Coldwell Banker Residential

Meet the man hoping to succeed Mike Morath on the DISD board

“He is so passionate about public schools he won’t send his kids there? Does he believe his neighborhood school is for the ‘others?’ Greenhill admits only the very smart and/or the very rich. He’ll never know the community of a neighborhood school of diverse people working together for the kids, living within the rules and budget passed by the Texas legislature.”

— Dinah Miller

“I had the same reaction until I sat down with Dustin [Marshall] and queried him about his knowledge of the issues. He has accumulated a lot of public education experience and made a large personal investment in four short years since returning to Dallas in 2011. He also understands the importance of gathering more information beyond the hard data. He’s intuitive, approachable and he listens. I guarantee, district parents and advocates will surely tell him what he does not know, as I did in our meeting.”

— Louisa Meyer

Councilman Clayton makes plans to revamp the GastonGarland-Grand intersection

“The last study examined the Gaston to [north-bound] Garland traffic going into a tunnel and the [south-bound] Garland to Grand traffic being elevated. This eliminated all traffic lights. I can’t remember the cost but it was deemed too costly for the

Debbie Labarba

TEAM LABARBA

Realtor - Coldwell Banker

“Without Integrity Nothing Works”

Whether it’s her positive attitude or her never ending smile, Debbie’s clients tell you that she is diligent about making sure things go according to plan. Her clients are totally happy when it’s time to sign on the dotted line. I guess that’s what helped her grow her successful business for over 25 years! She is thankful to each and everyone of her clients and would welcome you as well with all your real estate needs.

Debbie LaBarba 214.729.9116

Debbie.labarba@cbdfw.com traffic volume. With the traffic volume significantly up I wonder if this solution could be revisited now since the cost per volume would be less?”

— Lakewood Insights

“We have known about this problem for many years but ignored warnings that that the new shopping center would irritate the clogged intersection even more. The traffic gets worse every year, sometimes backing up cars to Whole Foods at rush hour. I think there will be several options on correcting the traffic jam.”

— Erica from dallas

Texas’ open-carry gun law goes into effect

“Chill, hippies. I lived in Ohio (an open carry state for everyone not just concealed carry license holders) for 37 years and never once saw anyone carry openly. You won’t notice a thing.” — Bob Lawson

“Private businesses can forbid open carry. That will make it easy to determine which ones to patronize.”

—

Bob Cheek

“Considering we are the 45th state to enact this. I’m guessing no real difference at all.” —

Chris Grams

“When you see someone with a gun just call the police and let them determine if the person is legally carrying. Not complicated.”

— John Coveney

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WHAT YOU’RE MISSING

Construction halted at Greenville-Belmont after city pulls building permit Texas’ open-carry gun law goes into e ect

Landlord, not bankruptcy threat to Dixie House

Owners of La Bodega’s push back opening date

Rep. Sheets honors Chamberlain Studios of Self Defense

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Email editor Brittany bnunn@advocatemag.com

Q&A Landfill engineer Richard Akin

Most of us don’t think about our trash once it leaves our sidewalk. If we do, it’s probably not to contemplate the minute details of how the managers at McCommas Bluff Landfill keep the landfill from overflowing or how it drains rainwater. But for East Dallas neighbor Richard Akin, it’s all he thinks about at work. Akin is the senior landfill engineer at McCommas Bluff. Sounds like a job that stinks, right? Far from it. “It’s a fun place,” he says. As long as he does his job right — “We like to know that we’re not leaking, that we’re not polluting and that we’re collecting as much as we possibly can,” he says — the rest of us can continue on our merry, oblivious way.

What’s the biggest challenge of your job?

From an engineering perspective, just making sure we don’t overfill. Landfills live and die by what’s called ‘airspace’ — what we’re allowed to fill. As long as we don’t go over a certain height, everything is fine. So I have to make sure that doesn’t happen.

What does your day-to-day look like?

I’m responsible for drainage and roadways through the landfill and projects that we’re going to do on-site, that we’re not going to contract out. I’m also in charge of the environmental science section. I have an environmental coordinator and four [hazardous-waste] inspectors. We don’t accept [hazardous waste]. They’re looking for things that are not acceptable. They do random inspections on the loads of customers, so they’re looking for things like unused paint or materials containing asbestos. Plus, we can’t accept liquids at the landfill.

