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Blue Ridge Mountain


Urbannizer

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That gonna-be-178-ft.-high pile of trash going up across the street from Shadow Creek Ranch? Nothing a little smart landscaping can't handle. Rice architecture grad student Lysle Oliveros's proposal for the Blue Ridge Landfill makes for a rockin' video. And Houston needs a mountain, anyway.

http://swamplot.com/garbage-playground-dev...05-12/#comments

Video with renderings here:

http://vimeo.com/4384401

Does anyone know more about this?

Edited by UpuPUp!
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Blue Ridge?? That's insulting to NC. I like Houston and everything, but can't they come up with an original name rather than copping a name from one of the most beautiful ranges in the country?

The Blue Ridge name is relevant to the area. Our office is down there and we do volunteer stuff for Blue Ridge Elementary - not sure if there are other things called Blue Ridge.

This topic is about a proposal to turn the landfill into a Mountain, That topic you posted is about the proposed landfill expansion.

There's a difference.

Ok...RELATED topic, not duplicate.

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The Blue Ridge name is relevant to the area. Our office is down there and we do volunteer stuff for Blue Ridge Elementary - not sure if there are other things called Blue Ridge.

Ok...RELATED topic, not duplicate.

The Blue Ridge Prison Farm was located there also.

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I believe it is in Pearland.

West of Pearland. So, just outside of nothing, next to the mud between the chinese tallow trees.

There's also a good-sized antenna farm out there.

Is it called the Blue Ridge antenna farm? Yeah that is my favorite thing down here. All kinds of fun blinking lights and awesome signal/reception.

Google says there's a couple of churches and a park named Blue Ridge.

Edited by 20thStDad
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West of Pearland. So, just outside of nothing, next to the mud between the chinese tallow trees.

Is it called the Blue Ridge antenna farm? Yeah that is my favorite thing down here. All kinds of fun blinking lights and awesome signal/reception.

Google says there's a couple of churches and a park named Blue Ridge.

It sounds like it's in the middle of nowhere...

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I always thought those antennae were in Stafford. So, in essence, this landfill will be between Pearland and Stafford. Oh great, a nice southerly breeze will bring its funk right over the city.

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I can see one of these mountains northeast of downtown. Looking at maps.live, it is north of Beaumont Hwy 90, east of John Ralston/Greens Bayou and south of Ley. This appears to still be in "production". I wonder if there are plans for it one day. Houston, we have a mountain.

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West of Pearland. So, just outside of nothing, next to the mud between the chinese tallow trees.

Is it called the Blue Ridge antenna farm? Yeah that is my favorite thing down here. All kinds of fun blinking lights and awesome signal/reception.

Google says there's a couple of churches and a park named Blue Ridge.

I vaguely recall having seen a reference to that somewhere on an obscure map a long time ago. Just browsing through aerial photos, I count eight antenna towers which are situated only a little southwest of the Blue Ridge School, and on both sides of the Fort Bend Toll Road.

And scanning through USGS topo maps, I can see that Blue Ridge gets its name because there's a hill that peaks out at a 94-foot elevation at the intersection of McHard Rd. (FM 2334) and Moffitt Ln. It looks to be about 15 to 20 feet above the mean elevation of the rest of that part of Fort Bend County. Given the enormous concentration of oil and gas rigs out there in what is labeled on the map as the Blue Ridge Oil Field, I'm guessing with a fair bit of confidence that the protrusion is a salt dome. And actually, given that that area is probably so environmentally contaminated already that the big landowners wouldn't dare allow future residential development on it for fear of getting slapped with a liability suit, it strikes me that this is an ideal place for a landfill or other 'dirty' industry. Bring it on.

Edited by TheNiche
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It sounds like it's in the middle of nowhere...

We actually have several places in our region that are like this. One is the Pierce Junction area, just south of 610, and there are another couple of spots located off of the Gulf Freeway in between Pasadena and Clear Lake City.

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Landfills stink -- even after they're closed. What are they going to do with the landfill gas collection system? Have all of the gas wells go to a piping system, then cover THAT with grass, then burn the gas 1/2 mile away?

Landfills sink too. A landfill can settle anywhere from 10-30% depending on what kind of waste it had and how the landfill was operated. How will they build anything on top of this hill?

It seems more graphic design than engineering.

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Landfills stink -- even after they're closed. What are they going to do with the landfill gas collection system? Have all of the gas wells go to a piping system, then cover THAT with grass, then burn the gas 1/2 mile away?

Landfills sink too. A landfill can settle anywhere from 10-30% depending on what kind of waste it had and how the landfill was operated. How will they build anything on top of this hill?

It seems more graphic design than engineering.

Ever heard of Wildcat Golf Club? It was a former landfill that has been converted into a golf course. Makes for some of the best views of Houston's skylines that there ever were, and it doesn't stink. Somehow, they even managed to build a club house on it.

EDIT: But you're right, the concept shown on Swamplot is just an architecture student's class project or something, not a serious proposal. Never mistake an architect for an engineer, or vice versa.

