LEAGUE CITY — A proposal to build a hazardous household waste collection facility near a neighborhood has residents worried about safety.
The city applied for a grant to build a regional hub for the collection of household hazardous waste, including paint, oil, pool chemicals, potent cleaners and discarded electronics, near the Bay Ridge subdivision on the city’s east side.
But some people living in the subdivision near the site said they want the city to provide more information, including about how it would prevent chemicals at the site from leaching into the soil near their homes. City officials said the facility — where chemicals would be temporarily stored but not buried — is safe.
The city proposes building the site on a tract it owns along South Shore Boulevard between state Highway 96 and FM 646 near the Bay Ridge subdivision.
The land now is occupied by a lift station, which transports sewage and wastewater from nearby businesses and homes to the city’s treatment plant for cleaning.
The city asked the Houston-Galveston Area Council for $662,000 to build the facility to collect chemicals from its own residents and those of Webster, Seabrook, Kemah, Clear Lake Shores and La Porte, Travis Doughty, director of general services, said.
The city proposed putting the collection facility near the Bay Ridge subdivision, but that site isn’t absolute, Doughty said.
Lisa Bowles, a resident of the subdivision, said most people don’t like the idea of a chemical collection site near their homes. She questioned the city’s ability to prevent substances from leaking into the soil or water table in the largely residential area prone to hurricanes.
“Something always can happen, always,” she said.
Chances are slim that a modern collection site would experience some catastrophic spill of hazardous material, Wes Shows, coordinator for the Stella Rogers Recycling Center in Pearland, said.
The Pearland center, the only hazardous material collection site in the area, never has reported any large-scale spills in its four-year history, Shows said. Crews have spilled small amounts of motor oil; the oil was quickly absorbed and discarded, he said.
Like the Pearland center, the League City collection facility would not bury waste on site; instead, League City would store chemicals and discarded electronics in fireproof storage lockers until a certified contractor collected the hazardous materials to dispose of them properly elsewhere, Doughty said.
Creating a regional hub for Bay Area residents to drop the hazardous materials stored in their garages and under their sinks could prevent those materials from ending up in area landfills, Doughty said.
Eventually, the city hopes to one day create a “reuse facility” where residents could, for example, swap a half empty can of paint in a color they didn’t want, for a half-empty can of paint in color they did want.
“I see a lot of upsides to this,” he said.
League City residents now have no central place to dispose of household waste, except to pay a fee to use Pearland’s facility. The Pearland center charges $50 to drop up to 100 pounds of chemicals, and $20 to discard up to 100 pounds of electronics.
League City years ago stopped collecting waste on so-called household hazardous waste collection days because the process was expensive and inefficient, Doughty said.
Most residents either discard their hazardous waste in the garbage, which is then trucked to landfills, or they drop the waste at specialized collection sites, including mechanic shops that accept used oil, Bowles said.
Bowles said she doubted residents who now discard hazardous waste in trash bins would support a city collection site.
“People who are concerned about the environment will find places to take it,” she said. “People who don’t care are going to continue to drop it anywhere.”
