What A Shame!

There's a humongous pile of mulch that's been accumulating for many years near a town just outside the city (it's in the county, but the media doesn't seem to know that, they keep saying it's in the town. Now it's on fire! They say it could burn for months and they're looking for a company that specializes in putting out difficult fires. I'm talking about a structure about 3 stories high and more than two times that length. It's creating health problems because of smoke. No officials have explained WHY this construction company has accumulated all that without selling or giving it away. One person I know says there were issues with contracts and legal issues that prevented that. All I know is that in all the years I've seen that thing accumulate those problems could have been worked out, so I say the blame is on the company. Of course, they were manipulating the media, suggesting it was totally the fault of some unknown arsonist (hasn't been proven yet if there was one). I'm thinking it could even be spontaneous cumbustion...have heard it happens in extremely large piles. Or it could have been an employee that broke the rules and smoked near it. OMG, if they had let me have a few truckloads of that mulch, I could have found enough manure and other greens to mix with most of it! And mulch my garden with the rest!
Linda

How's that for dealing with "city hall"? What a waste.

Now it's contributing to green house gasses instead of preventing them! Is there no end to man's waste? Actually the bottom story of the pile was probably solid worm castings after that many years. I have almost cleaned up a truckload of leaves that someone dumped on a demolition site last year that turned into a gold mine of worm castings waiting for me with my plastic bags to scoop up and take home a trunkfull each time I passed by. I think I got at least a cubic yard and there is just a little more to get when I have the time and the daylight and it continues not to snow here.

Is this pile vegitation and wood like tree stumps limbs you name it. If that is what it is and it It is do to composting it will smoke from heat generated on the inside. We used to have sawdust piles in the ozarks that big would smoke and smolder for years on end. Now days the sawdust is used in wood products and large hog shed operationswhere it is and turned into compost that goes back onto the fields. If it is a pile of building from construction it has a lot of plastic and other materials in it and it is toxic. I would not bet against the fire being set and my primary suspect would be the company that has the pile. Your local goverment is not the place to go. you need to contact the Feds and the EPA. But coming from Bush land that may not help you either.

The construction company that had been accumulating that stuff (I believe it was all coarsely shredded mulch) called that location a "recycling center", but apparently no recycling was going on. Now Helotes has found a company they want to handle this fire. They're getting together with the construction company and the one that specializes in putting out fires to try to get the construction company to pay for this. Obviously, this humongous pile was put in the county because there's less regulations, but it's right outside the town of Helotes and also near the city of San Antonio. You wouldn't believe how big this pile is! And all these years that stuff was accumulating, I was occasionally paying for mulch at Garden-Ville and Fertile Garden. Except for the period of time a housing development was going in nearby and as they cleared, they would load my truck up if I tipped the guy that worked there. But yeah, that pile was a fire just waiting for a time to happen. Our state doesn't seem to care about the environment. I vote, but it's usually like butting my head against a brick wall.