Texas company faces heat for plans to locate landfill near floodplain

A Texas company is facing criticism amid its plans to develop a landfill close to a 100-year floodplain near Laredo, Texas, The Texas Tribune reports.

Rancho Viejo Waste Management started applying for the necessary approvals back in 2011 for the site, but criticism has picked up in the wake of Superfund flooding experienced around Houston following Hurricane Harvey. The site is slated to house toxic Class 1 industrial waste, including coal ash from power plants and industrial sludge.

“The proposed landfill is, as far as I can tell, right in the middle of a floodplain and a creek that is an immediate tributary of the Rio Grande,” George Altgelt, a Laredo city councilman, says in the report. “From a practical standpoint, who builds a dump in the middle of a creek? When did that become a good idea?”

The developer originally planned to dedicate 660 acres of the 950-acre site to waste disposal, a portion of which intersected with a 100-year floodplain mapped by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). A 100-year floodplain depicts the areas that could go underwater in the event of a 100-year flood. However, as such natural disasters have increased in frequency in recent years, the issue has gained added attention.

“Every standard we have out there relative to flooding is obsolete or potentially obsolete in the Houston area," Jim Blackburn, co-director of the Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters Center at Rice University, says according to the report. "I suspect the same is true throughout Texas."

According to Rancho Viejo Waste Management, the company has followed all necessary guidelines and has, as needed by law, documented how parts of the site will be removed from the floodplain using dikes, drainage channels and detention ponds. The company also said it was planning on downsizing the area used for waste disposal to 72 acres, the entirety of which is purportedly located outside of FEMA’s floodplain.

The company has received approval from FEMA to go ahead with the site and is awaiting approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). Rancho Viejo Waste Management said it would continue to try to get approval from the county following their recent denial by the floodplain administrator in May.