ALPINE — Rancher John McCarthy is considering taking legal action against the City of Alpine and Texas Disposal Systems (TDS) for the landfill operation that abuts his family property in every direction.
The City of Alpine landfill, an 80-acre site established in the early ‘90s, is located east of town just past the Highway 67 turn off, tucked back from the road. The remote area’s windy conditions cause trash to blow from the confines of the landfill onto the McCarthy and Seale family ranch, which raises cattle and horses. Plastic bags and other refuse litter the land, catching on cholla and mesquite.
TDS workers pick up litter with pickers around the landfill’s edges, but McCarthy said farther flung trash gets deposited all across the ranch, traveling as far as three miles away where his family resides.
“Everything else continues to blow out hundreds of yards,” McCarthy said. “It continues to tumble until a bush grabs it — its final resting place ‘till it shreds up in the wind and becomes small fragments of plastic blowing around the earth.”
“When you’re riding horseback through here, and [trash is] laying down on the ground everywhere, you’re like, how do you reverse this?” he added.
McCarthy said talks with TDS to address the litter issue have stretched on for years, and he feels like the company and the city are “kicking the can down the road” rather than resolving the problem, leading the family to consider a lawsuit. Also at the forefront of McCarthy’s concerns is potential groundwater contamination from the landfill.
TDS and the city told The Big Bend Sentinel they meet trash containment requirements and are in compliance with the state regarding landfill operations. The Sentinel filed records requests with the city and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to obtain regulatory reports.
The land for the dump was sold to the city by a previous mayor, William Sohl. The facility was initially run by Republic Services until TDS signed a contract with the city to take over the site’s operations in 2007. TDS leases the site from the city every year for a varied price — most recently $150,000. In exchange, 25% of the landfill’s monthly revenue — TDS is a for profit business and accepts waste from other commercial clients in addition to city residents — goes to the city, typically around $10,000 to $13,000 a month, “A decent amount of money,” City Manager Megan Antrim said.
Like the City of Presidio landfill and the Panther Junction landfill located in Big Bend National Park, the City of Alpine landfill holds an “arid exemption,” under the TCEQ, meaning it is not lined and is not subject to groundwater monitoring requirements. Arid exempt landfills exist across the state, mostly in rural, dry areas like South Texas, the Panhandle and West Texas. In order to qualify for an arid exemption a landfill must accept less than 20 tons per day, be located in an area with less than 25 inches of annual rainfall and serve “a community that has no practicable waste management alternative.”
The City of Alpine landfill accepts trash from Brewster, Presidio and Jeff Davis counties, and, depending on the year, trash from other nearby counties like Reeves, Terrell and Culberson, according to annual reports from TCEQ. In 2006 the landfill’s original 1993 permit was altered to allow for two arid exempt units, each with a 20 tons per day limit, according to a spokesperson from TCEQ.
A few years ago McCarthy discovered a dead cow with “a big chunk of plastic bag” in her gut, a loss that spurred him to escalate discussions with TDS regarding the need to install high fencing around the landfill. At the time the only deterrent windblown trash met was a short wire fence that marked the facility’s boundaries.
McCarthy said the likely cause of the refuse-lodged rumen was that cows will graze around the bases of mesquite, where plastic bags are likely to catch, when grass is not available. The cow’s death was a significant economic hit considering the subsequent profit loss of several calving seasons, he said, and an emotional one, given the level of care that goes into raising animals.
“One thing that people don’t realize about a lot of ranchers is that conservation is a huge part of our everyday deal. A lot of times they don’t see us when we’re out here, when it’s freezing cold, taking a newborn calf, drying it off and making sure it’s okay,” he added. “We’re out here breaking water, pulling ice off, making sure our animals can drink.”
Sometime after the incident, in 2022, TDS installed a portion of high fencing on the northwest corner of the landfill at their expense.
McCarthy sought compensation for the dead cow but did not produce an autopsy from a veterinarian per TDS’s request. Brandon Smitheal, vice president of operations – offsite services for TDS, said while “there was no evidence to conclude that the cow died as a result of ingesting waste that came from the landfill,” TDS agreed to purchase around $13,700 worth of old utility poles from McCarthy, a goodwill gesture, that they used to put up the portion of high fencing.
