NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard

Frisco, Texas residents are upset with the Exide battery recycling plant in their town.

What Exide does there is smelt lead from old car batteries to be recycled into new car batteries and other useful reusable materials. They've been doing this at the same place for 46 years.

"What Exide provides is a responsible point for recycling," said Joseph Dowd, vice president and general manager for the company's North America Recycling group, who was in Frisco last month during some of the upgrades. More than 97 percent of lead-acid batteries can be recycled into reusable materials, making it the highest recycled material in the world, Dowd said.
-Dallas News

In the past 46 years, people have chosen to build neighborhoods, stores and schools around the Exide plant. The plant was there first. People then built around it.

Now, those people, who drive cars with batteries in them, want Exide out. Their beef is that Exide pollutes Frisco. The EPA and TCEQ say Exide did put about 1.7 tons of lead in the air last year.

The Exide plant is on the list of most in need of improving their environmental impact and are willing to abide.

The company has repaved roads on its property and bought a new vacuum sweeper to reduce so-called fugitive emissions, which are the tiny particles that escape through doors or fall off vehicles. The plant also has replaced two-thirds of the bags in its baghouses with Teflon bags that perform about five times better. The remaining bags will be replaced next year.
-Dallas News

Now, certainly Exide should follow the best practices available to control it's discharges. It's also certain that the shadow of a lead smelter is not the best place for a new gated community.

Although government regulations aren't awfully popular, I think a really good one would be for the CEO, majority stockholders, and the board members of all companies should be required to have their primary residences within a very small radius of their factories or plants. They have to live there at least 9 months of the year, and use the same water that the rest of the community uses, and not be able to put up a dome over their house to fill with air more breathable than the community gets.

I think compelling company execs and their families to live near their factories and experience their own run-off and fumes would make a miraculous difference in the amount of pollution that they currently think is "acceptable" for those less privileged than themselves to live with.

You know I'm right.

You would think that Texas is big enough to where people wouldn't build their neighborhood around a lead recycler.

It's like people who move in next to an airport or railroad then bitch about the noise.

Dummies.

The median household income of these less privileged people in Frisco is $101,972 a year. Probably a sight less than the CEO of Exide, but these aint the po' folks usually posted up as victims of corporate pollution.

Frisco has grown tremendously through the 1990s and is still growing. Exide was there before a lot of these people were even born, let alone living in Frisco. The plant was built where it is because it's well out of Dallas yet still easily accessible by the DFW area, which has a lot of cars and other users of batteries. It made good sense to put it where they put it.

I'm with Stone. Don't build next to these places and then complain.

It doesn't matter that the people in the surrounding community make $100K a year. What matters is that the plant isn't safe.

Sure, it may be a poor choice to buy a home near such a facility, but I like *my* rule much better. If you want the plant to run clean and safe, force those muthas who own and run it to live within 1/2 mile radius of the plant and live with the same resources as the community.... no bottled water, no bottled air. That plant would become a miracle of ecological efficiency if the corporate execs were compelled to live next to it. I promise you that.

They can make it clean, but they don't because they aren't affected and aren't interested in what other people suffer through. Putting them and their children under the influence of what the plant exudes suddenly makes them both very interested and affected. That is what brings change.

I am for Frisco in this.

You indicate that Exide is on everyones list for need to improve, which must mean something is wrong.

And because Exide was there 46 years ago, I would say Frisco was a very little town at that time. And, proabably everyone there would be employed by Exide. Meaning no one is going to complain else they get their walking papers.

And, it might be that Exide in building those roads and housing was in fact building a company environment. Hence the 'company sto'.

But then with all the population growth and people fleeing Dallas over the years, but still working in Dallas for the big money, you have a population not connected to the plant. Thus they are willing to protest this environmental problem.

Maybe it didn't happen exactly like that, but Ive seen big compnies rule small towns. But only when that population is small.

Quantrill

one of the most to the point comments I have read about Exide's lead. If they had to live and breathe what the residents of Frisco have to - they would have cleaned up years ago. Unfortunately it is too late now to clean up. We are loaded with lead, cadmium and arsenic in out waterways, air and most importantly our soils. Frisco is slated to get 190% increase in hazardous waste from other Exide plants to be buried in the landfills on the Exide grounds. Its coming from Columbus, GA, TN and LA.

Come to the P&Z meeting tomorrow night 2-14-12 to let our local government know- it high time Exide takes their lead and GO! Starts at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall 6101 Frisco Square Blvd.

Another good point. Not many who work at the plant live in Frisco- but the plant manager rents an apartment here. For those that think the home buyers should have know better- how? I bet they did not know a few years back either until the reports and media got ahold of the "story". It's a black eye, a cancer in the middle of Frisco. Where was the information back when homes were purchased. The medical research was not well known back then. These are real people and children living with real effects of lead. Even the recent allowable lead levels are have come down since now experts state that there is no safe lead levels. And the blood tests do not measure the long term, low level effects of chronic exposure that the Frisco residents are expose to because of a lead smelter. I like your statement about knowledge. If posters would research nad learn the FACTS in this debate they would not be so quick to point fingers at a city with a population of 124,000. Of which 38% which are children.