How West Dallas is leaving a history of environmental racism in the dust
West Dallas’ environmental justice movement is transforming the neighborhood. After decades of fighting for a voice, the community is moving heavy industry away from their homes — fast.
In the past year, the city ordered two concrete batch plants to close. On May 11, City Hall will consider a new approach to permitting these plants requiring a public hearing for each one. Residents and city officials agree that the key to success has been the strength, leadership, and experience within the community.
“West Dallas shows up,” says Kathryn Bazan, chair of the Dallas Environmental Commission. She has been working in partnership with West Dallas 1 to address environmental concerns since March 2021. “I have attended major policy revision meetings that would have 30-some speakers from the entire state show up. You get that many from West Dallas for the batch plant hearings. The community is highly engaged, which I think is why we have gotten so much traction on making these policy changes.”
Sarah Ashitey lives in the West Dallas neighborhood of Gilbert-Emory. She remembers feeling discouraged at a City Council meeting where she protested roofing manufacturer GAF’s presence in West Dallas. Residents have been making their voices heard at City Council sessions for years, and especially seizing on the public comment period when a polluter’s operating permit is up for renewal.
But denying a permit is a long process, and it’s hard to know how effective community efforts are in the interim. Especially when the larger fight against industrial polluters next to people’s homes has been going on for decades.
“We came out of it knowing our fight was not going to be easy, but Debbie Solis lifted our spirits,” Ashitey says. “She was able to win a case before. We felt like it was a battle we already lost, but she was the one who said, ‘No, this is possible.”
Sure enough, Solis, who has lived in West Dallas for 61 years, says recent meetings have been going very well.
“We need to make sure we do our part. We need to get more people involved and give the community information. That’s what was missing in the past,” Solis says. “In public meetings, everyone in that room is together. We don’t know each other sometimes, but we’re getting to know them more and better as we continue to show up.”
Solis believes a big part of the forward momentum has been the support of Councilman Omar Narvaez. The community has been empowered to vote for the right people in office, work with commissioners who live in the neighborhood, and stay informed about permit renewals and applications. This is what gives residents a voice, she says.
Paula Hutchison, a retired Navy Veteran born, raised, and still living in West Dallas, sees serious momentum in grassroots community organizing to match.
“Until people had leadership from organizations like the Sierra Club, Downwinders at Risk, and acquainted themselves with leadership from West Dallas, they didn’t feel like they had a chance to say anything,” Hutchison says. “West Dallas 1 put one big foot forward as an organization to let City Hall know — and the EPA and business owners know — that we no longer want that in our environment.
“Now that I’m the elder adult in my community, I see that it was the elders who stood up and became leaders across issues in West Dallas. Issues like equal rights, housing, and education, all fought in the same vein,” she continues. “It’s a force now that won’t lay down and accept any explanation for these kinds of actions.”
The history of West Dallas is rife with institutionalized racism. Now proactive policy changes are in the works because the power to shape the community is shifting. Dallas Free Press created a timeline to show how West Dallas today is grappling with problems with century old roots — and to show just how quickly things are changing.
West Dallas’ origins in environmental racism
April 28, 1908 – Cement City, a small company town structured around the Texas Portland Cement Company, is incorporated.
Workers suffer extreme job hazards: bones shattered by the grinding of gears, limbs caught in equipment, a worker falling into a bin and suffocating under crushed rock. Dust and smog hang in the air and settle in well water. Illnesses such as tuberculosis and typhoid spread fast.
As long as it is separate from the city of Dallas, Cement City and much of the area that will become West Dallas lack basic facilities like gas, electricity and sewers. Dallas’ presence is mostly in the piles of waste cityfolk dump on and near people’s homes.
The majority of worker-residents are Mexican, many of whom immigrated to escape the Mexican Revolution. The company segregates housing based on race into villages for Mexican, Black, and white people. Cement City’s company housing is removed by 1959.
“The unique location of this Company’s mill, just outside the corporate limits of Dallas, assures a low tax rate on this Company’s property permanently, while the mill site, being so close at hand and directly connected with both Dallas and Ft. Worth … places the company in a position to easily procure and retain the common labor and high class artisans necessary to keep the plant in constant and uninterrupted operation.”
Southwestern States Portland Cement Company Prospectus, Southwestern States Portland Cement Co 1907.
Killing the lead smelter
1934 – Murph Metals, later acquired by RSR, opens a lead smelter on Westmoreland Road. The facility melts batteries and scrap metal to isolate lead. The chemical waste from the process forms toxic byproducts that the company dumps in nearby landfills. Sometimes, they also dump them around people’s homes. Battery casings with high lead levels are used to fill yards and driveways.
June 25, 1946 – The Ruberoid Company sets up a plant in West Dallas to manufacture roofing materials. They eventually merge with what is today known as GAF.
1954 – What is now the neighborhood of West Dallas is incorporated into the city of Dallas.
1956 – The Dallas Housing Authority builds the West Dallas Housing Projects after tearing down 800 homes as part of a “slum clearance” effort.
City officials are facing a burning question: Where could Dallas’ Black residents live without upsetting white people? Their answer is public housing. They see annexing West Dallas as an opportunity to relieve the consequences of racism.
The West Dallas Housing Projects offer 1,500 units for black residents; 1,500 units for white residents; and 500 units for Mexican residents. The complex is just 50 feet from the lead smelter’s property line—and directly downwind from its fumes. The units end up primarily occupied by Black residents. White people avoid the area because of “environmental disadvantages, such as odors, smoke and dust from neighboring industrial plants.”
May, 1974 – The City of Dallas sues RSR and two lead smelters operating in South Dallas because their emissions exceed standards set by the city’s lead ordinance. Dallas established these standards six years prior but never enforced them. The lead smelter companies agree to pay $35,000 in fines and implement pollution controls.
October 16, 1974 – The City Council passes an ordinance requiring that smelters now need a Specific Use Permit to operate.
June 1, 1983 – The Dallas Morning News breaks the news that an EPA study confirms West Dallas residents have lead poisoning. The Dallas Housing Authority recommends evacuating the closest of the smelter’s neighbors. Federal officials received