Group Opposes Plans for New Landfill Site in Waco, Texas

Few city landfills are planned, opened and operated without at least some public resistance, generally in the area where a new landfill is envisioned. So it was in the early 1990s when a group called Citizens to Save Lake Waco fought the city of Waco landfill now operating along U.S. Highway 84. So it is now with a group called Citizens Against the Highway 84 Landfill opposing what city of Waco officials propose as a new 290-acre landfill site along Old Lorena Road, next to the current 237-acre landfill. Many of those opposing the new site live in housing subdivisions that have arisen along busy Highway 84 in recent years.

Complicating the matter: Planning and engineering landfills and gaining approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which oversees safe management of waste to ensure clean water and clean air, take time — and city officials and landfill consultants say the current landfill probably has only seven years of life left — perhaps less as more people settle in the Waco area, more businesses sprout and more refuse is generated.