In what many will deem a victory for Nevadans Against Garbage (NAG), Humboldt County Commissioners unanimously voted to revoke Jungo Land & Investments’ five-year conditional use permit (CUP) extension required for the Humboldt County Landfill project to continue.
Winnemucca attorney Robert Dolan argued the Regional Planning Commission–which granted Jungo Land & Investments the permit in 2007 and permitted its extension in 2010–“abused discretion by issuing the permit extension because Jungo Land & Investments failed to show good cause the extension was necessary.”
“Jungo Investments waited one year to file the solid-waste permit and 21 months for the air quality permits,” the Silver Pinyon Journal reported.
In rebuttal, John Frankovich of McDonald Carano & Wilson, representing Jungo Land Investments and Recology, argued the delays were due to “community activists attempting to derail the project.”
The revocation of the conditional use permit can be appealed if Jungo Land & Investments requests a judicial review.
Bloggers at the NAG Web log, www.nolandfills.wordpress.com, are optimistic but still cautious.
“Although the denial of the extension of the CUP is an encouraging sign, there is no reason to think that Recology will not appeal this decision or that the permitting process will suddenly cease and that this nightmare will become just a memory,” one NAG member wrote.
Watch the deliberation (posted on YouTube by notogarbage) here:
Too bad Winnemucca blew a revenue stream that would last for 99 years!
$1 million a year for 1,042,857 tons (more or less) of garbage equals less than $1.00 a ton in “hosting fees”. (Hosting fees are what the company pays the community for the privilege of dumping the garbage.)
On the other side of the country in community of Tullytown, PA, those good folks get $4.50 a ton in “hosting fees”. (The county get its own “hosting fees”, too.) Tullytown gets so much money, there are no property taxes for the residents and each homeowner gets a check for around $1,500 each December.
The town has a new $460,000 fire engine ladder truck…A new smaller $210,000 fire engine…New sidewalks…New $8,000 laptop computers in the town’s police cars…Household trash is picked up at no charge from each home…Streets are swept in the spring, summer & fall and plowed in the winter…And an end-of-summer picnic complete with fireworks is held for the residents, free. All of this is courtesy of the “hosting fees” paid to the town by Waste Management, Inc.
And how safe if the disposal?
Continual monitoring of air and ground water assure that the residents safety is the number one priority.
How is this accomplished? The following site includes how a landfill is built: How there are six layers of liner to prevent water aquifer contamination; How liquids which collect at the bottom of the pit are pumped out.
See for yourself:
http://phillyecocity.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/living-high-on-trash-the-falls-and-tullytown-pa-landfill-expand-and-accept-radioactive-materiel-too/
Winnemucca citizens: You had the answer to your fiscal problems for the next century knocking on your door. You let this golden opportunity go by. You could have parlayed the $1 million in hosting fees to $4 million +! Dumb….