Travis County Commssioners Court
May 11, 2004
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Item A1
A1. Consider and take appropriate action on request for Travis County comments on proposed rules, municipal solid waste site operating plans, 30 tac chapter 330, subchapter f, rule log number 2004-050-330-ws. I知 sure in state lingo that means a whole lot.
>> john kuhl, environmental officer. I知 just going to go ahead and start with a bit of an apology. I meant to get a greater amount of detail work into these comments, so forth, get them to you sooner. So I think today it will be a good time to introduce what's going on and figure out if -- if you want to proceed with -- with the general sort of cover letter that I produced or if you want to hold off a bit and think about it. What I just handed out to you, as I walked in front of the dais is I got to thinking about an explanation of what basically a site operating plan is and what the current rule making process is all about at tceq. If you guys to know all of the details about what's going on, thought that was a good place to start. Basically, as you will recall, there was -- there was a legal case that has brought this kind of to the forefront. [indiscernible] facility in san antonio was seeking an expansion, that's a b.f.i. Facility, they were sued successfully, based upon the fact that their site [indiscernible] lacked specific detail to guide day to day twaitions. What happened after that -- day to day operations. What happened after that was people started looking a little bit closer at these regs, how they are being implemented by industry, realizing perhaps there really wasn't enough detail being -- the site operating plans. That judgment was appealed and lost again, then the industry took the actual rule itself to task and what -- the tceq to see if they could actually get that requirement in the rule taken out. In other words they went to the commission and said, you know what, we need great flexibility, we need the ability to separate our sites, we -- the way we need to operate them and this rule making case that we've -- that we've lost here in court on site operating plans is going to bog down all applications that are before you now, it's going to create a lot of uncertainty in industry. Therefore we just need to get rid of that part of the rule. , a letter that was unanimously supported by you to argue against that, we were actually successful -- I would say that we were with a greater group of folks who thought that was not a good idea, this is the result. Tceq said we are not going to take that out of the rules, we are going to go through a rule making process. However where we talk about what's flawed here, how we can correct it. That was begun -- we sort of worked real hard on the m.o.u.'s, a hiatus here at Travis County. Next thing that you know we had a stakeholder meeting on the 19th and I tell you, if you read the paper and see Commissioner soward saying he wants to move quickly, have results, he's really walking the talk. Walked in there, found out they wanted their comments April 26th, that's the second page of the handout that I just gave you is the time line. We have missed that no. To fear, we can get our comments in and still be a part of the process, but soward was obviously taking the staff to task, said he wanted to get a draft rule out by the 20th of this month. My thinking was if we could get these comments in at least for the time being, if you would like for us to generate greater detailed comments that's fine, too. What I did was I looked out and found some comments that -- that for the most part I felt like I could support and I thought that I would bring those to you. Those came from rick lowry and he wrote those on behalf of several environmental groups and entities. Then there was also a -- a series of detailed comments that came from harris county's pollution control division, which does -- which does enforcement on landfills in harris county. I thought they were pretty decent comments. What I did was drafted a cover letter that says we generally support those. Then I added another little area of a suggestion towards the end of that cover letter that says basically we feel like what we've learned over the last few years in dealing with the landfills and having them voluntarily improve some of the conditions out there is that will when you have got very large sites that are very long-lived and they are in close proximity to neighborhood, it could be that you have -- that you actually ratchet up your level of expectation for those site operating plans that are in those land use contexts. In other words, if they are very close to a lot of potentially affected parties, perhaps they -- perhaps they need to, you know, kind of work a bit harder and we may need to see that reflected in the rules and implementing procedures associated with those rules. In a nutshell, that's where I知 at, that's what i've done. Entertain questions, work with you, however you would like.
>> the concept paper that -- that was handed out today, where does that fit in now?
