Just Sayin’
February 14th, 2007 at 8:03 am
That massive mulch fire down in Helotes must not be happening right now. After all, the folks in charge of preventing this particular environmental calamity said it couldn’t happen.
“It will not burn,” the general manager for Zumwalt Construction, owner of the pile, told the San Antonio Express-News in 2005. “It is 60 percent dirt. The dirt will prevent it from burning. The dirt prevents combustion.”
County fire officials backed him up.
So did the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which waited until after the fire started to issue sanctions, despite having visited the site for years.
Six weeks after the fire started, firefighters are just now entering what they hope will be one last three-week push to put out the smoldering pile. The final price tag is estimated at more than $3 million, just to extinguish the fire. That’s not counting the cost of disposing of the debris. Or the $270,000 the county spent to move medically at-risk residents out of the city temporarily. Or the medical bills stemming from the polluted air. Or the environmental risk posed to the vital Edwards Aquifer.
Officials hope to recover some or all of that money from the pile’s owner, but the threat of litigation remains.
Which all begs the question: Wouldn’t it have just been easier to take oversight more seriously and actually enforce some regulations?
February 14th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
Sir:
This whole affair shows no planning and no concern for anyone,,,,, just cya.
I have never heard anything from the Govenor or any high level state person do anything but avoid the problem,,, Maybe it would go away….
Your comments are 125% correct!!!!
March 20th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
[…] been avoided sounds familiar, it’s because a similar story is playing out in microcosm in Helotes, where TCEQ failed to prevent a giant mulch pile from catching on fire, putting the town’s […]