EPA left West Dallas neighbors in the dark about a promised environmental justice study

In November 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency packed a room at the West Dallas Multipurpose Center with neighbors and members of the press to announce a major project in West Dallas:

For the first time, the EPA would conduct a “cumulative impact study” in the region, sampling air, water and soil pollution in neighborhoods that have long said they suffer decades of compounding environmental injustices. 

But almost a year and a half later, the results of the study, formally dubbed the Cumulative Impact Assessment Pilot Project, have never been released, and community advocates involved with the project never received an official response from the agency about its status. 

Cumulative Impacts Assessment — Pilot Project Background & Project Outline by Dallas Free Press on Scribd

“The hope was that the study would help us understand the environment that we live in, and influence decision makers to act,” says Janie Cisneros, the founder of Singleton United, who has been fighting for environmental justice in her West Dallas neighborhood for years.

Cisneros was involved in the original conversations about the study, but suddenly found herself out of the loop, months into the project, with no clarity about the status of the report or whether community members would get to see the results of the sampling. 

“We haven’t received any official word,” she says. “There’s a lot of pain and hurt in this community because we were not prioritized, and clearly we still aren’t being prioritized.” 

The EPA was supposed to release the study’s results and hold public meetings by July 2024. This March, EPA’s Region 6 spokesman Joseph Robledo told Dallas Free Press, “At this time, we do not have additional information to share.”

Missing: EPA data and methodologies for West Dallas ‘cumulative impact’ study

To try to find out what happened, Dallas Free Press filed public records requests with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the City of Dallas, asking for communication between the agencies and EPA on the study’s content and publication date. TCEQ records reveal that commission staff reviewed the EPA’s findings and data. The City of Dallas provided only one email thread between an EPA employee and City staff discussing a potential new air monitor installation in Joppa last February. The City’s Office of Environmental Quality did not respond to an additional request for comment. 

Public records show that the EPA presented a PowerPoint to TCEQ on Aug. 6, 2024. The slides indicate that the collection of air pollution sampling was nearly complete, but do not provide detailed results or methodologies. The section on soil sampling indicates that the EPA collected only nine soil samples for the study over just three days in March 2024.

EPA Cumulative Impact Slides (08-06-24) by Dallas Free Press on Scribd

According to hand-written notes by a TCEQ employee, dated Aug. 6, 2024, the EPA’s sampling didn’t find noticeable levels of mercury in fish tissue samples — but it also may not have collected enough samples to formulate a conclusion. West Dallas neighbors, including Cisneros, who convened at Fish Trap Lake the day the EPA cast their nets, noted that only one fish was caught that day, and nothing in public records indicates any further sampling.

According to the notes, the agency also appears to have collected air samples from the SharedAirDFW monitoring network — a community-funded system that was set up by nonprofits and universities in the area precisely because the state and federal governments’ air monitors don’t provide an adequate picture. A spokesperson with TCEQ said that the agency could not clarify or confirm if other monitors were used in the study, as EPA staff did not provide modeling files or supporting documents.

The air monitoring system is run jointly by the environmental justice group Downwinders at Risk, the University of Texas at Dallas, Paul Quinn College and Dallas College. The network received additional funding from the EPA and the National Science Foundation, as well as private foundations and local governments. 

“I wasn’t aware that they [the EPA] were using that data source,” says Caleb Roberts, the executive director of Downwinders at Risk.

While Downwinders’ partnership strives to collect high quality data, it can’t spend thousands of dollars for regulatory-level monitors used by government agencies.

“I would expect the EPA to use their own methods,” Roberts says. “It seems like they didn’t give much effort, and not that the data was insignificant.”

No ‘leg to stand on’ for community environmental advocates

The EPA’s cumulative impact study was supposed to bolster community-funded research that groups like Downwinders at Risk and Singleton United have been conducting on their own, he adds. Downwinders was planning to release its own public health study, in partnership with Texas A&M, after the EPA published its cumulative impact study. 

“For me to go to the City of Dallas and say, ‘The water is bad, the air is bad, the soil is bad’ — the burden of proof is on me,” says Misti O’Quinn, a community organizer with the Dallas chapter of the Sierra Club. “It shouldn’t be that way. To have data to point to, to say, ‘Hey, [the EPA] tested the water, and this is a problem,’ by default, that puts the burden on the City or TCEQ. Having that data is a leg to stand on.” 

TCEQ & EPA Cumulative Impacts Meeting Notes (08-06-2024) by Dallas Free Press on Scribd

TCEQ’s records seem to suggest that as late as August, there were still plans to release the report to the public, with a web page that would host four separate reports on soil, air and water pollution, plus the fish tissue sampling.

“Even if they didn’t find anything, in a report they’d have to put their methodology there,” Roberts says. “Those things are open to scrutiny — but [now], even the question of how they got this data is not being shared with the community.” 

A source with knowledge of the study confirmed that there were issues with the sampling and data collection. The study fell short of its goal to provide a truly cumulative picture of environmental pollution in West Dallas.

Environmental justice lagged, even before President Trump

In February, the Trump administration wreaked havoc as it fired thousands of federal employees and froze budgets. In Dallas, some EPA employees have resigned or found new jobs before their positions were eliminated; it’s unclear whether those jobs may be reinstated later. 

It seems unlikely that the EPA Region 6 office will receive additional funds to complete the study, as the new administration has deleted data on environmental justice and attempted to withhold funds related to equity and justice. 

But environmental advocates say that the mishaps and lack of transparency aren’t solely related to the election and its consequences. After all, the study was supposed to be released well before any change in administration. Dr. Earthea Nance was appointed to lead EPA’s Region 6 office by President Biden. She is widely recognized as an environmental justice advocate. 

Nance’s replacement, Scott Mason, was formerly the deputy energy secretary of Oklahoma. Prior to the November presidential election, he collaborated with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, on writing the manifesto of slashing government budgets and agencies, which President Trump is now enacting. According to the Texas Tribune, that document recommends eliminating the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance, altogether.  

“I think that Dr. Nance really did want to do the right thing,” O’Quinn says. “We had plenty of conversations with her, and with staff, but there was a lot of bureaucratic red tape.” 

The lack of transparency over the release of the study has strained the working relationships that community organizations had with the office.

“I wouldn’t say that it had to do with national politics — it’s local politics,” Cisneros says. “The big question we should be asking is, what is it that the EPA didn’t want people to know? If the presentation wasn’t ready, why? What was the friction?”