Harris County has sued to close the Hawthorn Park landfill. The methane readings it cites go back to at least 2002.

Harris County has gone to federal court to force the permanent closure of the Hawthorn Park landfill, which sits against the Carverdale neighborhood in northwest Houston. The county attorney says the county has never once been allowed onto the property to test for pollutants, and the methane readings the county cites start in 2002.

Why it matters

A permitted construction and demolition landfill sits next to a neighborhood where some residents have lived more than four decades. The site has taken almost nothing for years, but the permit does not expire, so nothing triggers the capping, groundwater sampling and long term monitoring that a formal closure would require.

If the county wins, the operator pays for closure and monitoring. If nothing happens, the site stays in the same condition it has been in since 2016, and the testing the residents are asking for does not happen.

By the numbers

1977, the year waste disposal began at the site. The current permit dates to 1994, per Waste Dive. The site was a sand mine first and predates modern federal landfill rules.
Nearly 130 acres permitted on a 171 acre site, per Waste Dive. KPRC 2 describes the landfill as covering more than 150 acres. The two figures are not the same and neither outlet reconciles them.
2016, the year the landfill reached functional capacity, per Waste Dive. It has not closed.
2002, the earliest year in the pattern of property line methane exceedances the county cites.
January 2024, when the operator withdrew its expansion request after opposition from the county, residents and a developer, and asked to change its management plan to install a gas interceptor trench.
July 14, 2026, the date County Attorney Abbie Kamin announced a notice of intent to sue, served on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the EPA and Waste Management. The federal suit followed.
Investigation 2117248, TCEQ’s November 12, 2025 investigation into the alleged denial of county investigators’ access to the site. KPRC 2 reports it was marked resolved on August 5, 2026 after the county asked to voluntarily dismiss its claim without prejudice. Resolved there means withdrawn, not decided.
Chlorobenzene, barium and arsenic, the contaminants the county says are in nearby groundwater. Those are allegations in a filed case, not findings.

What the coverage buried

KPRC 2’s story does the work most do not. It pulled the TCEQ investigation record, printed its own caveat that the resolution neither proves nor disproves the access allegation, named the residents instead of quoting a group, and said plainly that the health concerns neighbors describe have not been linked to the landfill.

What no story carries is cost. The county is litigating in federal court under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and no figure has been published for what the county is spending to do it. The only item on Thursday’s agenda that could cover it, item 174, reference 26-6689, authorizes legal action and litigation expenses in various cases in county courts, district courts, the Texas Court of Appeals and U.S. District Court. It names no case and no amount.

The other side

Waste Management’s position, given in July, is that the facility operates under a TCEQ permit and is monitored, inspected and tested by both the company and the state. It declined to comment on the pending suit. That is a real answer. A permitted site inspected by its regulator is not an unregulated site, and the county is asking a federal judge to push toward closure a state permit the state has not moved to pull.

The record is the answer to it. TCEQ has had property line methane data since at least 2002, the site has been at capacity since 2016, and the one investigation into whether the county could get on the property to test ended because a claim was withdrawn. Twenty-four years of readings and a regulator that has not closed the file is the case for a federal judge looking at it instead.

What to watch

The federal docket for Harris County’s complaint against USA Waste of Texas Landfills Inc. The county attorney’s office has not published a case number.
Whether TCEQ acts on the permit on its own, or waits for the court.
Whether the county obtains an order letting its investigators on the property to sample.
Thursday’s agenda, item 174, and any later item naming outside counsel in this case.

Bottom line

The residents want testing and closure. The county wants the same thing, in court, 24 years after the first readings it cites. Nothing here is decided, and the operator is entitled to the presumption that it has complied with its permit. The question worth asking on Thursday is not whether the county is right about the methane. It is why the agency holding both the permit and the data has not answered it.

Sources

Editorial