While I love History, I find Harlingen reminds me of how things were 40 years ago, in regard to the City’s failure to manage recycling and the mowing and maintenance of our green spaces.
Why, still, no curb side recycling? Even towns in Indiana have that.
If a person places the wrong type of object in the bin, they receive a little cardboard notice with instructions, in English and Spanish.
When I recently visited our recycling facility, the worker informed me that we do not take all types of plastic, though formerly they had.
Most of our yoghurt containers and other items are in #5 plastic containers (labeled on bottoms of containers in a little triangle).
These must be dumped in a landfill, and dry out to become the crispy plastic bits which kill so many sea birds and fish when they blow out to the Gulf.
Our landfills also sometimes contain terrible toxins like vials of Mercury, which is just bulldozed into the soil.
This eventually will contaminate the waters needed to sustain life, with horrible effects in genetic damage and other illness.
Are we so busy tweeting insults and paying attention to poor sources of information that we fail to gather
information about how to live well together as a community?
We ARE part of Nature, not separate from it. Why, then, do we not train our City workers (don’t fire them, but retrain them!) to help prevent erosion from the banks of our lovely canals, instead of paying them to create dust by “mowing the dirt” caused by drought and a failure to be informed on the well-known ways to prevent erosion, viz., allowing small shrubs and trees to grow, not mowing too short, … not mowing some areas at all (As in Highway Depts., who often encourage wildflowers to grow, and mow perhaps once a year.
Surely if the Texas State Highways can do it, Harlingen’s City government can get up to date.
Also, we have expert Master Naturalists who do lovely things with Ramsey Park (Arroyo Colorado World Birding Center) on 499 Loop, with some help from City workers, since it’s a City Park.
Why not make use of their expertise and volunteers to plant appropriate native trees and shrubs, instead of those requiring more water, care, and money?
These native plants, which where here before white people were, survive droughts and freezes, which we do have in Harlingen.
Native trees like Cedar Elm and Anacua ought to be planted along bike paths, instead of the not-reallynative Live Oaks, native only to a part of Starr County, and farther north.
Grass does not need mowing so often, and mulching
and wildflowers need to be encouraged, not ignorantly and harmfully removed, esp. Milkweeds of various types, so the Monarch Butterflies have a chance at survival.
We attract at least 350 million dollars to this region in eco-tourism dollars.
But they don’t like to see eroding canal banks, and 50% fewer birds and butterflies. It is not an insult to our City workers to retrain them in recognizing and protecting our natural heritage, the native plants.
It is a sign of our respect for their minds and abilities to learn, as we all must do, and make the appropriate changes for the good of all, including ourselves.
Fewer herbicides and pesticides and huge mowers, and more gentle and effective methods of parks and bikepath management are required.
Let’s get up into at least the 20th Century here, Harlingen.
Many of our City workers probably had an Abuela who knew all the native plants, as most of my students did.
So, let’s get a little bit greener and save money and time, as well as lots of great birds, butterflies, and plants.
Thanks for your attention to this matter.
Sarah Merrill Harlingen
