COUNTY JUDGE’S UPDATE
7-27-2010
IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE I HAVE CHANGED MY MESSAGE AND I I want to bring everyone up to date on an issue that has been going on since 2003. That is who will have control of NABORS Landfill and Hauling Company located in the north part of our county.
Back in 2003 it was up for sale. The owners wanted it to stay under local ownership and didn’t want to sell it to a large corporation. The Solid Waste Management District (which the County is a member of) purchased the landfill. During this time I left and went to work for Arkansas Department of Emergency Management. The Solid Waste Management District contracted with the Northwest AR Economic Development District (NWAEDD) to manage and operate NABORS. When I returned in 2007 and became the manager of NABORS it didn’t take me long to figure out that the NWAEDD was about to bankrupt the landfill operation. They were losing money faster than they could borrow it and their solution to the problem was to borrow more money and raise rates. After several attempts to explain how we could stop the loss of money and possibly turn things around, only to be told to just do my job and not worry about the other issues, it soon became apparent that the NWAEDD’s management style and mine were not going to work out and after 8 months I left. While working for NABORS I obtained my class “C” landfill license. This was considered by ADEQ as having a master’s degree in landfill operations. I really felt that we had a great opportunity to have a great landfill but it just didn’t work out.
Since then I was elected as your county judge and became a member of the solid waste board. As I have some valuable insight, I began asking questions. Not always getting a straight answer, I then began a crusade to get the landfill away from NWAEDD because I knew they didn’t have the necessary experience to manage a landfill business - and NABORS is a business. It’s probably in the top 20 as far as employees and payroll in the county. In March of 2009 we were able to convince the Solid Waste Management Board that it would be in the best interest to cut our ties and get out of the contract with NWAEDD before they bankrupted NABORS.
Since March of last year we have been able to manage our way out of serious financial difficulties.
Just when we had things going our way a few of the Solid Waste Management Board members decided they no longer wanted to operate a landfill and hauling company. They began looking for someone to come in and manage the company. We were already showing great profits and NABORS was moving forward. To say the least I was not a happy camper. We had just saved the company from bankruptcy, things were looking up and now they wanted to give it to someone else to manage.
I reminded them why we first bought it and that was to protect the landfill from an outside corporation coming in, filling it up with outside trash from all over the country. Well, the debating began again. The company they felt would give us the best return was a company called SANTEK. It was an out of state company that only had one other landfill in northeast Arkansas. The contract stated that we give them all the income, they fill our landfill up and we keep the liability. It was the worst contract I had ever seen. They would immediately double the amount of trash to 200,000 CY and within 5 years they wanted us to have ADEQ permit the landfill for an additional 6 million CY. The landfill would be full in 10 years and the bonds would still be outstanding with no way to pay them. "Great deal for them - bad for us" After a lot of tough negotiating with the other judges and mayors that make up the solid waste district, they finally (with a very close vote) agreed to let Baxter and Marion Counties and the City of Mountain Home to purchase NABORS and take over its operation. It was tough negotiating because apparently SANTEK had been doing some work behind the scenes and I felt that some of the board members were too friendly with SANTEK. This almost split the board and that would have been bad.
I really felt good. Baxter County, Marion County and Mountain Home now would be able to do what we had originally started out to do and that was to have control over who brings what into our landfill.
The citizens that have the most to lose if something happened are now in control.
But there is always something. About 2 months ago a company called IESI began stirring things up again. This is the same company that tried to sue the owners of RLH and the Solid Waste Management District trying to stop the sale. IESI doesn’t want any competition and will do whatever they need to stop it. A letter was sent out to all the board members and to our bonding company full of lies. Now apparently IESI’s letter is making the rounds of the Quorum Court members. Again, they are trying to put fear and doubt in people’s minds. There is no truth in the letter. To-date, only one Q.C. member has listened to them. Their letter made statements that they knew were wrong. It was a very damaging letter toward the Solid Waste Board and I took great acceptance to it because I saw it as an attack on Baxter and Marion Counties and the City of Mountain Home.
