Lubbock

Lubbock Hopes for Dump Cleanup

For a decade, an 80-acre dump of wood, asphalt, tar shingles and tires has sat festering just off Interstate 27 on the northern fringe of Lubbock. On two occasions since 2002, the debris has burned for at least a week, leaving behind blackened piles of debris.

Lubbock officials have puzzled for years what to do about the abandoned recycling site. Now, they are looking to the Legislature for financial help to clean up the debris piles across the highway from Lubbock International Airport, a dump one official calls "a blight on one of Lubbock's main gateways."

"It's an environmental hazard, it's a threat to the airport, and it's a threat to the adjacent property owners because it attracts rodents and undesirable beings," Tony Privett, lobbyist for the city of Lubbock told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

The 80-acre dump has caught fire twice, in 2002 and again in 2009, a year after the state recommended that the dump be closed. The Avalanche-Journal reports both fires lasted about a week.

Privett said he has been working with Lubbock's legislative delegation to draft a bill that would reserve state funds to clean up abandoned, privately-owned recycling centers.

Lubbock Mayor Glen Robertson said a state-based program already exists to help cities with cleaning up the abandoned dumps.

Court records relating to unpaid taxes on the property list the owner as Larry Webb. The Avalanche-Journal reports the telephone number listed in the documents for Webb found the line disconnected. No number is listed for Webb in Haskell, Texas, where the most recent court documents show he lives.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality first reported violations at the dump in 2006 and recommended shutting it down in April 2008 because waste piling up at the site wasn't being recycled. A judge ordered the business closed temporarily in December 2008. A final judgment filed in a state district court in Austin required Webb to pay a $100,000 penalty and $62,500 in legal fees to the state and begin removing solid waste from the site at a rate of five tons per month. All of the waste was to be removed in three years.

None of that happened. TCEQ spokeswoman Andrea Morrow tells the Avalanche-Journal that the commission is now reviewing the matter and is almost finished with its latest environmental study. The Texas Attorney General's office expects to have that report by the end of the month.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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