Kelley protests 19th Street dump site; city says site is legal, safe
Published 9:28 pm Tuesday, September 19, 2017
- The 19th Street dump site, which community activist Hilton Kelley said he will continue to protest.
By Jesse Wright
jesse.wright@panews.com
Since Monday, community activist Hilton Kelley has been protesting a dump collection site on 19th Street.
The site is used to sort debris from Tropical Storm Harvey. Debris must be sorted by type before waste can go into the landfill and the cities across the area have sites located at various areas in their communities.
However, Kelley, who is the founder of the environmental nonprofit Community In-Power and Development Association Inc., said the 19th Street site in Port Arthur is illegal and harmful to residents.
To the contrary, City Manager Brian McDougal says the site is legal and, at least according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, wholly safe.
Kelley disputes this.
“TCEQ approves a lot of things that are not necessarily healthy for us,” Kelley said. “They approved a lot of applications for the chemical refineries. And they’re lacking in enforcing when they have an emission event.”
Since Monday, Kelley said that he and city Councilman Harold Doucet have been blocking access to the collection site, though he acknowledged the mayor and city officials want to continue to use the location.
Kelley claims the area is a landfill filled with toxins. However, McDougal said the operation is safe—according to state standard.
“TCEQ did approve the site; it is a legal site,” he said. “TCEQ inspected it.”
He added that the location is central and convenient and that’s why it was chosen.
Nevertheless, Kelley said he is passionate about shutting the location down. On Tuesday he reported that he, McDougal and others met at the site for a “heated discussion” that seemed primed to verge into a fistfight.
Kelley said he is not afraid of fisticuffs, if it comes to that.
“A good old fistfight never killed nobody,” he said.
So, while there was no violence Tuesday, Kelley is not giving up. He hopes to mobilize the community Sept. 27 for a showdown. He is asking for area residents to join him at 9 a.m. to protest the site.
“I am trying to muster up citizens to come and stand with me,” he said. “I don’t live in that neighborhood, but I am a community activist. … I am trying to get them to go stand with me.”
He said he will be holding a press conference at 9:30 or 10 a.m. that day.
