Waste Management Services

Mexican Drug Cartels Are Now Smuggling Drugs Across the Texas Border in Toxic Waste

The Mexican cartels, never ones to rest on their ingenuity, are always coming up with new and inventive ways to smuggle large quantities of drugs into the United States. Take the drug cannon, modeled on the T-shirt launching devices used at NBA games, or the brilliant drive-a-Jeep-over-a-border-fenc ... More >>

If Dallas Wants to Ban Plastic Bags, It Should Be Prepared to Get Sued by Retailers

The city of Dallas is "maybe a year or two" away from considering a plastic bag ban, assistant city manager Jill Jordan told City Council members on Monday. First there will be a study to figure out its potential impact and exactly how many bags plastic bags there are in the city. It might also be ... More >>

When Should Dallas Require Apartments to Recycle? There's Still Some Debate About That.

When city staff first unveiled their vision to transform Dallas into a "zero waste" city by 2040, there was immediate pushback. No one quibbled with the goal of waste reduction, but pretty much everyone quibbled with the way the city should get there. Environmentalists critiqued the plan for puttin ... More >>

Judge Halts Dallas' Flow Control Plan, Basically Calls City Hall a Bunch of Liars

A federal judge has ruled that the City of Dallas pretty much lied about every single aspect of its so-called "flow-control" trash program. Judge Reed O'Connor granted a permanent injunction against a new city ordinance that would have forced commercial haulers to take all their trash to the city- ... More >>

City Council Dismisses Concerns About Burning Garbage, Adopts Long-Term Plan

Many people were not happy when the city unveiled its long-term solid waste management plan. It's goal of achieving zero waste by 2040 was admirable enough, but the plan pushed consideration of such measures as a plastic bag ban, mandatory recycling and increased composting efforts out a decade or m ... More >>

Plastic Bag Bans and Mandatory Recycling: A Glimpse into Dallas' Trash Future

Best case scenario: The world's largest retailer builds a spaceship that allows humanity to flee a trash-choked planet and spend several centuries growing ever fatter and lazier on an interstellar cruise, unwitting captives to a self-aware computer, until an oddly adorable trash-compacting robot uns ... More >>

Riot Fest 2012 Expands From Chicago to Dallas, Brings Rise Against, Andrew W.K., The Sword and More

Are you experiencing Festival Fatigue yet? Too bad. One more all-day-er has been announced for the summer: In addition to Toronto and Brooklyn, Chicago-based punk circus Riot Fest is expanding its reach to Dallas on September 22 at Gexa Energy Pavilion. Rise Against, Descendents, Municipal Waste, ... More >>

Harold Simmons' Radioactive Waste Dump Gets the Go-Ahead from State Regulators

A radioactive waste disposal company owned by Harold Simmons' Dallas-based Contran Corp. has been given the green light by state regulators to dispose of low-grade radioactive waste at a West Texas site. Representative Lon Burnam, who says he possesses confidential documentation exposing an undercu ... More >>

So Much For Flow Control. For Now, At Least, as Federal Judge Dumps Waste Control Ordinance.

​It's been a couple of weeks since lawyers hired by the city and the National Solid Waste Management Association squared off in U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor's over the flow control ordinance that would have dumped all the city's solid waste at the McCommas Bluff Landfill. I say "would have" b ... More >>

We Checked and, Yup, Dallas's Flow Control Plan Is Still All About the Benjamins

Back in September, when the city passed its ordinance requiring commercial solid waste companies to dump in South Dallas's McCommas Bluff landfill, the proposal drew an unexpected foe: a group of Paul Quinn College students, led by school president Michael Sorrell, who protested in front of City Hal ... More >>

From the Memos: Still More About Bike Plan, and A First Look at Flow Control "Study Group"

Click to enlarge one of the unfunded projects in the Bike Plan memo sent to council.​Kim Jong Il will never get to see implementation of the Dallas Bike Plan; neither will Václav Havel. Whether you will remains to be seen: Last we looked it's going to take 10 years for the city to roll out a maze ... More >>

City Hall: No, This Is Not Project Wall-E, Where the "E" Does Stand for "Environment"

Gary Liss​This morning, a Friend of Unfair Park sent me this press release, which, on the surface at least, appears to reveal the mystery behind that real estate deal known only as "Project Wall-E" the council chatted about behind closed doors two months ago. The release is a bit inscrutable but ... More >>

Next Week, Federal Judge to (Temporarily) Decide Fate of City's Flow Control Ordinance

Photo by Danny Hurley​Tomorrow, the Dallas City Council will go behind closed doors to meet with city attorneys about a host of legal issues staring down City Hall, among them: a long-going federal wrongful arrest suit about to get even more expensive (council will vote next week to pay Brown & ... More >>

Waste Management Association Sues City Over "Anti-Free Enterprise" Flow Control Ordinance

​Saw this one coming; so too did the city council. After all, in mid-September the council met behind closed doors with city attorneys to review "legal issues regarding proposed resource flow control ordinance" -- which, as I am sure you recall, is the ordinance directing all solid waste collecte ... More >>

"Sounds Too Good to Be True": WFAA Sifts Through a Few Issues With Flow Control

​The council may or may not vote on that ordinance involving the redirecting and recycling of solid waste today. It all depends where flow control falls on the action-packed agenda, which includes passing the budget (that should go smoothly) and debating Yucatan and Service Bar's denied-at-CPC spe ... More >>

"A Moment of Truth for the City": Mayor Demands Council OK Flow Control. It Did.

