Texas air wares.

From the air, Gibraltar Chemical Resources, Inc. resembles a ballfield clearing in the yellow pine forests of east Texas, scraped down to red dirt and crowded with steel sheds and smooth white cannister tanks. It lies in rural Winona, where many people raise cows or rose bushes for a living. Started in 1982, Gibraltar now handles 25 million gallons of hazardous waste a year from such sources as Fortune 500 electronics companies, small paint shops and U.S. military bases. It recycles solvents, mixes other chemicals as fuel for cement kilns, and pumps fluid wastes almost a mile down an injection well. Government agencies approve of Gibraltar's work, but some townspeople accuse the company of chemical warfare.

Phyllis Glazer moved to Winona in 1988, advised by doctors to retreat to the country after she had been bedridden for three years in Dallas. On a 2,300 acre ranch, she raised exotic animals like elk, zebras and small deer for fun. In October 1991, while driving her son to school, she passed through an orange-brown cloud escaping the Gibraltar gate, and suffered a chemical burn like strep throat. Many residents have been wounded by the noxious air, enduring bloody noses, respiratory wheezes, even cancer. From 1982 to 1992, Texas regulators heard over 100 complaints about repugnant odors and fined Gibraltar over $90,000. But Glazer had a fortune to spend against the company, the inheritance from her father who came to the U.S. after losing his family in the Holocaust. "He would have been very happy to see his money used to save human lives," she says. Glazer founded a group called Mothers Organized to Stop Environmental Sins (MOSES). For her troubles, she has had animals mutilated and hung on her fence and her house targeted in drive-by shootings.

In September 1993, the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Committee took the unprecedented step of shutting Gibraltar for several days so that outside experts could help improve its operations. The bad publicity has hurt business, admits V.P. James Mobley: revenues have dropped by 40 percent. He adds that the plant has added pollution control equipment and quit accepting some wastes to combat the odors. But some in Winona say the stench continues. And so does the bitter political atmosphere. One woman who lives near the plant claims that a chemical truck driver nearly rammed her car when she went looking for the source of a smell that had given her son a bloody nose. Until permanent air monitors are installed around Gibraltar to determine what's really in the air, this Texas dog fight will continue. Contact: MOSES, 15115 Road, 16E, Winona, TX 75792/[phone].