The City of Big Lake has been forced to pay $32,550 fine following a landfill investigation.
A total of twelve violations, and a $32,550 fine was handed down by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
“We felt it could have been a lot worse and so we just went ahead and bit the bullet and went with it,” Big Lake Mayor Pro-Tem Phil Pool said.
The hefty price tag stems from an investigation last summer into the city of Big Lake’s landfill, where the TCEQ found multiple issues. Some of those include an excessive amount of windblown trash, no cover materials to control odors and no vehicle navigable roads.
“Basically, the violations all amount to cover up. It was an oversight on our part, I won’t point fingers or name names, we are all in this together,” Pool said.
Big Lake’s Mayor Pro-Tem Phil Pool tells me one employee is to blame. That person was terminated last July. One of the violations forced the city to pour more than $60,000 into roadwork, allowing for easy access to the landfill.
“The roads were impassable shape and that was one of the violations that they got us on,” Pool said.
About 90% of the landfill problems are now fixed. It’s something Pool says will be maintained on the regular, so the TCEQ won’t come knocking again.
“We’ve now got somebody out there right now that takes care of that daily on a daily basis, whether they have to bring in other equipment if ours is broke down. It gets done daily,” Pool said.
(Information from YourBasin.com)
