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A former local recycl ing company is nowhere near being out of the hot water yet as Colorado County continues to pursue civil action separate from the conclusion of the criminal charges.
As previously reported by The Colorado County Citizen, Inland Recycling and their former CEO David Polston, entered a guilty plea deal earlier this year after admitting to the felony offense of intentionally dumping company wastewater into Skull Creek, a tributary connecting to the Colorado River.
The company was required to pay out a $75,000 fine as part of the guilty plea after the May 1 verdict was delivered.
Despite the company ultimately being found guilty of criminal wrongdoing, the foot has not been taken off the gas yet on the civil side as three separate entities, the Texas Attorney General’s Office, Colorado County and the Lower Colorado River Authority, all continue to “prosecute the civil lawsuit against the defendants who polluted Skull Creek.”
Colorado County were not the first parties to purse civil action, according to their legal counsel Kelly Brown. Procedurally, the Texas AG filed suit initially followed by the intervention of LCRA and Colorado County as well.
“We are what are called intervener plaintiffs in this case,” said Brown. “So, the state just leads but we are also pursuing it. Colorado County, LCRA and the Texas AG all want the same thing.”
Brown says the County is pursuing the case alongside the two other entities to ensure the “county’s interests are protected” and that the county has a voice. He says all parties involved have different perspectives and interests, but all want the same thing at the end of the day.
“LCRA intervened, just like the county did,” said Brown. “Because, you know, the LCRA is the Lower Colorado River Authority. They intervened to protect its interest that being of the Colorado River Authority. Everybody’s got a little bit different perspective, but the state, the county and LCRA all want inland Ken Owens and Poston to fix the problem, which includes cleanup of the site.”
The cleanup would include full remediation of the site, alongside the removal of what Brown describes as a “plastic tote tank or cage.” He says the cleanup process will be extensive for the parties involved, as the state has certain cleanup standards for environmental cases.
“The state always has cleanup standards for the soil, surface water, creek and groundwater, with the groundwater being beneath the soil and so, regulations, procedures, guidance, all sorts of things to tell people how to do it, part of the in this particular case,” said Brown. “It also includes removal of those plastic tote tanks. The companies that sent material in these totes sent the totes to the site. We have contacted many of those companies and they have come and retrieved their totes, and we continue to try and get companies to be responsible and remove their totes, and a lot have been removed.”
Colorado County Judge Ty Prause says the tanks were sent from companies that worked with Inland Recycling in the past, which were contacted and requested to come help with the cleanup process due to their association with the guilty company.
“A source of direct pollution that was being piped into Skull Creek from that location ceased,” said Prause. “I think the total is somewhere around 900 to 1000 chemical totes. The big, plastic, four or five feet tall chemical totes that were brought there for processing have been removed thus far from the site. We have had no more bad cases of all the terrible odor that was being discharged into our creek, which then flowed directly into our river and affected everyone downstream from us all the way to the coast. So major, major victories.”
Prause is unsure of how the county will move forward to prevent another case of environmental malpractice, given that Inland Recycling were allowed to continue work despite being found in violation of “permitted product” by state agencies in the water. He hopes that more than anything, the ones who allowed the operation to keep going have learned their lesson.
“I do not know if we’ve learned how we can prevent things from happening in the future,” said Prause. “When our state agencies permitted this operation to continue after it was, I think, 400% in violation of the amount of storage capacity at one point. And 400% is an outrageous number, outrageously large. I am using that as a ballpark figure, but it was tremendously over their permitted amount of product, and hopefully the state agencies have learned as well.”
After almost five years of pursuing this case, Prause says he is just grateful to the community for making it a “team effort” in getting those who polluted the river to be held accountable for their actions.
“Gratitude, praise and thanks to all the local individuals who worked so hard to report and take pictures and call and put pressure on their officials,” said Prause. “Along with assisting us at the county.”
Brown says the efforts of all combined parties in this civil suit all points to one desired outcome; the full clean up and remediation of the site. He emphasizes however how he feels Inland Recycling and the associated parties have not done as much work as the county, LCRA and the Texas AG’s office would have liked to see.
“The state, the county and LCRA are each telling this company to clean up the site,” said Brown. “So, it is up to the company and the other defendants to come up with a plan to clean it up and spend the money and develop the cost estimate to clean it up. They have spent some money at the site, but not nearly enough.”
The civil trial is set for next year, April 2025
