Environmental Quality Denies Multi-Million Dollar Landfill

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality denies landfill company’s request for a re-hearing, effectively ending a three-year grudge match between Lasara residents and multi-million dollar plans for a 600-acre landfill.

La Sal del Rey, a tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, contains a 530-acre salt lake, La Sal Vieja, where all kinds of birds stay for the winter. Thousands of sandhill cranes, snow geese and long-billed curlews roost at La Sal Del Rey each year. When they fly in, they blanket the sky, landing in the snow-white terrain like countless migrating flurries. There’s also a rare little critter called the pygmy owl, a protected bird with few and shrinking habitats. And those are just few of the area’s inhabitants, many of which are on the U.S. endangered species list.
But the lake itself was in danger, until a remarkable alliance of nature lovers and community residents teamed up to fend off the threat from a proposed landfill, a menace that finally went away last week.

HISTORY AND ENVIRONMENT
The tract of Hidalgo County land borders Willacy County, and it is also at the head of a delta that feeds to Laguna Madre north of Port Isabel. The role the region plays in the South Texas ecosystem is crucial, a role that’s just as important as the role La Sal Del Rey has played in U.S. and Texas history.
The lake gets its name from the fact that Spanish explorers claimed it for their king. The millions of tons of salt at La Sal Del Rey were once a crucial resource for military strategy. A critical supply point and military objective that the state of Texas took over during the Civil War, La Sal del Rey was also the spark for an 1866 Texas constitutional amendment that gave mineral rights to property owners and stripped them from the government.
Just recently, La Sal Del Rey again played an important part in history. But this time, instead of providing a staple necessary for survival or serving as a precedent for property rights, La Sal Del Rey became one of the arguing points for a colorful coalition of ranchers, bird lovers, community residents and others who gathered enough force to stand up to a multimillion-dollar company that tried to build a landfill in one of the nation’s most diverse wildlife corridors.

HOME TO ENDANGERED SPECIES
The Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge stretches from Falcon Lake to the Laguna Madre and is considered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to possibly be the most diverse ecological zone in the nation.
The endangered species that can be found in this South Texas tract are many: there’s the wood stork, bald eagle, aplomado falcon, piping plover, least tern, jaguarundi, ocelot and American alligator.
Plus, at the end of the corridor, there’s the green sea turtle, hawksbill sea turtle, loggerhead sea turtle, Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle and leatherback sea turtle, just to name a few.
And of course don’t forget the region’s threatened species, which include the Texas horned lizard, speckled racer, Texas indigo snake, black-striped snake, northern cat-eyed snake, black-spotted newt and Rio Grande lesser siren.
And the Mexican burrowing toad, giant toad, Rio Grande chirping frog, white-lipped frog, Mexican tree frog, sheep frog, river goby, and blackfin goby…

A BAD PLACE FOR A LANDFILL
With so much wildlife depending on the corridor linked by La Sal Del Rey and the Laguna Madre delta, it seems obvious that building a landfill where the two regions meet might have been a bad idea.
But in the original 2003 application for a landfill permit, the Tan Terra company seemed to conveniently omit the zone’s ecological significance. As the community finally started to ask questions almost two years later, Tan Terra strengthened its representation that the landfill would be safe.
“We know the requirements for building a safe landfill and we’re going to follow those requirements,” said Tan Terra attorney Brett Ryan last year, as protests mounted in Raymondville and Lasara against the proposed dump.
Tan Terra owner Dusty Rhodes referred to the criticism from environmentalists as “scare tactics,” and promised to have his own experts provide accurate information to the community.
Reports from Texas A&M University, however, show that the toxic runoff from municipal landfills matches runoff from industrial landfills. Tan Terra planed to house both types of facilities, a municipal landfill to collect regional waste and an industrial landfill that would have been able to accept toxic matter from the 170 Mexican maquiladoras that edge the Rio Grande Valley.
Sure, nobody wants a landfill in their back yard. But in Lasara, there was another question. Could the ecosystem afford to have a landfill in a wildlife corridor?