Edited by TheNiche
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What are they going to do with the landfill gas collection system? Have all of the gas wells go to a piping system, then cover THAT with grass, then burn the gas 1/2 mile away?

I'm aware of a company that's collecting the landfill gas and piping it to the vicinity of Texas City to provide additional power to refineries. I believe the gas being collected is from the landfills next to Shadow Creek Ranch.

Pretty good use of this "resource" if you ask me.

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Ever heard of Wildcat Golf Club? It was a former landfill that has been converted into a golf course. Makes for some of the best views of Houston's skylines that there ever were, and it doesn't stink. Somehow, they even managed to build a club house on it.

EDIT: But you're right, the concept shown on Swamplot is just an architecture student's class project or something, not a serious proposal. Never mistake an architect for an engineer, or vice versa.

So that whole video is just a thesis and not really going to happen? This would be a sweet project.

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So that whole video is just a thesis and not really going to happen? This would be a sweet project.

If this were really a going concern, there would've been a concerted marketing campaign. We wouldn't have heard about it this way. And typically the folks that put those together don't get any personal "on-air" recognition for it.

That's not to say that the landfill isn't going to happen, just that the concepts proposed in the video aren't part of that.

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And scanning through USGS topo maps, I can see that Blue Ridge gets its name because there's a hill that peaks out at a 94-foot elevation at the intersection of McHard Rd. (FM 2334) and Moffitt Ln. It looks to be about 15 to 20 feet above the mean elevation of the rest of that part of Fort Bend County.

As flat as Houston is, I always thought that natural rise was a little weird. I mean, you're driving up a hill in a pasture with the Williams nee Transco Tower in plain view to your north, that always seemed a little odd as I would expect a rise like that on a rural wooded road in Waller County. You usually don't see hills like those in any real frequency until you get about 25-30 miles north of town. I guess that's probably the only natural hill in the Houston City Limits, right?

Edited by JLWM8609
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As flat as Houston is, I always thought that natural rise was a little weird. I mean, you're driving up a hill in a pasture with the Williams nee Transco Tower in plain view to your north, that always seemed a little odd as I would expect a rise like that on a rural wooded road in Waller County. You usually don't see hills like those in any real frequency until you get about 25-30 miles north of town. I guess that's probably the only natural hill in the Houston City Limits, right?

Nope, it's not in the Houston city limits. It's either unincorporated or it might possibly be Missouri City.

I can think of about a dozen salt domes in our metro area. Basically, if you just think about the places where we have large oilfields or where Friendswood Development Corp. (a former subsidiary of Exxon) developed master planned communities such as Friendswood, Clear Lake, or Kingwood, you can figure out where a number of these are located pretty quickly.

Probably the easiest to physically observe is High Island.

EDIT: I found a map of salt domes along the Texas coastal plain, and I count 24 of them in our MSA. I don't think that this map is conclusive, however, because it leaves off several of the ones that I know exist in southeast Harris County. There are probably another half dozen...maybe more.

Edited by TheNiche
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Is it called the Blue Ridge antenna farm? Yeah that is my favorite thing down here. All kinds of fun blinking lights and awesome signal/reception.

The first tower was a candelabra for 2 and 11 a mile or so west of the old 288. In 1980, Senior Road Tower Group was formed by 8 FMs stuck on Shell and Tenneco downtown to build a master antenna so they could escape the ever-growing Houston skyline.

The original location of SRTG was Dewalt, TX, and I think the address of the earlier tower was also given as Dewalt which was near the intersection of 6 and FM 1092. Dewalt has since been absorbed by Missouri City and several other towers have been added.

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If this were really a going concern, there would've been a concerted marketing campaign. We wouldn't have heard about it this way. And typically the folks that put those together don't get any personal "on-air" recognition for it.

That's not to say that the landfill isn't going to happen, just that the concepts proposed in the video aren't part of that.

I guess if anything, some entrepenuer might see this and have the guts to go through with it. Or actually...what kind of person/people would actually do this anyway? Would a landfill company be the only type of people that would undertake this? How else could you make money from it?

...thinking out loud

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I guess if anything, some entrepenuer might see this and have the guts to go through with it. Or actually...what kind of person/people would actually do this anyway? Would a landfill company be the only type of people that would undertake this? How else could you make money from it?

...thinking out loud

The landscaping concept works if and only if the City of Pearland or the Shadow Creek Ranch HOA at least agreed to provide all funding and to drop any lawsuits that they might've been planning and to endorse the project. I'm pretty confident that that would do the trick.

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I dunno... I think a mountain created out of trash would be a constant reminder for all the Shadow Creek residents that they are living next door to a... well... a mountain of trash, the largest mountain of trash in the US in fact.

Definitely wouldn't make me want to start a family there.

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Nope, it's not in the Houston city limits. It's either unincorporated or it might possibly be Missouri City.

I think it is in the city limits, maybe just on the extreme edge. The intersection of McHard Road and Moffit Rd. at the crest of the hill has City of Houston installed green and white street signage. Mo City has those red white and blue signs.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source...2,262.15,,0,0.5

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source...,306.74,,0,6.65

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