Tootsie Herndon

Spofford | Politician

Mrs. Herndon was the mayor pro-tem of Spofford, a community south of Brackettville in the Trans-Pecos of west Texas. She was involved in a number of efforts to protect this part of the state, particularly the precious groundwater that underlies these arid lands. In the early 1990s, she and Citizens Against a Radioactive Environment successfully built an alliance with the government of Mexico to stop a proposal by Texcor to construct a low-level radioactive waste site near Spofford that would have been within the 62-mile border strip protected under the La Paz Agreement. In the mid-1990s, Adobe Eco-Systems proposed a 213-acre, 100′-tall landfill to take up to 5000 tons per day in municipal and industrial waste from border maquilla factories. This landfill was proposed for the same site as the Texcor low-level radioactive waste facility. It too was defeated by Mrs. Herndon and local grassroots opponents. She also served on the board of the Kinney County Groundwater Conservation District. Landowners and water marketers filed applications to pump 100,000 acre-feet of groundwater from the Edwards, Edwards-Trinity, and Austin Chalk aquifers for sale to San Antonio and other growing municipalities. Mrs. Hudson and others on the District board sought to limit these applications because they appear to exceed historic uses on which the permits are calculated (seven times current use), and could drain local aquifers, threatening the life and economy of Trans-Pecos towns.