01.29.09
Open Letter From A Prudent Citizen
An open letter to the WCCC:
AN OPEN LETTER TO WILLIAMSON COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
AND LETTER TO THE EDITORDear Commissioners:
The residents of the Hutto area are reaching out to you at this difficult time. You face some extremely important decisions regarding the landfill expansion permit and the landfill contract.
You have the upcoming hearing on the expansion permit in two weeks on February 11 and you still do not have a new contract for the landfill that is acceptable to the residents of Hutto. Of course, if you allow the expansion permit to go through without a new contract in place, that would be disastrous. It would leave us with the 2003 contract. And if you think having the 2003 contract covering the existing 200 acre landfill is horrific, imagine that contract covering a 575 acre landfill! This appears to put us (and you) in a difficult spot. However, there is a solution.
That solution is to pull the expansion permit and to put it to rest for good (and pay Waste Management for the costs they have incurred in pursuing the permit, as you have already tried to do before). Then you could just allow the current landfill to operate, whether under the 2003 contract, or perhaps under an improved contract, for the remainder of its life. This would provide more than enough landfill capacity for the residents of Williamson County.
As far as we can tell, aside from Judge Gattis and Waste Management, no one even wants this landfill expansion. Nor is it needed as Gattis argues. The technology of handling solid waste is already making great strides toward making landfills obsolete. In as little as the next 5 to 10 years, we will continue to experience great strides in single stream recycling, zero waste programs and similar initiatives that promise to eliminate the need to just bury our waste. Please do not lock us into a huge landfill expansion now when technology is showing us that we will not need it. Remember, the current landfill still has upwards of 20 years (or more as technology improves) of life left. There is simply no pressing need to allow this expansion now. And the damage it will do to the economic development of the northern Hutto region is just too much of a price to pay.
It would ironic indeed if this Court went down in history as the one that declared virtual nuclear war on a billboard for the benefit of one neighborhood, but allowed this landfill expansion to ravage an entire area of the county for the next three generations. You have the power to stop the madness now.
Thanks for listening and please help put a stop to this now.
Jeff Maurice
Hutto, Texas
Jeff Maurice is chairman of the Landfill Committee of the Hutto Citizens Group.