The person that is contacting the Q.C. members and is the point man for IESI was under investigation by the FBI for possible contract irregularities when he was mayor of Cabot. I personally don’t want to associate with an ex- politician that was under investigation by the F.B.I. (www.arkansasleader.com/2007/04/top-story-fbi-investigates-former-cabot.html)
Just before IESI’s letter came out we noticed that ADEQ was nit-picking us on everything we did. Nothing suited them. They were demanding that we do things at the landfill that we knew were wrong and we were being held to a different standard. One day the new head of the Solid Waste Division for ADEQ came to our landfill for a visit. He had been working for a large waste management corporation and had very close ties to IESI. He had only been on the job about 6 weeks. He looked over the new cell site project that was under construction. Since it was built just like all the other cell sites out at the landfill we didn’t foresee any problems. Within a week we had a letter from him ordering us to shut down even though our engineering company had been sending in the necessary project reports and all were approved, he said it didn’t pass his “eyeball test”.
Trying to work with ADEQ over the past month has been a nightmare. They told us we had to basically get another engineer because they didn’t like the one we had. They have turned down everything we have sent in for approval and most of the time not giving a reason. It is seems obvious that the head of the solid waste division isn’t working for the best interest of everyone - just his friends in high places.
The county has the responsibility of providing solid waste services to the counties not the large corporations. It is a shame when a state or federal regulatory agency is influenced by big corporations.
Just look at the Wall Street, Banking industry and the latest is the BP fiasco. After those incidents that damaged millions of lives and cost billions of dollars we find out that the regulatory agency in charge of oversight was really not doing their job and was protecting the large corporations. I see no difference in that and the situation we are in with ADEQ. The regulations are not being applied across the board fairly. The large corporations are given free passes and we are held to a very tough standard.
This has been a tough struggle but we will prevail. We have a safe and environmentally friendly landfill and we will keep it that way. We need everyone that doesn’t want our landfill operated by an out-of- state corporation that can bring in whatever they want -from wherever they want and we bear the consequences. Right now a large corporation hired by BP to dispose of the oil sludge, is hauling it to a landfill in Alabama. This could easily happen here if we lost local control of the landfill. You are the owners of the landfill and you need to support it. Let’s keep the money right here in Baxter and Marion Counties. Let’s keep local people employed and do our business with the only locally owned and operated landfill in this area.
7-27-2010
IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE I HAVE CHANGED MY MESSAGE AND I I want to bring everyone up to date on an issue that has been going on since 2003. That is who will have control of NABORS Landfill and Hauling Company located in the north part of our county.
Back in 2003 it was up for sale. The owners wanted it to stay under local ownership and didn’t want to sell it to a large corporation. The Solid Waste Management District (which the County is a member of) purchased the landfill. During this time I left and went to work for Arkansas Department of Emergency Management. The Solid Waste Management District contracted with the Northwest AR Economic Development District (NWAEDD) to manage and operate NABORS. When I returned in 2007 and became the manager of NABORS it didn’t take me long to figure out that the NWAEDD was about to bankrupt the landfill operation. They were losing money faster than they could borrow it and their solution to the problem was to borrow more money and raise rates. After several attempts to explain how we could stop the loss of money and possibly turn things around, only to be told to just do my job and not worry about the other issues, it soon became apparent that the NWAEDD’s management style and mine were not going to work out and after 8 months I left. While working for NABORS I obtained my class “C” landfill license. This was considered by ADEQ as having a master’s degree in landfill operations. I really felt that we had a great opportunity to have a great landfill but it just didn’t work out.
Since then I was elected as your county judge and became a member of the solid waste board. As I have some valuable insight, I began asking questions. Not always getting a straight answer, I then began a crusade to get the landfill away from NWAEDD because I knew they didn’t have the necessary experience to manage a landfill business - and NABORS is a business. It’s probably in the top 20 as far as employees and payroll in the county. In March of 2009 we were able to convince the Solid Waste Management Board that it would be in the best interest to cut our ties and get out of the contract with NWAEDD before they bankrupted NABORS.
Since March of last year we have been able to manage our way out of serious financial difficulties.
Just when we had things going our way a few of the Solid Waste Management Board members decided they no longer wanted to operate a landfill and hauling company. They began looking for someone to come in and manage the company. We were already showing great profits and NABORS was moving forward. To say the least I was not a happy camper. We had just saved the company from bankruptcy, things were looking up and now they wanted to give it to someone else to manage.
