Flow Control Passes City Council

It was Representative Beto O'Rourke who asked the decisive question. After well articulating the pros and cons to go with Flow Control or maintain the status quo with Waste Connections and the Camino Real Landfill, he asked Environmental Services Department Director, Ellen Smyth, "Can El Paso do flow control?" "Are we ready, do we have the resources, the expertise, the wherewithal?" Ms. Smyth answered: "Can do." She said that we have the resources, the expertise, the wherewithal.

And so, by a 6-2 vote (Robinson and Lilly dissented), City Council embarked the City on course that some believe to be an $18 million crap shoot. Others, though, feel that by taking responsibility for its own waste, El Paso will set course to a more sustainable future of reducing, recycling, reusing and composting.

El Paso is also taking responsibility for its own waste rather than dumping the problem (sorry to say the pun is intended) on its poorer neighbors in Sunland Park who have for years protested against the Camino Real Landfill saying that it is the cause of illnesses (including a greater cancer incidence among the population) and toxic water pollution.

Retired attorney Taylor Moore, a Sunland Park resident and member of the Sunland Park Grassroots Environmental Group, articulated the dangers of putting on top of the water table a landfill where industrial wastes are still buried and deadlier toxic wastes in the past were once taken in the dark of night. He spoke about the water table flowing to the Rio Grande was being compromised and that water from the Rio Grande is pumped from the Canal Street station to Sunset Heights to Brown and beyond to the entire city.

EPWU official, John Balliew, refuted Mr. Moore's claims when he said that particulates found in water tested upstream at Borderland, Canutillo and Vinton were consistent with what was present in the water tested at the Canal station. However, the question for Mr. Balliew is "Who does the testing? An independent?"

After a summary of Waste Connections proposals by Lee Wilson and a convoluted speech by Representative Robinson, the Council voted in favor of Representative Byrd's motion (and Quintana's second) to commit to flow control as outlined in the enabling ordinance without a deal with Waste Connections.

As Robert Ardovino said: "Responsibility is promoting sustainability." El Paso has decided to become sustainable - at least with waste if not with water and sprawl and building ugly freeways on a beautiful mountain corridor.