Texas Campaign for the Environment: Victories 2005

TCE worked with neighbors opposing the IESI landfill expansion in Weatherford. TCE and others convinced state environmental agency officials to review the staff decision to approve the landfill expansion without including the normal public participation process required for expansions. These developments force IESI to enter into a settlement to limit future expansions in Weatherford and join with TCE in urging the state environmental agency to not view the permit process in this case as a precedent for others.

After months of pressure from TCE and the Computer TakeBack Campaign, Apple announced the company would take back obsolete iPods at the company's retail stores in the U.S. TCE replies that Apple needs to set up systems to take back all its products conveniently from all customers, whether or not they live near an Apple Store.

TCE organizes Texans to call for better standards for landfills, working closely with landfill neighbor groups. The three commissioners who oversee the state environmental agency made their first pass at reviewing the proposed standards and supported some initial improvements in landfill rules in August 2005, including:

• Requiring that large signs be posted around proposed or expanding trash facilities to notify the public of the pending matter
• Requiring trash companies to put their permit applications on their website so that the public can review them on the Internet without increasing the workload of TCEQ staff.
• Reinstating current standards (that staff wanted to delete) requiring that applicants provide the state environmental agency with “data of sufficient completeness, accuracy, and clarity to provide assurance that operation of the site will pose no reasonable probability of adverse effects on the health, welfare, environment, or physical property of nearby residents or property owners."
• Requesting comments on how the state should handle electronic waste.

TCE publicized the discovery of old computers once belonging to the City of San Antonio in dumps in Lagos, Nigeria.  This expose led to the city pleding to require that when new electronics are purchased, the city will require takeback of old equipment.  This ended the process of auctioning off the old equipment which gives the city little control as to how it is recycled or disposed of.

TCE exposed that James McQuaid an appointee to one of two "general public" slots on a state trash advisory panel was married to a Trinity Waste executive.  McQuaid failed to disclose this conflict of interest in writing when he applied to fill the position.  TCE called on him to resign or for the Commissioners of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to remove him.  On December 20, 2005, McQuaid resigned.