A stretch of gravel road, buried in the shadows of the forest west of Lake Worth, holds the key to two possible futures facing this slice of unincorporated Tarrant County.
On one side, a massive sign announces a Dallas company’s intention to turn a former sand quarry into a landfill. Across the street, residents have put up a declaration of their own. “DITCH THE DUMP,” it reads. “DON’T TRASH OUR SILVER CREEK.”
“Do you want to smell garbage?” said Ron Calvert, who has lived in the area for nine years. “I know I don’t.”
Near an RV park and a large recycling plant, 3411 Silver Creek Road has become the center of controversy for hundreds of residents living in the northwestern outskirts of Fort Worth. After purchasing the property late last year, BAP Kennor Landfill LLC now wants to store and recycle construction and demolition waste materials at the site.
To do so, the company needs a municipal solid waste processing permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality — and neighbors want to ensure that BAP Kennor doesn’t receive it.
Calvert is among the residents who have posted signs on their lawns and joined a Facebook group to communicate with others concerned about noxious odors and traffic that they say would be generated from a new landfill facility. About 6,000 people live in the census tract surrounding the property.
“Of course, we’re already getting warehouses built down Silver Creek, by (Interstate) 820, and there’s a big increase in traffic,” Calvert said. “Then you add garbage trucks to that, and the trash that falls out of the trucks. It’s too close to the city to put a garbage dump in a populated area.”
As the owner of a custom home construction company, Don Brewer has had a front-row seat to the area’s transformation from rural oasis to suburban homestead. Building a landfill near water sources and on land that has been leveled for the extraction of minerals poses a threat to residents who rely on wells for their drinking water, Brewer said.
“There’s an adjacent creek that would also affect the city water supply,” Brewer said. “The last thing that we want to do is have a water table or water system that’s being compromised.”
Their protests have earned the attention of county and state officials. After the state environmental commission notified property owners of the permit application in July, Tarrant County Commissioner Manny Ramirez began receiving calls asking him to step in.
Ramirez, who represents northwest Tarrant County, contacted state Rep. Charlie Geren. The lawmaker requested a public meeting for residents to voice their concerns, currently set for Dec. 5 at White Settlement ISD’s Brewer High School, Ramirez said. A meeting time hasn’t been finalized.
In the coming months, Ramirez expects the Commissioners Court to consider a resolution formalizing its opposition to the landfill permit. County crews are responsible for road maintenance in the area and are concerned about how daily heavy truck traffic would further damage aging roadways, Ramirez said.
“The traffic already is growing to a point where road maintenance has become an issue,” he said. “We are keenly aware of the impact that this will have on traffic and mobility in that region, and we’re very, very concerned about it.”
Tom Noons, a principal at BAP Kennor, did not respond to a request for comment, nor did a representative for Parkhill, the architecture and engineering firm that submitted the company’s application. A call to a company phone number listed on the application was unreturned.
Site’s history includes previous landfill permit, quarry operations
On March 8, Parkhill simultaneously submitted two applications on behalf of BAP Kennor Landfill. One application seeks to register the construction and operation of a municipal solid waste recycling facility at 3411 Silver Creek Road.
This permit would allow the facility to process waste, which is a separate activity from the disposal of waste known as landfilling, said Laura Lopez, a spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
“TCEQ’s approval to conduct municipal solid waste processing activities does not include on-site burial or disposal of waste,” Lopez wrote by email. “BAP Kennor is seeking a municipal solid waste processing registration to separate, sort, shred, grind, and bale waste. On-site waste disposal is not proposed in the application.”
The company’s second request would transfer an existing municipal solid waste disposal, or landfill, permit from Bajemi Corporation, Bruce Fentress and Sharon Fentress to BAP Kennor. First issued to Tarrant West Landfill in 1978, the disposal permit became inactive in early 1999, according to a TCEQ database.
“The existing landfill at the proposed BAP Kennor site is currently inactive and not accepting waste,” Lopez wrote. “A separate permit amendment application would be required before on-site waste disposal can occur.”
Two other state environmental permits, for aggregate production operations and stormwater, are active at the site. The aggregate permit, which remains valid through early 2024, allows the property owner to extract materials like sand, gravel and limestone.
In the two decades since the site’s landfill permit was active, the surrounding area has grown up, Ramirez said. There’s a much larger residential presence, and the city of Fort Worth projects further growth, he added. BAP Kennor’s property lies in the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, or a legally designated area located beyond Fort Worth’s corporate boundaries that the city has the authority to annex.
“The residents of Tarrant County living out there in Silver Creek, they enjoy a certain quality of life that they expected when they purchased their properties, and I think this project is not consistent with the neighborhood and the community environment that they’ve enjoyed for many years,” Ramirez said.
What comes next
The state environmental commission has yet to make a decision on BAP Kennor’s requests. Staff are reviewing the company’s waste processing application to ensure it’s technically complete, and BAP Kennor is addressing deficiencies identified by the commission, Lopez said.
After the public meeting, the commission will consider all comments to determine if any revisions to the application are necessary, she said. BAP Kennor will have an opportunity to address any issues before the TCEQ makes a final decision regarding the application. Nearby landowners and people who file public comments will be notified and provided instructions for protesting the decision if they wish to do so, Lopez said.
Meanwhile, Brewer and his fellow Silver Creek residents say they want to protect the serenity that the community is known for. That means keeping the issue front and center for elected officials, he said.
“The word ‘no’ is not real big in my vocabulary,” Brewer said. “The more cages you can rattle, the better chances you have of somebody saying: ‘This isn’t going to work.’”
Haley Samsel is the environmental reporter for the Fort Worth Report. You can reach them at haley.samsel@fortworthreport.org.
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