​Brantley's been at Dallas City Hall for this morning's flow control vote, which began with that promised pre-game protest by the students of Paul Quinn College, who stood throughout the entire discussion that ran close to two hours. (Save for one protester, who fainted during the discussion, prom ... More >>

Dallas NAACP Will Meet With Local EPA Officials to Discuss City's Flow Control Proposal

​Speaking of flow control ...On the other side you'll find a letter that Juanita Wallace, president of the Dallas branch of the NAACP, sent to Environmental Protection Agency Region 6 chief Al Armendariz in which she decries the city's proposal that would force all solid-waste collectors to dump t ... More >>

Talking With the Trashman About Flowetry: Solid Waste Haulers Make New Pitch to City

​First, let me apologize for the headline -- I was listening to Billy Bragg and friends on the way into work this morning, and it could not be helped. Now, then. It's been a whole two days since last we discussed flow control -- I know, right? -- which, as you're well aware, involves the city forc ... More >>

Knee-Deep in the Waste Stream as Sanitation Services Head Mary Nix Talks Flow Control

​Reason I missed Sanitation Services head Mary Nix last week was because she was on a plane bound for California -- Roseville, specifically, site of a "resource recovery" facility that converts trash into renewable energy. Which means ... get ready ... we're about to talk about flow control, the p ... More >>

Talking Trash with Mary Suhm, Because You Have Not Heard the Last of Flow Control

​Last we looked, the council tabled till after its summer vacation a proposal from Marys Suhm and Nix to force all the solid-waste haulers in the city to dump their trash at the McCommas Bluff Landfill rather than one of the dozen other sites in the region. The city manager and head of Sanitatio ... More >>

Before the Council Talks Trash This Morning ...

​No doubt most of you aren't all that concerned where your garbage gets dumped, so long as it's picked up and hauled off on time. That said, the subject's slowly but surely becoming a hot topic at City Hall, as City Manager Mary Suhm and Sanitation Services Director Mary Nix make their solid-waste ... More >>

Talking Trash With the City Manager As She Looks At Ways to Generate Additional Revenue

​In a few weeks, Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm will present to the city council some revenue-generating brainstorms she hopes could offset some of this year's $60-million-and-maybe-more budget shortfall. Among her proposals, she tells Unfair Park, will be one familiar to anyone paying attention la ... More >>

Harold Simmons One Step Closer to Getting What He Wants: Everyone's Nuclear Waste

Annette and Harold Simmons​At the end of last year we spent quite a bit of time following Nuke Free Texas's efforts to stop  Governor Rick Perry's appointees on the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission from giving Waste Control Specialists the thumbs-up to bury nuclea ... More >>

Solid Waste-rs Tell Caraway They Really Don't Want to Be Told Where to Dump Trash

​Last June, we took a look at some moneymaking brainstorms Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm presented to the city council, which Suhm hoped would offset some of the $131-million budget shortfall with which she was faced at the time. Among them was one in particular that didn't get very far, or so it ... More >>

How a Projected Increase in Solid Waste Disposal Will (Kinda) Save Rec Centers

​This afternoon, City Hall spokesman Frank Librio forwarded a memo City Manager Mary Suhm sent to Mayor Tom Leppert and the council last night, in which Suhm broke some news: She found an extra $1.8 million with which to fund the city's rec centers, whose hours she's proposing to drastically cut i ... More >>

Peek at Three Moneymaking Brainstorms on Tomorrow's Council Briefing Agenda

​Today or tomorrow, depending upon when she's got the time to wrap up our chat, we'll post the Unfair Park Interview with Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm concerning this year's $131-million budget cutting that's more like a gutting following last year's to-the-bone. So far in our conversations she's ... More >>

Let's Talk Trash For a Second

Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city's Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a "community meeting" with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. "Um," I told her, "probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, ... More >>

Trash Ain't Nothin' but Cash

How Vonciel Jones Hill Will Spend Valentine's Day

A Trashy Tale

American Toxic

The railroad tie plant that gave birth to tiny Somerville may now be killing the town, residents claim

Sam Coats' Concrete Problem

D/FW Whistleblower to (Finally) Get Day in Court

Getting the Bird

West Nile keeps animal control officers hopping to collect dead birds

Best Handyman

George Miller

Garbage by Numbers

City's recycling rate takes a dive

Cash for Trash

The city's new recycling center is up and running, sort of

Trashy Questions

City auditors take a belated look at Dallas' recycling program

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Why Dallas' recycling program is a $17 million joke

Troubled waters

DFW Airport officials were warned years ago that they had a problem with water pollution. So why are fish still dying?

Trashy behavior

Dallas gets blamed for doing too little to stop an illegal dump from choking a neighborhood

Soul Coughing

Getting dumped

Despite shoddy science, bad economics, and catastrophic health risks, a West Texas border community may become the nation's nuclear dumping ground

Trashed

State examiner recommends rejection of Ferris' controversial landfill-expansion permit

Talking trash

Ferris' landfill stays in limbo--while state regulators fight among themselves

BeloWatch

Letters

FBI probes bribery allegations in Ferris

The Trashing of Ferris, Texas

When a giant came to a tiny town, it soon became clear that almost everyone has a price.