I reminded them why we first bought it and that was to protect the landfill from an outside corporation coming in, filling it up with outside trash from all over the country. Well, the debating began again. The company they felt would give us the best return was a company called SANTEK. It was an out of state company that only had one other landfill in northeast Arkansas. The contract stated that we give them all the income, they fill our landfill up and we keep the liability. It was the worst contract I had ever seen. They would immediately double the amount of trash to 200,000 CY and within 5 years they wanted us to have ADEQ permit the landfill for an additional 6 million CY. The landfill would be full in 10 years and the bonds would still be outstanding with no way to pay them. "Great deal for them - bad for us" After a lot of tough negotiating with the other judges and mayors that make up the solid waste district, they finally (with a very close vote) agreed to let Baxter and Marion Counties and the City of Mountain Home to purchase NABORS and take over its operation. It was tough negotiating because apparently SANTEK had been doing some work behind the scenes and I felt that some of the board members were too friendly with SANTEK. This almost split the board and that would have been bad.
I really felt good. Baxter County, Marion County and Mountain Home now would be able to do what we had originally started out to do and that was to have control over who brings what into our landfill.
The citizens that have the most to lose if something happened are now in control.
But there is always something. About 2 months ago a company called IESI began stirring things up again. This is the same company that tried to sue the owners of RLH and the Solid Waste Management District trying to stop the sale. IESI doesn’t want any competition and will do whatever they need to stop it. A letter was sent out to all the board members and to our bonding company full of lies. Now apparently IESI’s letter is making the rounds of the Quorum Court members. Again, they are trying to put fear and doubt in people’s minds. There is no truth in the letter. To-date, only one Q.C. member has listened to them. Their letter made statements that they knew were wrong. It was a very damaging letter toward the Solid Waste Board and I took great acceptance to it because I saw it as an attack on Baxter and Marion Counties and the City of Mountain Home.
The person that is contacting the Q.C. members and is the point man for IESI was under investigation by the FBI for possible contract irregularities when he was mayor of Cabot. I personally don’t want to associate with an ex- politician that was under investigation by the F.B.I. (www.arkansasleader.com/2007/04/top-story-fbi-investigates-former-cabot.html)
Just before IESI’s letter came out we noticed that ADEQ was nit-picking us on everything we did. Nothing suited them. They were demanding that we do things at the landfill that we knew were wrong and we were being held to a different standard. One day the new head of the Solid Waste Division for ADEQ came to our landfill for a visit. He had been working for a large waste management corporation and had very close ties to IESI. He had only been on the job about 6 weeks. He looked over the new cell site project that was under construction. Since it was built just like all the other cell sites out at the landfill we didn’t foresee any problems. Within a week we had a letter from him ordering us to shut down even though our engineering company had been sending in the necessary project reports and all were approved, he said it didn’t pass his “eyeball test”.
Trying to work with ADEQ over the past month has been a nightmare. They told us we had to basically get another engineer because they didn’t like the one we had. They have turned down everything we have sent in for approval and most of the time not giving a reason. It is seems obvious that the head of the solid waste division isn’t working for the best interest of everyone - just his friends in high places.
The county has the responsibility of providing solid waste services to the counties not the large corporations. It is a shame when a state or federal regulatory agency is influenced by big corporations.
Just look at the Wall Street, Banking industry and the latest is the BP fiasco. After those incidents that damaged millions of lives and cost billions of dollars we find out that the regulatory agency in charge of oversight was really not doing their job and was protecting the large corporations. I see no difference in that and the situation we are in with ADEQ. The regulations are not being applied across the board fairly. The large corporations are given free passes and we are held to a very tough standard.
This has been a tough struggle but we will prevail. We have a safe and environmentally friendly landfill and we will keep it that way. We need everyone that doesn’t want our landfill operated by an out-of- state corporation that can bring in whatever they want -from wherever they want and we bear the consequences. Right now a large corporation hired by BP to dispose of the oil sludge, is hauling it to a landfill in Alabama. This could easily happen here if we lost local control of the landfill. You are the owners of the landfill and you need to support it. Let’s keep the money right here in Baxter and Marion Counties. Let’s keep local people employed and do our business with the only locally owned and operated landfill in this area.
Joe Bodenhamer ~ County Judge
Elected 2009 - Present
Phone: 870-425-2755
Office Location: 3rd Floor, Baxter County Courthouse
1 East 7th Street, Mountain Home, AR 72653
Elected 2009 - Present
Phone: 870-425-2755
Office Location: 3rd Floor, Baxter County Courthouse
1 East 7th Street, Mountain Home, AR 72653
Official Web Site Of Baxter County Government
