Reduce Waste during the Holiday Season

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Thank you, Ellen Smyth, Director of Environmental Services for the City of El Paso for sharing this infographic. Be sure to visit Recycle Right El Paso and Take Care of Texas. 

Glass Pulverizer Is in Operation

Ribbon cutting at the Pendale Citizen Collection Station
Photo by Terry Sunday

The City of El Paso is now officially in the glass recycling business even if it is just a pilot program. Rep. Lily Limón, Environmental Services Director, Ellen Smyth, and other dignitaries were on hand to launch the new recycling program at the Pendale Citizen Collection Station.

The glass pulverizer
Photo by Terry Sunday

All El Pasoans will be able to drop-off their glass beverage bottles and jars at their neighborhood collection stations. (No window panes, automobile windshields, ceramics or glass figurines please.) The bottles will be taken to the Pendale Station where they will be pulverized. The resulting powder or beads may be used as mulch, road bedding, arts and crafts, etc.

Photo by Terry Sunday

Bottles should be separated by color: blue, brown, clear and green.

Who's To Blame for Trash Collection Site Next to Keystone?

These water fowl do not know that the City of El Paso has only put the trash collection site next to their habitat on hold . . . for now.

Although officials from Tommy Gonzalez down say that the nasty, dirty, ugly trash collection site next to Keystone (open space, wildlife preserve, archaeological site and botanical gardens) Park is on hold, they always add "for now" or "in the near future" or "for the time being". Rep. Niland claims that nobody in her district (District 1) has complained about the station. Of course, she only listens to a few Country Club Facebook friends as she did with our Christmas Tree in the San Jacinto Park when she wanted to take it down or destroy it by pruning it in a more triangular shape. Ask the people of the Upper Valley Neighborhood Association. Ask the parishioners of St. Jude's what they think about the collection station next to them. They are outraged. It's not just a bunch of tree huggers, animal lovers, heritage hippies who are angry.

Now we learn that the District 8 Rep along with the District 1 Rep want to put the blame on Ellen Smyth, the Director of Environmental Services. The truth is that Ms. Smyth was doing her job - the Reps of District 8 and District 1 were ignoring the situation for four years! Joyce Wilson, the perfecter of closed door deals, took money from the Environmental Services as part of the land swap that procured the City of El Paso the land next to Keystone. Naturally, Ms. Smyth saw this as land for her department's use. Now that there is a big brouhaha, Ms. Niland and Ms. Lily are calling for Smyth's head rather than acknowledging their responsibility. It is akin to a drunk driver who is oblivious to what's happening on the road and, thus, causing an accident and then blaming it on the sober driver. 

The Open Space Advisory Board will discuss and take action on the whole issue of a collection station next to Keystone at their next meeting, April 1st at 3 PM at City Hall #3, 801 N. Texas (red brick building at the corner of Texas and Virginia) in the Thorman Conference Room (downstairs). MAP

There is an online petition as well as a petition circulating through the Upper Valley Neighborhood Association and St. Jude's. 

Such a site does not belong next to an open space with a wetlands and animal habitat, an archaeological site, a neighborhood and a church. How would people feel if it was put next to St. Matthew's or St. Mark's in the Upper Valley or St. Clement's downtown. Hmmm?

Another Vampire That Just Won't Die

You know how vampires work. They flee the least hint of sunlight and hide in their sarcophagi until it is pitch black again and their victims will be caught unawares.

Such it is with the collection station next to Keystone Park.

It appears now that the project is dead at least for now. (Read David Crowder's excellent article in this week's El Paso Inc.) With pressure mounting, Rep. Cortney Niland has said "no" to the expansion. She has said that before and then the project mysteriously rises again. It is dark and nobody is looking. Count Dracula rises again from the dead.

According to Ellen Smyth, the Environmental Director, the construction of an expanded collection station next to a precious wetlands, bird habitat and archaeological site is not going to happen for the foreseeable future. But she also tells us that the land was purchased just for such an expansion so it may come up again in the future.

The Open Space Master Plan makes it clear that "Keystone Heritage Park is a key cultural site as well as the remnant of a unique wetlands zone. Preservation of undeveloped lands around the park should be a high priority of the city in the near future." The strategy for preservation is the acquisition of land around the park. ". . . without the acquisition of the remaining 20 acres around the park," states the Master Plan, "the facility will be a mere shadow of what it could have been." (Towards a Bright Future: A Green Infrastructure Plan for El Paso, Texas - the Open Space Master Plan - page 5-32)

What should be done? Land for a collection station away from Keystone should be identified. The current land next to Keystone should be a dedicated park site to complement the wetlands park. Until there is a firm alternative plan, the City will green light the collection station next to Keystone when nobody is looking. We will wake up one day and discover that a bulldozer has begun to scrape and shape the land. We don't want to be caught unawares.

For now, the project is off. But until the land is preserved and another site faraway is chosen for the ugly, noisy collection station, then the bulldozers will come and the City will tell us that there is nothing to see.



Please keep signing the online petition and spread the word.

Let's make sure that this vampire never wakes up again.