West Dallas’ long history of successful grassroots organizing is proving key in the ongoing fight towards environmental justice and in the face of new threats brought on by green gentrification.
by Helen Cole, Raul Reyes, Jr. and Kathryn Bazan
In the 1980s, residents of West Dallas successfully fought for the closure of the RSR Corporation plant, which had been polluting the neighborhood for over 50 years with emissions and battery chips contaminated with exceeding levels of lead. In the 1990s, they once again succeeded in having the closed plant declared a superfund site—a designation from the US Environmental Protection Agency—demanding action to remediate the lasting pollution caused by the plant’s reckless practices. As in many other cases of environmental injustices, the affected communities that led the fight for the closure and clean-up of the plant were mostly Black and Brown. Fast-forward to the opening of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, the development of luxury complexes like Trinity Groves and the proposed Trinity River Corridor Project that would include the Harold Simmons Park—and we see that West Dallas follows the same green gentrification trends observed in other EJ communities. The struggle experienced in West Dallas highlights the continuous and relentless efforts of long-term residents in fighting environmental injustices even as they are threatened by new trends such as rising costs of living and the threat of eviction. While pollution from remaining industries continues to threaten the health of local residents, the area’s long history of successful grassroots organizing is proving key in the ongoing fight towards justice.
Recent activity in West Dallas reveals a pattern in heavily polluted areas that later experience green gentrification. On July 29, 2021—over 40 years after the initial effort to close the RSR plant began—residents of West Dallas won the right to a hearing against a request for a federal air permit renewal by GAF Materials Corporation, one of the largest providers of roofing in the US with seven decades of presence in the West Dallas community. While roofing is an essential element of quality housing and touted by GAF for its role in in increasing resilience to climate change emergencies, its production has a waste by-product of particulate matter at PM2.5 and PM10 Sulfur Dioxide (SO2). GAF emits over 260 tons per year of such pollutants into the air of West Dallas, increasing the risk of asthma, lung and heart disease among vulnerable groups, eye, nose and throat irritation, as well as generating acoustic pollution and the ever-present odor of rotten eggs and burnt tires emitted from the plant. Low-income and minority residents are more likely to experience the negative results of such production that have been under-monitored for decades.
Photo via Dallas Morning News
Whether GAF would be able to renew its five-year permit presented the opportunity for residents to have their concerns heard by authorities. Through community led monitoring, the West Dallas community along with environmental groups were finally able to submit monitoring results as part of the record and evidence that the plant had been violating WHO and EPA standards. Grassroots efforts by groups such as Neighborhood Self-Defense Project, Dallas Sierra Club, Downwinders at Risk, Legal Aid of Northwest Texas and West Dallas 1 collaborated to gather accurate emissions data for the plant by installing additional monitoring stations—paid for by environmental groups but manned and supported by the residents themselves—to measure the excessive levels of air pollution. In addition, residents were able to investigate public records, finding evidence that GAF was also violating several zoning ordinances.
These methods are very similar to the approach used in the 80s and 90s against the RSR lead plant, during which residents collected samples from their own homes to have them tested for lead. Although an official complaint system had been in place, few reports about the GAF plant had been received, which organizers attribute to a lack of awareness of the system or a lack of faith in the system given the history of injustice. This highlights the essential role of grassroots organizations in environmental justice struggles.
Meanwhile, less than a mile away, property values continue to soar and new luxury developments continue to expand. The restaurants and art district at Trinity Groves continue to attract new white residents and wealthy visitors from around the city. Such changes have not necessarily improved the living conditions in the neighborhood for long-term residents, who instead are threatened by rising housing costs, eviction, and changes to social networks—all conditions that threaten the mental and physical health of residents. Rather than replacing traditional health threats caused by higher levels of pollution, flooding and social conditions such as widespread poverty and violence, these new exposures create compounding and overlapping threats to health and quality of life.
The former Thomas Edison School on the left, the new Argos concrete plant on the right, and the former location of the lead smelting plant, now a superfund site, in the foreground. Photo by Helen Cole
The development occurring near the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge has also contributed to uneven environmental conditions within the neighborhood. In 2016 the Argos concrete plant that once stood where the bridge now connects to West Dallas was relocated further into the neighborhood, next to the former RSR plant and behind the local middle school, which was later closed due to its proximity to the cement plant, health concerns and poor educational testing results. The new site sits across the street from the former location of the largest public housing project in the country that was finally closed in the late 1990s due to poor conditions and the result of a discrimination law suit, and just one block from the GAF plant. In another example, the regulatory state agency Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) received a permit application for a 23rd concrete batch plant within West Dallas in July, a temporary plant on Singleton Boulevard that will be located within a mile of six other existing plants, including the relocated Argos plant. Polluting industries have further concentrated in areas that are not yet gentrified, while clean-up efforts continue in the gentrified area near the new luxury condo developments.
The persistence of and emergence of new patterns of injustices in West Dallas is not unique—many communities of color in major urban centers throughout the US and beyond have similar never-ending and overlapping cycles of environmental racism, non-inclusive economic development, redlining and disfranchisement. All of these conditions have a common denominator: systemic racism fueling unfair and inequitable practices and processes.
The West Dallas community now awaits the decision from TCEQ, most likely granting GAF another five years in the neighborhood. Nevertheless, the West Dallas community represents an awakening in communities of color that are taking action against injustice by gathering data, organizing, strategic planning, coalition-building and most importantly, taking ownership of their community’s future.
Top photo via Dallas Morning News
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