A jury on Thursday found that Waller County commissioners met illegally in closed sessions among themselves and with developers of a controversial landfill proposal over more than two years before agreeing to host the project.
After a three-week jury trial that was the talk of this rural county, the 12-member jury sided with the city of Hempstead and a citizens group that had challenged the Commissioners Court’s February 2013 approval of the 250-acre landfill just outside the Hempstead city limits.
The verdict does not block the landfill, but it does represent an important victory for those fiercely opposed to the project, who fear it would hurt property values and pollute an aquifer that serves the Houston area.
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Landfill opponents say Thursday’s victory will strengthen a separate case as they contest a draft permit issued two years ago to the developer, Pintail Landfill, by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
The judge presiding over Thursday’s civil case, retired Judge Terry Flenniken, could invalidate a 2013 ordinance allowing the landfill now that a jury has found commissioners met illegally. That would reinstate a 2011 city ordinance that had prohibited the landfill, said Corey Ouslander, attorney for the city of Hempstead. Pintail maintains that the ordinance has no weight because it was adopted after they had filed their application with the state.
Flenniken is also set to rule at a Jan. 21 hearing on whether the county had authority to approve the project given that 106 acres falls within Hempstead’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, a bubble around it that could be pulled within city limits once the population increases.
A ruling in opponents’ favor on that element could allow the city to block the project through health and safety codes or other means, Ouslander said.
The developer maintains that it has the necessary permits to proceed, regardless of the verdict.
“We plan to build a state-of-the art facility that will be an asset to Hempstead and to Waller County,” said Brent Ryan, attorney for Pintail Landfill, a subsidiary of Georgia-based Green Group Holdings.
See here and here for the background. A copy of the charge of the court, which includes the questions the jury was asked to resolve and their answers, is here. This may be a short-lived victory for the plaintiffs regardless of this verdict or the rulings to come from Judge Flenniken, as the landfill developers plan to go forward anyway and claim that all they need is TCEQ approval, but it’s still a good win. We’ll see what happens from here. KUHF has more.