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Residents don’t want to see a mountain of trash.  Who does?

gets the go-ahead to expand.

For many people, trash is just something to be picked up and thrown out.  Where it lands after that doesn’t really matter unless the landfill is near your home.

“Occasionally, if the wind is right you can definitely smell and odor of trash,” said Brian Long Shadow Creek Ranch resident.

Shadow Creek Ranch is a Pearland community just a few miles away from the Blue Ridge landfill.  The landfill was in existence long before the area turned into a nice neighborhood.

Now the owners of the landfill want to expand and asked the state for permission.

Project managers with Allied Waste Services were in meetings all day Thursday, but spoke with 11 News in an off-camera interview.  They said they believe the proposed expansion is necessary.  After all they say, the trash has to go somewhere.

Officials said the expansion would more than double the current size from 600 acres to more than 1,300 acres and increase the landfill’s height from 58 feet to 170 feet.

For a comparison, all of Reliant Park sits on 45 acres.  It would take 17 parks to fill up half of the proposed expansion.  And 170 feet is almost equivalent to the height of the Inn at the Ballpark across from Minute Maid in downtown Houston.

Brian Long said he is all for being a good neighbor, but says this proposal is too much.

“Now you’re making a nice, big landfill into a mega-landfill that’s three times as tall and three times as big in a footprint area.  That’s just not something that anyone wants in their backyard,” he said.

The residents got a second chance to voice their opposition to the proposed expansion at a public meeting at Blue Ridge Elementary School in Fort Bend ISD Thursday night.  It’s the second public meeting on the issue since July. 

Allied Waste officials said they would be at the meeting to present their case, listen to the opposition and answer questions.