Smitheal said when McCarthy first approached the company about litter concerns a couple of years ago they were in compliance according to their Site Operating Plan, a foundational document prepared by a licensed engineer on behalf of the city and approved by TCEQ. He pointed out that the city technically owns the facility, but said even then TDS has gone “above and beyond” their requirements to try and remedy the issue.
“We want to have good relationships with neighboring property owners, and we certainly understand that there are certain potentially undesirable elements of being next to a landfill,” Smitheal said. “We want to do everything we can to mitigate that.”
TDS stationed an additional bulldozer and operator at the site, he said, to ensure trash was being compacted and covered quickly. They hired additional staff for the purpose of picking up escaped litter, he said, admitting the area’s strong winds pose a challenge. TDS also installed the portion of fencing on the northwest corner of the landfill where it was determined the “prevailing wind is that will catch the most,” Smitheal said.
But McCarthy was frustrated to learn that high netting was not being installed around the entire landfill perimeter, he said — a solution he and Jason Chopelas, another neighboring landowner, said they would still like to see pursued. The presence of rattlesnakes in nearby pastures that trash collectors traverse and extreme weather conditions they work in concerns him as well, McCarthy said.
“Whether it’s 10 degrees or 105 they now are trying to push them to be out here and clean trash, because they know they’re being scrutinized at this point,” McCarthy said.
“The ultimate goal is to not have [TDS] trespassing on our ranch every day. I don’t like the liability of their people being on our ranch,” he added. “They don’t seem to have a problem sacrificing human safety for the cost of a mesh fence.”
Smitheal said McCarthy has not expressed to him that TDS is not allowed on his property, and he was not aware of a trespassing issue. He said it wasn’t “economically feasible” for TDS to put a fence around the entire property, and even if they did, “it doesn’t stop everything.” So they instead rely on the “strategy” of having their employees collect the litter, he said, on a daily or near daily basis.
“Our equipment operators get out and pick up litter,” Smitheal said. “Yesterday, my manager was out there picking up litter. Any drivers that we have, that the workload doesn’t require them to be in a truck, we employ those guys picking up litter. We certainly don’t limit it to the staff that are titled as landfill labor. We put all hands on deck.”
Antrim said the city was a part of past conversations with TDS regarding potential solutions to the landfill litter issue — another rancher, not McCarthy, raised the matter publicly with the City Council at some point — but as far as she was aware, the concerns had been addressed.
“The city did work back with TDS, and that’s when part of the fence went up,” Antrim said. “We have addressed things when they’re brought to our attention.”
“I think the fence was put up in the areas where, obviously, [it was] the most needed,” she added. “It is an expense.”
Antrim said she had not heard from McCarthy regarding his complaints, and as far as she is aware, TDS and the city are in compliance. She said TDS submits regulatory information to the city on a monthly basis regarding various aspects of the landfill operation — including a daily overall inspection of landfill cover, windblown waste, gates and more signed by the on-site manager — and city employees drive around for “random inspections” of the facility.
McCarthy, whose attorney obtained copies of some of the monthly inspection reports via a public records request, accused TDS staff of “pencil whipping” the documents because the activities do not match what he sees on the ground, he said. Smitheal said the landfill inspections are completed in accordance with TCEQ requirements. (The landfill was last inspected by TCEQ in 2022, at which time no violations were noted, according to a spokesperson from the agency.)
McCarthy said he found the city’s recent code enforcement crackdown on commercial businesses in town ironic considering the ongoing issues he’s had with the municipal landfill. He said the dumping ground is “out of sight, out of mind” for most and because it’s located in a rural area proper regulation is going by the wayside.
“I don’t think if this was located around Midland or Odessa, where there was a higher density population around, this crap would be happening,” McCarthy said. “There’d be a fence up around the landfill like right now, but we’re out here in podunk Alpine, which is the reason I love it out here. There’s not many people, not much traffic or anything else; the landscape is beautiful.”
Both McCarthy and neighbor Chopelas, whose ranch lies northeast of the landfill, are either actively testing or plan to test their wells for potential groundwater contamination. Chemicals may leach into groundwater from landfills “by means of precipitation and surface runoff,” according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA.)