>> that was actually a handout that we received at the stakeholder meeting back on the 19th of April. And there were a whole lot of other pieces attached to the back of it, but that was a good summary I thought to kind of get you guys up to speed on what was going on there with tceq. It -- it actually had the rules attached to it, the -- the section of chapter 330, subpoena chapter f that has a site operating plan, the rules that per tape to site operating plans and it also had some -- I believe some draft, actually pretty much what I had attached to that, so that's another thing that I could definitely provide you with to make it easier to review where we are at on this. I just didn't want to completely overwhelm you on such short notice.
>> -- I --
>> sounding off on letters using a word that I have never used in my life, con commitant, thank for you making us sound more educated.
>> any input from -- from anybody else here today? If so, please come forward? Your recommendation basically is for us to -- approve the letter, your letter and in that letter basically you adopt comments submitted by harris county, rick laurie?
>> correct. Lowerry.
>> correct.
>> as our little special paragraph?
>> right.
>> situation on [indiscernible]
>> right.
>> what does our paragraph say? I did get that in writing yesterday, but I don't have that before me.
>> would you like me to read that.
>> can you?
>> yes, sir in our attempts to protect problems and better protect Travis County citizens over the past few years, we have worked with lot landfills to improve conditions at their site. In general areas of wind blown litter control, odor control, bird and vector control, leachate management, [indiscernible], storm water [indiscernible] mud leaving the site. While conditions are not perfect at these sites, they are improved and it leads us to believe, some if not all of these improvements should be considered minimum expectations at [indiscernible] sites in urban and suburban settings. In other words the rigor and robustness required in sight operating plans should match the land use setting. In cases where landfills are proximate to densely populated neighborhoods, schools, places of worship, et cetera, the standards of operation should ratchet up concomitantly. [indiscernible] expectations are hire, volume and profits should also be higher in these areas. In summary we appreciate the inclusion in this process and look forward to continued dialogue and improved rules and implementing procedures for msw operating sites in Texas. I mean the key question is, have you had a chance to look at those comments provided by lowerry in harris county probably not. I wouldn't expect you to support those unless you had. So we can -- we can -- we can go through -- a little bit after time process where you are allowed to look at those, we can come back. I don't think we are going to lose the opportunity. I mean, there is -- I haven't talked to wade wheelie or the other staff at tceq to find out if they are actually going to get their draft rule out by the 20th, but I think that's just an internal circulation to the Commissioners and other staff, it won't go public until I believe it was June 25th on the time line. So it's a start in this dialogue for us.
>> if we don't do it today, [indiscernible] the 14th, but we don't need the 72-hour posting requirement by calling it back up, -- what's the court's will?
>> how much time did you say that we could have on this thing, john?
>> like I say, they are planning to debt a draft rule out in just nine days. What -- what they said to us, because there were a lot of folks at that stakeholder meeting that said whoa time out, foul, we can't get our comments in that quickly because they only gave us a week's notice to get comments in. Their answer was generally that if you don't get them in by the 20th, you might not get fully into the first draft of that rule. But it's going to be seeing a lot more change in iteration over the summer. So -- so I would say if we -- if we tried to get it in by early June or so, you know, you would still get in there 25 days, 20 to 25 days before it hits the public. As a draft rule. So that's --
>> [indiscernible] I mean --
>> harris county has been more active on this situation than anybody out there in terms of -- of environmental enforcement, et cetera. And certainly in terms of the work that's been done by mr. Lowry and others, I highly respect their work as well. Then john has captured in the two-page letter I think some other things that are very specific to Travis County. So you know I have looked it all over. I知 -- you know, I知 fine, but I respect what everybody else wants to do in terms of getting it in. But I think sooner is better than later. If we want to supplement because we get further information, we should. But I知 ready.
>> I知 ready, too.
>> I don't have any problem with that.
>> move approval of the letter and the attachments.
>> seconded by Commissioner Gomez. Discussion? Any comments from anybody here? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Let's have it back on the court's agenda on the 25th just in case.
>> okay.
>> thanks, john.
>> I will consider changing concommitantly to simultaneously, maybe.
>> proportionately. [laughter]
Last Modified: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 7:23 AM