Joppa shouldn t have to fight this hard for cleaner air dallasnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dallasnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Invitations were sent out to people in the Joppa community to form a community oversight committee for the project. At the time it was announced, Adam Bazaldua, the Dallas City Council member who represents Joppa, applauded Downwinders and Joppa resident Temeckia Derrough for helping make the project happen. Derrough is also the founder of the Joppa Freedman’s Town Association.
Now, Derrough said she feels she and another community member are being excluded from the project. “We feel our rights are being violated,” she said. She blames Downwinders, but the group says Derrough has representation on the committee.
Her relationship with the local environmental group began when she was fighting the development of a concrete batch plant in Joppa in 2018. Downwinders reached out to her to help. She said they began doing a lot of research on the community and educating them about the environment.
Back in the ’90s, if you had asked Rita Beving if Dallas would ever pass a climate plan, she would have laughed and said “good luck.” But the City Council passed Dallas first Comprehensive Environmental and Climate Action Plan last year.
The plan lays out 97 actions the city can take to help reach eight climate-related goals, including making buildings more efficient and ensuring communities breathe clean air. The city s Office of Environmental Quality is largely in charge of the plan s implementation. If everything goes according to that plan, Dallas will be carbon neutral by 2050, meeting a goal set out by the Paris Climate Accord.