Judge Litty says this photo has misled the public into what is being burned at the quarry. (photo credit: Joey Nault on Facebook)
Baxter County Judge Kevin Litty spoke out Thursday on allegations the county has been allowing hazardous dumping of fluids and debris at the old county quarry.
Judge Litty shared his opinion with KTLO, Classic Hits and the Boot News on the source of the allegations.
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The social media post was made Wednesday and calls into question the $16,000 recently allocated by the Baxter County Quorum Court for Aldi site development work and burning of debris at the old quarry on County Road 69.
Judge Litty spoke on the involvement of environmental officials as the El Chico building is taken down as well as burning at the quarry.
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Another question raised in the post was the dumping of boring fluids at the quarry.
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Should citizens be concerned about the quality of the water from the boring fluids being dumped? Executive Director Chuck Seaton of the Ozark Mountain Solid Waste District and Arkansas Division of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) representative walked the property last week and Judge Litty says a catfish pond on the site was used to demonstrate the safety of the water.
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According to Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery, there have been zero calls made to the sheriff’s office regarding the quarry in the last 90 days. One report was filed on July 21 questioning items that were being dumped at the quarry.
AUDIO CLIP TRANSCRIPTIONS
Clip 1: “Number one, I’m not going to do anything to hurt our community. Number two, I’m not going to do anything unlawful. I’ve covered them tracks before we got to where we’re at. I have a Quorum Court member that sits on our Quorum Court, and his son wrote the article that everybody’s seen on Facebook. He’s created me problems for eight months. That’s his wishes, but I’ve got to continue to fight through it, and I am going to do what’s right for Baxter County.”
Clip 2: “I had a representative from the ADEQ come over here and look at the building, look at the site, tell us what we could take and tell us what we could not take. The roof to the El Chico building was taken off and disposed of with Methvin out here at the receiving station on 62 West. The structure of the building was steel. We’re recycling every bit of that, and we’ll have receipts to show when this is all over how many tonnage of this building that we recycled. The only thing that is planned to be taken to the old quarry, was the stucco part of the building. It was stucco. Nothing has been taken at this point. I know a Facebook post misled people that was some burning debris out there. That was strictly brush, which we are permitted to burn brush at the quarry. We hold a permit to do that. It was strictly brush, nothing but trees is all it was. And we pick up brush daily in the county.”
Clip 3: “Over the past numerous years, I don’t know, I’ve been here two and a half, it was way before I was here, I was unaware of some vacuum trucks dumping out there. It wasn’t vacuum trucks, boring trucks that do these bores underneath roadways. They have to use water to do these bores. It creates muddy water in their tank system. They had been allowed to dump out there and it’s just it’s muddy water when it dries. We just push it off in the field area. I stopped that this week. No more of that is going on. I don’t think we should be responsible for a business like that dumping on our property. So I stopped that this week. This week it will no longer happen.”
Clip 4: “He looked at that pond and said, I can tell you right now there’s nothing toxic washing in this pond because it’s full of catfish. To my knowledge, if anything’s been dumped there unlawful, it’s unknown to me, and it sure hasn’t happened since I’ve been here as county judge. It’s not used for a whole lot anymore. The sheriff’s office does have a shooting range out there that they occupy part of it. There’s nothing ever dumped out there that’s not ever been permitted or okayed. For the most part, it’s used to dump brush or maybe some debris from some of our road jobs, which would be dirt, rocks, that kind of stuff. And we’ve rented it to Energy a time or two. We’ve got it rented to them now for the next 12 months to store some poles and transfers and that kind of thing that they’re going to rebuild some power lines from the tornado.”
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