20 Stories - Dog Canyon Landfill: A Solid Victory for Alamogordo
It all started with a knock on her door in 1991. Joyce Mount opened her door to a neighbor whom she’d never met, and was given a notice of a public meeting concerning a proposed expansion of a landfill in Alamogordo.
She looked at the notice, and immediately knew that the proposed landfill, “was something big…not a neighborhood landfill anymore.” Otero County and Waste Management sought to expand the landfill from 10 acres to 80 acres, with garbage buried 40 feet deep and piled 80 feet high.
Perhaps not such a bad idea, except that the landfill was located at the mouth of Dog Canyon in an alluvial flood plain. And it was located atop some of the highest-quality groundwater in the Tularosa Basin, where residents of Alamogordo and Holloman Air Force base drew their drinking water.
‘We didn’t think that we could do anything, because we didn’t have any money,” Joyce recalls. Efforts to involve local attorneys were unsuccessful, until Joyce’s group, Concerned Citizens for the Environment, brought in a non-profit attorney who had helped develop New Mexico’s Solid Waste Act and Regulations: Doug Meiklejohn. “After we talked to Doug, we thought, ‘well, maybe we can do this.’”
With Doug on board, the group was able to bring in local counsel to help on the case as well. Doug was also key to bringing in Karl Souder, a hydrologist who helped Concerned Citizens develop a technically-sound argument against the plans for the landfill. “We wouldn’t have been able to take this on without a lawyer and experts,” says Joyce. “The case was much more complicated than I would have originally thought. I had worked on small issues before, but I had no idea that the hearing would go on day after day.”
She was not intimidated by the proceedings, though. “Joyce is a model citizen activist,” Meiklejohn remembers. Concerned Citizens’ efforts were bolstered by Holloman Air Force base, which also opposed the facility. In the end, the NM Environment Department severely restricted the landfill expansion to eight acres, with a maximum depth of 30 feet and height of 30 feet. The State gave the County two years to find a new location for a new landfill, shutting down Dog Canyon landfill in 1994.
When asked if she had any advice for citizens groups fighting unwanted facilities, Joyce laughed, “yeah. If you can get the Law Center involved, you might have a chance.” Then she explained, “as a small, local group, it’s hard to find the right resources – the legal and technical know-how – to fight a case like this. So it’s really important to have a group like the Law Center out there to help folks like us.” Back to top