They’re also responsible for all the daily

Richard checks for our route site to look for what we call ‘leachate seeps.’ We have a big hill of trash and it gets rained on. Rainwater will percolate through the surface material, get into the trash, and it will matriculate down through the garbage, and it collects things as it goes to the bottom. If it decides it wants to come out on the side of the hill, it will form a wet area called a ‘seep.’ As long as it’s not running, it gives us a little time to get it fixed. The way they fix it is they pack more dirt on top of it, which encourages liquid to stay back into the hill and not try to pop out. If it forms any type of a stream, those require immediate attention because we don’t want any of that stuff to escape the

Texas‘ question. I just came routine checkup and cleaning. As always, I found the staff not only the epitome of professionalism, but gracious and kind. I’ve been under their care for over 10 years and would recommend this practice to those who are looking for competent, professional care.” - George Monroe landfill. So environmentally, there are lots of things to look at and lots of things to do.

Was it hard to get used to working so closely with garbage?

Not really. It’s funny people always ask, ‘Well doesn’t it stink? It’s nasty.’ Actually it’s not as nasty as you think. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but at the landfill there are different odors that are created by different things. Landfill gas itself has a particular odor. Leachate has a particular odor. The garbage itself has a particular odor. We can use those odors if we’re around the landfill inspecting, if we smell something in a place we don’t expect it. Visually it’s easy to see if something is not where it’s supposed to be, but if it’s something you can’t see but you can smell you go, ‘OK we shouldn’t be smelling this, why are we?’

Is your job dangerous?

The greatest danger to a landfill is fire. People ask about landfill gas. We’re concerned about it because it’s a greenhouse gas. It’s methane. People want to know what it smells like, but it’s like, ‘Well, landfill gas has an odor but methane itself does not.’ It is odorless and colorless, so you don’t know it’s there except that it burns nicely, although it’s not explosive.

Have you experienced a fire at McCommas?

Yes, but typically the fires that we see out here are vehicles. An actual landfill fire, though, I have not had to be a part of one of those. I hope to never be a part of it because you don’t fight them the same way you fight a house fire. Water won’t put it out. It’s a smoldering fire, and it could burn for years. So how do I know that I don’t have one right now? We have over 500 gas wells on the landfill. We’ve been harvesting methane gas. If we see a spike in the temperature, then we know something is awry and we go start the investigation. You have to smother a landfill fire with dirt. Part of our permit is a requirement that we have to have enough dirt on hand to be able to cover the entire working face within an hour with six inches of dirt. Do you eventually expand the

landfill or what’s next?

McCommas is as big as McCommas is ever going to be. There is zero desire to expand it. The permit modifications that would be involved would be such a hurdle that the city is not going to do it. The city decided that they wanted one single place to serve the needs of Dallas County, and that was back in the mid’70s when they started the permitting process for McCommas. They figured that their long-range plan was that it would have a life of 50 years. The 1980s was when they finally started accepting trash at the landfill. McCommas was originally permitted to bring in 10,000 tons a day. We haven’t seen that kind of volume since the last big economic boom many, many years ago. We see between 5,000-8,000 tons a day — with the exception of Sunday because nobody brings us anything on Sunday. At the current rate of material coming in and at the rate that it’s settling, we have about 45 years still left in McCommas.

We have an old part of the landfill that you’d never know is a landfill because it’s covered in grass. It’s also one of the highest land points in the City of Dallas. We have an absolutely panoramic view of downtown, and on a clear night it is a very beautiful sight. We have sunrises and sunsets that would blow your mind.

Interesting. What else would surprise people about the landfill?

It has nothing to do with the landfill itself. It’s the wildlife. McCommas itself is about 2,200 acres. Only about 978 of that will ever be used for the landfill. The rest of it is nature. I recently took a picture of a beautiful stag. It was magnificent, and silhouetted by the sunset. While driving through part of the landfill one day, I counted 15 deer, but we also have about 300 feral hogs. That’s not as pretty. They get to be big. We can’t hunt them or hurt them. We cannot touch them. We have four nesting pairs of red-tailed hawks. We have vultures and seagulls by the thousands. We’re also on one of the migratory paths for pelicans. —Brittany

Nunn

Big front porches, Fourth of July parades, and neighbors who know each other’s names. You’ll find a lot of neighborhoods like this in Dallas, if you know where to look. And we do. e Realtors at David Griffin & Company are e experts on Dallas’ established, close-in communities. Want to meet some new neighbors? Call 214.526.5626 or visit davidgriffin.com