Two landfills in Texas have been under scrutiny in recent months for their impact on residents.
One is the publicly run Amarillo Landfill, which sparked outrage after a fire jumped from the facility’s working face to a surrounding neighborhood, displacing residents.
Meanwhile, officials in the Houston area are taking action to shut down a WM-run landfill that has been mostly inactive in recent years. The site has operated for decades near a historically Black neighborhood. When WM subsidiary USA Waste briefly pursued an expansion beginning in 2021, it drew a swift rebuke from residents and Houston Mayor John Whitmire. Robert Bullard, a Houstonian who helped kickstart the environmental justice movement after studying the placement of waste facilities in and around minority communities in the city, is among the critics of the site…