By Anton Caputo
San Antonio Express-News
Copyright 2007 San Antonio Express-News
All Rights Reserved
HELOTES, Texas — Extinguishing the smoldering mulch pile near Helotes without polluting the Edwards Aquifer would take at least another month if a new plan is adopted.
State and local officials hope to finalize the back-to-the-drawing board plan today, which would open the way for crews to resume fighting the fire, which could last until March.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality halted firefighting efforts a week ago Thursday after smoke and ash residue was found in area wells.
Environmental and firefighting experts have been looking for a method to fight the blaze and protect the aquifer ever since. They hope a combination of clay-lined pits and a water treatment system will do the trick.
“I think that we have a good plan,” said Kelly Cook, TCEQ homeland security coordinator. “We’re going do everything possible to protect the aquifer and to put the fire out.”
That has proved tricky because the massive pile of brush, dirt and mulch that caught fire around Dec. 26 is on or very near the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone.
This means water in the area leaches through the porous limestone landscape directly into the drinking water supply. This, coupled with the massive size of the burning heap, has made firefighting difficult. The pile is estimated to be 700 feet long and 80 feet high.
The new plan calls for using heavy equipment to tear the pile apart from the top and place the burning debris in a lined trench and large pit where it can be doused with water and firefighting chemicals.
The trench, a 30-foot-wide sluice that would be dug next to the burning pile, will be lined with plastic sheets and 2 feet of clay to keep the water from seeping into the aquifer.
The sluice will connect to a massive pit -- about 325 feet by 175 feet -- that’s already on site. This pit also will be lined with 2 feet of clay and house a water treatment plant, which will purify the water so it can be reused for the firefighting effort or pumped into nearby Helotes Creek.
Crews will use at least 300,000 gallons of water a day.
According to the timeline in the plan, the sluice and pit would be ready by Feb. 7, and the firefighting would take another three to five weeks. That means the fire would burn until at least the end of February and maybe even until mid-March.
Despite the ambitious strategy, environmental experts aren’t not certain they can keep all the ash out of the aquifer while fighting the fire, said Yvonne Escamilla, Bexar County public information officer.
The Bexar County fire marshal’s office hasn’t determined the cause of the fire yet, but investigators have said they suspect arson. Road contractor Henry Zumwalt owns the pile and has been running a recycling operation on the site since 1981.
It has been a month since the fire started pouring sometimes-dangerous levels of smoke into the air around Helotes.
Bexar County’s lawmakers in Austin sent a letter Thursday to Gov. Rick Perry calling the current firefighting efforts inadequate and asking him to “direct the Division of Emergency Management to use overwhelming force to extinguish the mulch fire.”
“The bottom line is we don’t have the resources allocated,” said Rep. David Leibowitz, D-San Antonio.