Fighting for his farm
Cleveland man leads opposition to landfill proposed next door, raising worries about smell, dust, water quality
CLEVELAND — Van Weldon steered a red tractor slowly among the rows of new tomato plants on his farmland northeast of Houston, farmland that he worries could soon be ruined.
About an hour’s drive from downtown, Weldon has worked this soil since 1998. His domicile, he calls it. Here he built his business, Wood Duck Farm. There was something special to knowing this spot was his.
Now Weldon is fighting a proposed landfill that a Mississippibased limited liability company, PC-II, wants to build next door. Project documents say it could receive 1,300 tons of household, commercial and other trash a day.
Few issues are more enduring when it comes to protecting the environment than the battle over landfills. And yet, on the 51st Earth Day, people such as Weldon are still fighting them.
Spurred by a neighbor, Weldon bought a laptop and spent evenings and weekends researching plans for the “Peach
Creek Environmental Park.” He found himself facing a complex process that he felt would be expensive to win.
“David and Goliath,” Weldon said. “Here we are.”
The project is what’s considered a Type 1 landfill, which can also receive “special waste” that can endanger health if not handled properly, according to the documents. The site spans 636 acres in San Jacinto County, right by where Weldon was considering planting blueberries. The landfill would initially cover 115 acres; a second one could follow.
Those behind the effort were looking for new opportunities for their 2,000 acres of forestland in the county after timber prices dropped and nearby communities grew, said the environmental project manager, Jeff Hobby, in a statement. They were trying to ensure their and Weldon’s businesses would “continue to be good neighbors,” he said. Hundreds of yards of forest will provide a barrier.
Project documents say the landfill “will be designed to protect the health and safety of the people in the area.”
A Texas Commission on Environmental Quality spokesman wrote in an email that the application will have to comply with air and water quality rules.
Growing concern
But Weldon and at least some of his neighbors still dread the prospect of garbage trucks lining up along their narrow roads. They worry over contamination of the well water they use to irrigate and drink, as well as fouling of the crisp smell of their woodsy air.
For Weldon, it’s a threat to his business.
The farm was meant to be a weekend place while Weldon worked in oil trading, then Enron collapsed in 2001. So he started to grow cut flowers, then herbs. Now he sells produce at the Urban Harvest market and in Rice Village and the Heights.
He wakes each morning to a cup of coffee and a cigar.
His customers trust the integrity of his zucchini, cauliflower and kale, Weldon said. And he believes that if the landfill is built, the smell, dust and water quality concerns will eventually wipe him out.
After his neighbor Dana Moody, 47, learned about the landfill, she spurred Weldon to action. She saw a Facebook post about it, long after it was first proposed in 2019.
The Baytown native lives a short drive from Weldon, on land next to the Sam Houston National Forest. Here, in the rural community west of Cleveland and U.S. 59, she raised five kids.
This was supposed to be their legacy.
Fighting back
Moody knew a landfill wasn’t going to beautify their rural neighborhood, and she felt devastated for Weldon, thinking about his sweet corn, strawberries and lettuce.
“What’s going to happen to him?” she asked.
So Moody and Weldon got to work. Moody did research on her cellphone: What’s a soil boring sample? A geomembrane liner system? A leachate tank? Weldon read about other communities in similar predicaments. Moody called every community leader she could think of. Weldon hosted a community meeting at the farm.
Could they stop the project? Lower its height? Direct trash trucks through a forest road instead of the neighborhood?
Weldon reached out to an engineer, Abigail Gilson, who offered her personal advice. Gilson knows landfills can and do leak; her expertise is in preventing that.
Installing two liners, checking them for leaks and putting in an alert system for future breaks would go a long way toward being a responsible neighbor, she said.
For now, the project is under technical review. TCEQ will hold a public meeting when that’s through.
Nearly 200 comments on the project have already been submitted. One person said she was excited to leave the city and its pollution only to find this landfill proposed. Another worried about impacts to lakes where families swim and fish. There were concerns for property values.
(Project leaders believe the landfill will generate government revenue, jobs and funding to maintain roads.)
On Wednesday, the day before Earth Day, the landfill folks visited Weldon. Earth Day is observed worldwide, a movement meant to educate and involve people in environmental issues that are also gaining attention as urgency around climate change grows. This year’s theme is “Restore Our Earth.”
Still, the meeting left Weldon feeling like the company wasn’t going to let the “little farmer,” he said, stand in their way.