Amid the worst environmental racism still heaped on vulnerable Dallas residents, Paul Quinn College joins the fight
Amid the worst environmental racism still heaped on vulnerable Dallas residents, Paul Quinn College joins the fight
How its new Urban Research Initiative is helping neighbors and advocates trying to rid Floral Farms of a legacy of Shingle Mountain and other industrial hazards.
Five-year-old David Rojas rides his bike in front of his family s home on Bird Lane in the Floral Farms neighborhood of southeast Dallas. Eighteen-wheelers and other commercial trucks use the narrow street many times daily to get to an industrial recycling and waste disposal site on Bird Lane.(Lola Gomez / Staff Photographer)
They remember a different time in Dallas, when, for about two decades, “residents had a string of thoughtful, sincere and righteously angry advocates who served on their City Council.”
Former Mayor Laura Miller stopped over a dozen coal plants from being built during the administration of Gov. Rick Perry and implemented the first green procurement ordinance in the region. Former City Council member Angela Hunt hunted down waste, corruption and “staff shenanigans.”
Then, there were former City Council members Scott Griggs, Philip Kingston and Mark Clayton who helped defeat the Trinity Toll Road and gas drilling prospects in Dallas.
“Sometimes they fought their council opponents directly. Sometimes they made sure documents that were never supposed to see the light of day got their own spotlight,” the post read. “You knew these partisans would find a way to advance the cause. Because that cause was why they wanted to serve.”
When Raul Reyes Jr. steps out of his home, he can smell a burning stench emanating from the GAF asphalt shingle factory that’s been in West Dallas since he was a kid. With data reported to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), Reyes can tell it’s not just a smell in the air. It’s pollution. The plant in West Dallas is the largest industrial sulfur dioxide polluter in the whole county, according to the state of Texas 2019 official emissions inventory.
The data are compiled and released by TCEQ every year but are not widely distributed or mapped out.
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As Dallas works to move the mountain and get through its lawsuit with Jackson, neighborhood residents are trying to ensure that another environmental disaster doesn’t end up right outside their windows. But, they say the city isn’t listening to them. We just want our community to be green again, so we can enjoy our animals, our pets and be able to grow us and feel what it’s like to have a garden, Jackson said. Jackson is also the president of Southern Sector Rising, a nonprofit that deals with systemic racism in Dallas’ zoning practice.
There were gaps in city of Dallas zoning changes made throughout the ’80s, which were intended to protect people from hazardous industrial uses. But the measures left out and damaged majority non-white neighborhoods. As a result, land next to these residential areas became industrialized.