HARLINGEN — When city officials shut down the Harlingen Recycling Center nearly two years ago, many residents opposed the move, arguing they wanted the city to keep helping them take steps toward protecting the environment.
Now, Jorge Casillas is requesting officials grant him a special permit to open a recycling center offering free service.
But his neighbors along West Pierce Avenue and South F Street are trying to stop him from opening the recycling center near their homes.
At the corner of South F Street and West Pierce Avenue, the project site runs 280 feet along F Street and 800 feet along Pierce in an area zoned for homes and retail businesses.
“It’s not intended to be in a residential area,” City Manager Gabriel Gonzalez said Tuesday. “There are residences on three sides of their property.”
‘Clean’ business
Today, Casillas is taking his request to open the recycling center at 720 S. F St. before city commissioners.
“I have seen the lack of recycling and the opportunity of recycling in Harlingen,” he said Tuesday, adding his recycling center would cut out the city’s cost of transporting recyclable materials to McAllen’s recycling plant.
“I see a lot of cardboard and I see the opportunity to help the city, community and businesses,” Casillas, who works at an auto parts manufacturing plant, said. “If they gave me the opportunity, I would not charge the city.”
Casillas, who said his family’s worked in Mexico’s recycling business for 55 years, said he wants to run a clean business.
“I don’t want cars — I don’t want oil,” he said, adding he wants to recycle metal, cardboard and plastics. “We’re not using machinery. It’s (sorted) by hand and with a forklift — no torching, no fire.”
Neighbors oppose project
When Casillas makes his request at City Hall today, commissioners will be considering the Planning and Zoning Commission’s recommendation against granting him a special use permit.
Last week, the Planning and Zoning board unanimously voted against granting Casillas’ request after neighbors armed with a 26-name petition spoke out during a public hearing.
“That would affect not just neighbors but all the city,” Jose Sanchez, a retired construction worker whose family pushed the petition drive, said Tuesday. “It’s like we’re going to throw trash there. It will devalue the house and all the neighborhood. Why are they going to worsen the city?”
At City Hall, Javier Cervantes, the city’s Planning and Zoning Director, stated Casillas is proposing opening his recycling center in an area zoned for homes and retail businesses.
“The opponents expressed trash overflow and drainage concerns, crime and safety concerns, negative impact to their property values and increased traffic,” he wrote in the meeting’s executive summary.
At the project site, city officials also argue the 2,640 square-foot building is “unsafe,” he wrote.
Transport, recycling costs
At City Hall, his recycling center would save taxpayers the cost of transporting recyclable materials to McAllen’s recycling plant, Casillas said.
After high operational costs led officials to shut down the city’s recycling center in 2020, the city’s paid less than $10,000 to transport residents’ recyclable materials to McAllen’s plant during the last year, Gonzalez said, adding the city’s paid McAllen $3,000 for its service.
After officials shut down the recycling center here, they set up long steel bins at the site, allowing residents to drop off recyclable materials which trucks transport to McAllen’s recycling plant.