IN THIS DISTRICT 1 RACE, LONGORIA'S REELECTION BID STINKS

By Juan Montoya
Ever since the Brownsville Public Utility Board's South Wastewater Treatment Plant was built way back when , the stench of human excrement emanating from it has been assaulting the senses of the people living in the Southmost area.
When the predominant southeast winds blow through the city, the residents north and east of the plant get a whiff of it all through the day.
When they blow from the west or east, the other side of East Avenue gets its fair dose.
For all this time, the fact the the resident so the Southmost area residents were being subjected to this didn't seem to matter to many.
It certainly didn't seem to bother City Commissioner Ricardo Longoria, who has been in office for the last 12 years.
The stench became an issue when land across the sewer plant was included among the 80-odd acres that the city included as its offer in the Request For Proposals issued by the University of Texas System when it was debating whether to stay in the downtown area or leave north.
When UT officials came to see the properties in the city's RFP, they literally turned their noses up at the flatulent aroma wafting from the plant and which would have been directly in front of the proposed campus site. They politely said "no."
Now the city is proposing to move the park to the same site and doesn't seem too concerned that kids in the East Brownsville Little League or playing on the fields will be exposed to sudden gusts of traditional southeast winds (and an occasional northern) blowing the stench over the park. And one can only imagine families having a cookout being exposed to the mouth-watering aromas of human excrement as they munch on hot dogs or a pollo asado.
Longoria apparently thinks that PUB Manager John Bruziak's promise is as good as commissioner Deborah Portillo's gold and as vigorous as commissioner Rose Gowen's pedal-pushing legs. But all he has to do is ask for a map that shows where the smell-mitigating chemicals have been placed in the various lift stations and treatment plants across the city in the last year and he will see that the PUB and its administration car every little if the barrios have to bear the smells.
We did.
Of about 60 applications of the chemicals by PUB, the overwhelming majority were made in areas north of Boca Chica Boulevard and perhaps only one or two to lift stations in the Southmost, Las Prietas and downtown areas.
And, as if by magic, just this year, on March 15, 2015, a PUB "update" announced that "plans are already underway" to mitigate the odor. According to PUB spokesman Ryan Greenfield, the success that PUB has had in eliminating a majority of the smell from the Robindale Road plant across from FM 802 is being used as a prototype to eliminate most of the odor.
In past debates of the city commissioners, Longoria assails his opponents and critics by saying that "plans are underway" to eliminate the odor to make the move of Lincoln Par palatable to park visitors across the sewer plant five years from now.
In the PUB website, Greenfield says that the hydrogen sulfide that causes the stench can be eliminating by simply covering the channels where the rushing wastewaters stir the foul odors and sends them into the air. The next step is to channel the waste waters into biological towers containing microorganisms that feast on the hydrogen sulfide thereby eliminating 95 percent of the smell, they claim.
The plants to improve the south sewer plant are (you guessed it) "well underway" and should be finished by the end of 2015, after the May election.
With the "plans well underway" to treat the stench, why doesn't the city convince the UT System that the property across from the sewer plant is OK according to the District 1 commissioner and the PUB administrators and public relations guys?
If there is no problem with the smell, why move the park?
And if it was OK with Longoria for "his people" to bear the stench for the past 12 years he's been commissioner, why did he and the city move so quickly when the UT System complained that their sensitivities were injured by the stink and refused the parcel of land?
Who the hell do they represent?
Running in the District 1 race against Little Ricky are Michael Gonzalez and Roman Perez.