Concerned Citizens for Clean Water ran this ad in New Mexico and West Texas in June 2002:

STOP Pollution and Depletion of Our Drinking Water Supply

Got MUCK?

In February 2002, Hector Villa III, an environmental consultant with Frontera Environmental in El Paso, a former federal representative to the Pecos River Commission, and a former Regional Director of the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission (TNRCC--the environmental enforcement agency in Texas--the Texas equivalent of our own NM Environment Department), was found guilty of eight Water Quality Act Violations for illegal dumping and failure to report illegal dumping.

According to the New Mexico Attorney General's office, Villa and five other individuals, including Larry Gorzeman, owner of Gorzeman Dairy, participated in the illegal dumping of at least 70 (seventy) tanker loads (as much as 280,000 gallons) of rendering plant waste in two locations. This rendering plant waste included animal bone, hair, blood, fecal coliform, nitrates and other waste left from the processing of dead animals. More than half of the wastewater disposals were placed DIRECTLY into the East Drain of the Elephant Butte Irrigation System behind the Gorzeman Dairy between August 1997 and July 1999. The remaining wastewater was illegally dumped on a landfill on the mesa west of Las Cruces.

Copyright 2002-2008 Concerned Citizens for Clean Water, 7025 Sparrow Point, Fort Worth, Texas 76133. Phone: (817)346-7122. Email: citizens@saveourwatersupply.org.