Merco began the search for a state that would take the sewage. In Oklahoma, citizen protests prompted the State Legislature to pass a 5-year ban on the importation of out of state sewage. Arizona blocked rail shipments after samples of the sludge showed high levels of petroleum and infectious disease. Merco then turned to Texas, and targeted a site in Hudspeth County 2,065 miles away from-New York, but only 3 miles northwest of the small town of Sierra Blanca.
Prior to receiving approval of their permit, Merco donated $1.5 million dollars to Texas Tech University in West Texas to study the beneficial uses of sludge. Then, without an environmental impact statement, public process, or opportunity for questions, Merco received approval of its 5-year sludge registration from the Texas Water Commission in an upprecedented 23 days.
Soon after, Merco began dumping sludge on its Sierra Blanca "ranch". Transported by train from New Jersey; 250 tons a week of wet sludge was brought to Sierra Blanca to be sprayed on 78,500 of the 102,555 acres at the Merco "ranch". As EPA employee and sludge critic Hugh Kaufman said "The fish in New York are being protected. The people in New York are being protected. The people in Texas are being poisoned."
Life Next to the Sludge Dump
In 1992, after dumping began, the people of Sierra Blanca began to complain of the odor. "The chemical odors coming off the application area are not just a nuisance and a trespass, they're a health hazard - !hydrogen sulfide and ammonia vapors mixed with a fecal smell are indescribable except to say that it smells like death," says Addington, after one of just a number of complaints, "The Texas Air Control Board came down two days later and told us it was just cow patties." (5)
But odor wasn't the only problem. "We noticed strange rashes and blisters in the mouth, more flu, more colds, more allergies, and asthma since they came. We've seen a lot more sickness - especially with the kids," says Bill Addington, a local resident. The New York flu virus even made the rounds in Van Horn in 1996, a larger town 34 miles to the east. Sam Dodge, a Merco neighbor and rancher tried to sell his ranch to escape the smell, but none would buy it. Watch a Quicktime video clip from TV nation. (1.4 MB)
The community repeatedly tried to get the government to act in their defense. "In 1993, twenty Sierra Blanca residents went to protest at the Texas Water Commission in El Paso," he continues. "They were told by a TWC official that they were smelling the Sierra Blanca waste water treatment plant. Sierra Blanca has no waste water treatment plant."
After years of complaints, illness, and governmental inaction, in 1997 citizens of Sierra Blanca filed Civil Rights Complaint with the EPA,
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