STEALTH APPLICATION
Taking advantage of Texas Commission on Environmental Quality procedures, Tan Terra was able to get well into the permitting process before the community could gather force against it.
The attempt to build a landfill in Lasara, a town of 1,000 people eight miles west of Raymondville, started in 2003, when Tan Terra Environmental Systems first applied for a permit.
The TCEQ, the state agency that grants landfill permits, requires companies applying for a permit to post public notice that a landfill permit is being sought. To fulfill that requirement, Tan Terra took out advertisements in the Raymondville Chronicle – a weekly, English newspaper in a town several miles away. Most Lasara residents speak Spanish, and remained unaware of the plans for a landfill, failing to attend the first public hearings which began in summer 2003.
Tan Terra had already bought the 600 acres it hoped to build the dump on and had completed early permitting requirements before the some in community had figured out what was happening. A small group of ranchers, however, started their fight against the landfill early on.
No longer a commercial source for salt, the 5,384-acre El Sal del Rey ranch has been owned by the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service since 1992 and now serves as an attraction for tens of thousands of bird watchers, naturalists, photographers, researchers, and explorers who hike and bike the region famous for its stark natural beauty and ecological significance.
Though the history and environmental importance of the region is well-known, none of that information was included in Tan Terra’s permit application.

ONE SIDE OF THE STORY
Attorney Rick Lowerre, who was contracted by Willacy County rancher Ray Burdette, helped spearhead the opposition to Tan Terra. Lowerre would soon coordinate a collective legal front composed of the Delta Lake Irrigation District, the Lasara Independent School District, as well as a handful of ranchers and residents — including two plaintiffs whose low incomes qualified them for free services from Texas RioGrande Legal Aid.
Lowerre said the landfill’s threat to a fragile environment was obvious. But the TCEQ’s permitting process allows applicants to creatively represent the facts. If no one opposes an applicant, the TCEQ isn’t responsible for investigating any claims an applicant may make, or researching any threat to the environment.
“The general rule is that an application that meets state standards will be approved. State standards are not that tough … if you pick a good site,” he said. “Without the community there to prove the site was bad, the project could have gone through.”
Though the group fighting the landfill started late, they managed to pull together in time to ask TCEQ to deny Tan Terra’s application. They argued that the toxic runoff and contents of a landfill could threaten endangered wildlife. They also pointed out that the landfill site sat in a flood plain. In case of heavy rains, especially a hurricane, runoff from the entire dump would quickly flood the fragile Laguna Madre.
State Judge Sarah Ramos decided in October 2005 that the coalition’s complaints had merit. In a TCEQ hearing on April 12, Tan Terre and Lowerre went head-to-head with their research, experts and arguments. Lowerre and his coalition spent tens of thousands of dollars to prove their point. They hired hydrologists. They hired four endangered species experts, as well as wildlife and oil and gas experts. Tan Terra argued that the company was prepared to follow state guidelines to build the landfill, and that the information presented by opponents was inconclusive.

COMMUNITY VICTORY
TCEQ, based on the evidence, denied Tan Terre’s application. Tan Terra then filed for a rehearing, but TCEQ took no action before the June 12 deadline, effectively ending Tan Terra’s administrative options to receive a permit to build a landfill in Lasara and halting this threat to the environment.
Sure, nobody wants a landfill in their own back yard. But this particular dump would have been built in a major wildlife corridor with 1,100 kinds of plants, 700 vertebrate species (including nearly 500 types of birds) and more than 300 species of butterflies. Community objections to Tan Terra’s planned landfill went far beyond the usual predictions of rats and lower property values. With a Rio Grande Valley ever more aware of the economic, cultural and ecological value of natural resources, this three-year drama played out by hundreds of residents and dozens of lawyers is possibly the greatest community victory the area has seen in decades.