MIDLAND COUNTY, Texas — Monday morning at Midland County Commissioner's Court, commissioners approved an agreement brought forth by Judge Terry Johnson.
The agreement was for Midland County to use Ector County's cold storage to store bodies until Midland's new cold storage is built in the the coming months.
"Discussion started with our county judge, them getting together and coming up with a plan which they presented in court today so that’s going to help us out until we get this one up started," said Eddie Melendez, Director of Facilities and Operations.
Since Midland County hasn't ever had their own storage, they usually outsourced locally but are now focused on doing in-house. They say this is because it will save the county more money.
"It was a local vendor that did all this work for us that the county hired and has been doing it to my understanding for many years, but moving forward and doing things more efficient and saving taxpayer dollars we’re going to start to in-house," said Melendez.
This cold storage will cost around $90,000 and is expected to be completed in about 12-14 weeks.
"It’s about a 12-week process and that’s on a good time, I’m thinking 14 weeks at the most. It’ll take 12 weeks to build they’ll come into our facility. There’s some prerequisites we have to do in our facility to make sure we’re ready for that," said Melendez.
Midland County plans on using the same company as Ector County to build this cold storage. It will be located at 509 Lorraine St., across the street from the Courthouse.