The lead smelter in West Dallas is long gone, but the damage it left behind has not been forgotten.
A decades-long struggle over lead contamination continues for some residents, who are still gathering at churches, holding meetings in parks and speaking at City Council meetings about their health.
They want answers. They seek justice. They’re just not sure anyone is listening anymore.
“We hope and pray one day somebody’s going to help us,” said Renea Cooper, who used to live near the smelter.
The smelter opened in the 1930s and extracted lead from spent vehicle batteries and other scrap metal. Environmental regulations didn’t exist during much of the time that the smelter operated at Singleton Boulevard and Westmoreland Road. Measured in the 1970s, lead emissions from the plant were hundreds of times greater than today’s standard. The smelter, last operated by RSR Corp., closed in 1984.
Cleanups in the ’80s and ’90s removed tons of soil contaminated with lead as well as arsenic and cadmium. Legal settlements in 1985 and 1995 awarded more than $35 million to 954 children harmed by lead pollution while living near the plant.
But many more in this low-income, mostly minority neighborhood were exposed to harmful levels of lead. And they haven’t received any help.
“I call it like I see it,” said Luis Sepulveda, a West Dallas native who has spent much of his adult life fighting for his neighbors. “It’s environmental racism.”
Gathering evidence
One evening in March, Sepulveda propped a portable speaker atop his sleek black pickup. He still had to shout into the microphone to be heard over the crowd across from Pinkston High School. More than 100 people stopped by over the next several hours.
The career activist and former justice of the peace explained that he wanted to document the ailments, diseases and deaths that for decades have plagued this neighborhood. The idea is to use the data collected from the thousands of people to lure a law firm willing to take up their cause.
The focus in past lawsuits was on children, who are more susceptible to lead’s health effects. Lead in children has been linked to IQ loss, poor school achievement, and criminal and other behavior problems, as well as cardiovascular, immunological and endocrine effects.
In adults, lead has been shown to increase the risks for a variety of illnesses. But proving that lead caused one person’s specific health problem is difficult, if not impossible.
A storage shed behind Sepulveda’s house holds boxes of photos, newspaper clippings, and radio and TV interviews documenting all that’s happened in the neighborhood, along with his efforts as president of the West Dallas Coalition of Environmental Justice.
Mixed in there is evidence of contamination that Sepulveda has collected over the years. There are pieces of smelter waste called slag, several tablespoons of lead dust from an attic and a bucket of battery chips, which came from the smelter and were used as fill in people’s yards.
Sepulveda, 60, said he would like nothing better than to see new development for West Dallas. The Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, which opened in March at the east end of the neighborhood, is a conduit for growth. The city of Dallas is planning millions of dollars in infrastructure improvements to help spur more development.
But that can’t happen yet, Sepulveda said.
“You can’t move forward without it being cleaned up properly,” he said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deemed the cleanup in residential areas around the smelter complete in 1995. EPA officials in Dallas say the neighborhood still holds its Superfund status because residents won’t agree to remove it.
Soil testing commissioned by The Dallas Morning News this year found levels of lead that could be harmful to children in one-third of 36 properties sampled. Most of the levels, however, do not exceed the current federal cleanup standards for residential property.
Demanding justice
Across town, Otis Fagan has amassed paperwork from about 15,000 of his former West Dallas neighbors who lived within a half-mile of the smelter site. Some still do. He’s fighting with the city of Dallas over the interpretation of a court order from a 1983 lawsuit that called for a paid public health program for lead-related problems.
Fagan contends that residents were never made aware of the program. He’s trying to get the city to take on their health issues today.
“This issue is the failure of the city of Dallas to pay medical bills for losses you incurred for being exposed to the lead,” he told about 40 or so folks gathered at a church last month for a meeting of the Clean Association for Environmental Justice, which he formed.
But the court order specified that the program would identify and treat only young children and pregnant women. The court deemed the program completed in 1987.
Dallas officials have said the city fulfilled its obligations long ago and there’s nothing more it can do for residents.
In a letter earlier this year to Fagan, Dallas City Attorney Tom Perkins denied that anyone was eligible for money from the city for lead-related issues.
“There is no money available under the order or otherwise from the city respecting the old RSR lead smelter,” he wrote.
He advised them to seek private legal counsel.
But Fagan said he’s not going anywhere. “We are survivors,” he said.
Hard to prove
Residents, many of whom have since moved out of West Dallas, say they’ve been suffering for years from a litany of ailments that they attribute to lead exposure: kidney problems, high blood pressure, joint pain, headaches, miscarriages, tooth decay, heart problems, memory loss and cancer.
Proving it is another matter.
“You couldn’t tell if what they’re experiencing today is because of lead,” said John Villanacci, director of the Environmental and Injury Epidemiology and Toxicology Unit of the state health department. “There are so many risk factors.”
No conclusive evidence has shown that lead causes cancer, but it’s listed as a probable carcinogen by several federal agencies.
Data for the main ZIP code in West Dallas shows rates for most types of cancer to be no higher than what might be expected in the general population, says the Texas Department of State Health Services. Only liver and intrahepatic bile duct cancer in men came out significantly higher than expected in the West Dallas area, but the risk factors vary widely.
A 2002 survey through Parkland Memorial Hospital looked at the health of current and past residents of West Dallas and Cadillac Heights, another Dallas neighborhood that had a smelter. The survey found that while some health problems could be associated with lead exposure, others were linked to factors such as advancing age, obesity, and tobacco and alcohol use.
“Lead exposure in the year 2002 seems not to be a major public health problem in West Dallas and Cadillac Heights,” the study concluded.
‘Sick and dying’
William Hopkins, who turns 55 on Monday, doesn’t have any followers. He doesn’t belong to any groups. But he regularly shares his outrage at Dallas City Council meetings, which he has been attending since the mid-1990s.
He usually takes to the microphone during the public comment portion of the meeting, demanding help for a neighborhood that has suffered a lot of hurt.
“We’re sick and dying in West Dallas,” Hopkins told the council recently.
Hopkins’ father and two uncles used to work at the lead smelter. They’ve been dead for years. His mother, sister and aunt are also dead. They used to do the laundry, which included the plant uniforms, covered with lead dust.
As for his own health, Hopkins says quietly, “I don’t want to know.”
Instead, he wants to stay focused on West Dallas. Many of the past efforts focused on children. But what about the others?
“They should have helped us,” Hopkins said. “We never got it, and we’re dying.”
