that is actually doing the illegal dumping, how will that process work?
>> that's very simple. The task force has a phone number, I don't have it off the top of my head. They can call -- more simply, call the constable or sheriff's deputy, an a.p.d. Police officer.
>> I wanted to make sure that you mentioned constable. I deliberately asked that question because I know some folks think that the constable is just -- to serve papers, but they have a little more extensive powers than that, I wanted to make sure that was included. Not only the sheriff's office but to get this proper identification of these folks that are illegally dumping. So again I'm really concerned about this. And I know that -- that recently we just approved additional staffing for the sheriff's department and I think nine of these new patrol officer, deputy sheriffs will be patrolling in northeast, east and southeast Travis County. So again it will probably increase the veg lens and -- vigilance and enforcement of the breakers of the law --
>> I am probably right now being guilty, we are probably deviating from this item no. We probably need to --
>> okay.
>> stay back on the issue that john kuhl is up here to talk about.
>> although I will add the number that you requested, I will give you two of them, if there is concern about a spill entering a waterway or a spill of any kind that may be toxic, you can call a tceq spill response line and that number is 1-800-832-8224 24. 224242 the other number for general trash dumping, 1-877-no dumps. 1-877-no dumps. That's 1-877-663-8677. I keep it right here in my daytimer because this is always with me.
>> we will have this item back on after we hear from tceq.
>> thank you.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you, judge.
>> thank you, kevin.
Last Modified: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 6:44 AM