The City of Alpine landfill lacks a protective liner and a leachate — contaminated water — collection system, common safeguards in newer and non-arid exempt landfills.
“It’s just not good being that they fall under the air exemption act or whatever, that they don’t have to put a liner in,” Chopelas said. “If all that stuff is sitting on porous gravel, it’s going to take the path of least resistance and flow … All that nastiness is going to go somewhere.”
“The main concern is the water,” he added. “We’re running out of it out here.”
Because no groundwater monitoring is taking place at the site, according to TDS, potential groundwater contamination cannot be ruled out. Smitheal said nothing TDS has encountered has indicated that there’s “any problem with respect to water or groundwater,” and their staff are trained to screen prohibited waste from entering the landfill.
“We’ve got multiple layers of personnel that are trained to identify and prevent prohibited waste from getting into the landfill,” Smitheal said. “And being that there’s such low amounts of rainfall out there, all of that together are the measures that we have in place to protect the groundwater there.”
A TCEQ spokesperson said that when the City of Alpine first applied for the landfill permit in 1993, information on the geology and groundwater resources in the area was considered.
But McCarthy remains concerned that illegal burying has taken place in the past and that previous fires at the landfill — which he claims have been subdued by large amounts of water — pose a groundwater contamination threat. The Chopelas helped TDS put out a fire at the landfill years ago, Jason said, in order to ensure it didn’t spread onto their property.
Smitheal said there have been no incidents of illegal disposal since the company took over the site in 2007. Regarding fire, he said there have been a couple of “very brief flare ups” in the past as a result of some stockpiled organic material that was left out to dry — refuse from Village Farms tomato greenhouses — getting too hot and igniting. But Village Farms has since altered the way they deliver materials to the landfill and TDS is taking greater precautions to avoid fires, he said.
“I know the neighbors were concerned about it, but we got it under control quickly, and we changed our practice in terms of how we were storing that material,” Smitheal said. “We stretched it out into smaller windrows so that it wouldn’t have the opportunity to get hot like that.”
Antrim said every fire that occurs at the landfill has to be reported to the city, but off the top of her head, she didn’t know exactly why they were starting or what frequency they had occurred. She said the Alpine Fire Department has always been responsive to the incidents, which she referred to as “spot fires.”
Smitheal said TDS works closely with the city to get water trucks out to the landfill as quickly as possible when they are needed in the event of a fire. “The distances are great in West Texas,” Smitheal said. “It’s not like in the case of somewhere more urban, where you have better, closer access to water. But our practices are definitely in adherence with what we’re required to do by our Site Operating Plan.”
While no groundwater monitoring takes place, TDS does perform quarterly methane tests, Smitheal said, utilizing a gas detection monitor and a probe placed at a depth of one to two feet every 200 feet to detect methane readings. He said TDS has never had any indication that methane is escaping buried waste. Those quarterly tests are not submitted to TCEQ, but are required to be kept on-site at the facility, Smitheal said. A spokesperson from TCEQ said landfill operators are required to notify the agency if landfill gas concentrations exceed established limits.
McCarthy said in the future he would like to see the city hire a third-party compliance group to conduct gas monitoring and groundwater testing around the landfill. Antrim said she is unable to make that determination and it would have to be a conversation with the City Council.
The City of Alpine landfill is projected to last 37 more years at its current performance, according to records from TCEQ. Antrim said while it has been casually mentioned in the past, there has yet to be a “full blown conversation on where the next facility will be located.” The city created a recycling program to try and divert as much waste as possible from the landfill in order to extend its life, she said.
McCarthy said he takes issue with the city and TDS profiting off of waste from commercial entities and other counties that occupy valuable space in the local landfill. He said he’s worried about the long-term impacts of the dump, and how the city will move forward with establishing yet another landfill, its third, in just 37 years time.
“When you think about sustainability and you think about nature and the course of where this place was, I’m patching water stations for my cattle that cowboys have etched their initials in and dates, and they’re 100 years old. This isn’t the first rodeo for cattle and livestock,” McCarthy said. “We live, we eat, we have to survive. We have to think about the bigger global picture sometimes.”
The Big Bend Sentinel will continue to cover this story as developments occur.