Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 1
Number 1 is to consider and take appropriate action on an order concerning outdoor burning in the unincorporated areas of Travis County.
mr. Lee?
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners, herschel lee, Travis County fire marshal's office, our current drought index is in the 620 range, the burn ban will not expire until November the 16th.
we are expecting or hoping for some slight rain by Thursday morning, but I would like to caution the community, citizens, that this rain is going to be a passing rain.
not going to be the soaking rain that we need that any hot work or anything that's being done on agricultural basis that would normally be allowed be extremely careful with that.
my recommendation is to leave the burn ban in place.
>> questions or comments?
by taking no action, we leave the burn ban in place.
yes, sir?
>> can I -- can I just speak on that?
>> you can come forth and give us your name and -- and we would be happy to get your comments.
>>
>> [indiscernible]
>> fine, how are you, sir?
>> hey, my name is daryl
>> [indiscernible], I live out in the county.
I understand the burn ban, I understand the need of the burn ban, me and mr. Lee have had previous interactions through my burning.
but I mean it's like at some point I mean this burn ban has been on over a year, okay?
there is -- there is days that you can burn even though they might not be the days, they don't fall in between the session.
by us living in the county, I mean, we don't have bulk pickup, we don't have the city trucks to come by and do this.
throughout this drought in the last year, I mean, we got just like stockpiles of dead trees.
you know, the county ain't very good about picking up trash off the road.
and I got like two blind spots on my property.
basically it's like a -- like a city dump, you know, people don't want to pay for their trash, they kind of come out and dump it.
you know, so it's like in order to keep more people from dumping, a lot of times what we'll do is just pick all of this debris up, take it on to our properties and we'll burn it at a later date.
but this has been over a year, we haven't been able to burn.
I used to just burn with or without -- I mean burn ban or no burn ban and me and mr. Lee had a talk one day, so I agreed man to man I wouldn't do it anymore
>> [laughter] and but -- I mean, it's been a year since we live in precinct 4.
it's a lot of stuff, you know.
there's days that you can burn it's like, you know, the last time that I was burning, you know, me and the fire department was having a conversation in my front yard about my fire and I just refused to stand in the rain and talk to them about a burn ban, you know.
which resulted in a big fine.
I'm burning in the rain.
you know, it's -- is it any way that like the county could give us like a free dump weekend?
you know, okay well y'all can't burn it, we know there's a lot out there because y'all done had trees die, we know people dump and the county don't come pick it up.
is there any way that likeall could give us, you know, people that live in the county a couple of free dump days?
that way we can just take it to the dump and we don't have to burden the cost of $125 a trailer load to take it to the dump, we can get rid of some of these stockpiles of stuff, we can clean up in and around because the county just don't do it.
they don't come and pick up trash.
if somebody dump a boat the county will come pick it up.
a dresser, coach, water cooler with dead dogs in it, whatever that stuff we've got to pick this stuff up ourselves.
>> herschel, have we had any conversations with tcso environmental enforcement and t.n.r.
about -- I totally hear what you are saying that there's an unintended consequence of the burn ban that we probably have some dumping in the right-of-way that we might not otherwise have, have we looked at any kind of coordinated effort or looked at the impact of the burn ban to try to figure out how we can mitigate it?
>> I have not.
I have spoken to the environmental officers, but I haven't received any particular complaints or requests for -- for that type of thing.
and -- and having a burn ban, like we have had since about December the 10th of last year, has the unintended consequence of -- of accumulation of debris that people might normally be able to burn.
but just under the circumstance that's we've had, I do not feel that it's safe to -- to allow.
>> I totally agree with you there.
I'm just wondering if we might look at some sort of coordinated effort to see what the impact is because daryl I'm sorry, tell me your last name.
>> lofton.
>> I -- what mr. Lofton is saying, is -- is true.
I'm ---- I'm seeing it out at my parents in law, massive amounts of disturb from trees that have -- of brush from trees that have died off.
it's a decent hypothesis that there might be more dumps on the roadway because of it.
>> the city goes up on their trash prices.
dj collins, right -- that neighborhood back there, I mean it's like somebody will cut the trees and I got my own dead trees.
I'm coming out, on my way to the morning, drop my kids off to school, here's a pile of brush.
as long as you leave it there, the more people will see it and say oh, that's a good spotted to dump it.
they can dump there and get away with it, so can i.
I mean, I'll hook on to a trailer, throw it in the back of my truck, take it back down in my property just to keep it from --
>> being a magnet.
>> just making it because I've got like maybe half a mile of road frontage, a couple of spots you can actually drive off there, be 25, 30 feet off of the road, I mean mattresses, coaches, dressers, I mean last week it was somebody trimmed their bamboo piles so I had like three big massive bundles of bamboo.
it's like I mean it's just -- you have got to get it off the road.
the longer that you leave it there, the more people will see it and the more people will dump and Travis County won't come pick it up.
if you leave it there --
>> on this item?
>> I wanted to advise the viewers that the county does routinely pick up trash and debris in the right-of-way, going beyond the right-of-way is getting on private property, we don't do that.
also caution folks that might be thinking about pulling stuff up on the right-of-way, we do have limited resources, there is a concern about them -- them mixing in household hazardous materials with whatever is up there.
we don't want to do that.
>> the short answer to your question is, when it's safe to burn we'll lift the ban.
unfortunately.
I don't know that we can say more than that and I think those wildfires of a few weeks ago taught us a valuable lesson and that is that we need to be safe.
thank you, mr. Lofton.
>> thank you.
>> by taking no action, we -- we leave in place the ban.
>> are you here on that.
>> water issue.
>> that won't be until this afternoon.
that will be an executive session item.
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