More than a year after a judge ordered the removal of Shingle Mountain, Marsha Jackson is still coughing up black “gunk.” She can’t let her granddaughter play outside. She sees a pulmonologist and has to wear long sleeves in the hot Dallas summers because walking the dog leaves rashes on her skin.

The dumping ground remains behind her home of 25 years on Choate Street in southeastern Dallas, despite what appeared to be progress on its removal in March.

Jackson, 62, has sued the company that dumped the shingles and the landowner, and in July, the city. The city has demanded the other parties contribute to the cost of the cleanup, and activists have given the city an Oct. 1 deadline to begin removing the pile of toxic shingles and shingle dust left by a grinder.

But while they wait, Jackson and her neighbors are at risk of breathing, heart, skin and brain health problems, according to her doctor and environmental health researchers.

Experts and activists say the mountain is a monument to environmental racism that wouldn’t exist on the more affluent northern side of Dallas. At minimum, they say the city or owner should take short-term measures to minimize exposure until the site is cleared.

“We’re confined in our home just like a prison; I’m tired of suffering,” Jackson said in a raspy voice. “I want to be able to go out and do things like everyone else. I want to be able to laugh and talk to people just like everybody else and not have to worry about constantly straining my vocal cords.”

Legal and financial standoff

Jackson’s civil rights lawsuit would force the city to remove Shingle Mountain, rid the soil and water of pollution and rezone the property so it can’t happen again. She isn’t seeking damages beyond the cost of her legal fees.

Her lawyers, Laura Beshara and Michael Daniel, successfully argued for the 2005 shutdown of an illegal dumping ground the city built next to a Black neighborhood, the location of which is now the Trinity River Audubon Center. They declined to comment on Jackson’s lawsuit because it is ongoing.

The city of Dallas is in the middle of its own lawsuit against Blue Star Recycling, the company that built Shingle Mountain, and CCR Equity Holdings One, which owns the land.

In a motion for contempt that the city filed in June 2019, the city said Blue Star claimed it “has no money and no equipment with which to facilitate the removal of the materials.” The company filed for bankruptcy in October.

But in March, Gregory Sudbury, an attorney for CCR Equity, told The Dallas Morning News that a vendor had been hired to remove Shingle Mountain and that “CCR is pleased with the movement it is seeing recently with the pace of the clean-up.”

Trucks were seen carrying shingles to a property just outside of Rice, 35 miles southeast of Shingle Mountain. But Tonya Roberts, Rice city administrator, said they weren’t moving the mountain — they were delivering new shingles to a customer.

When asked about the status of Shingle Mountain this week, Sudbury said, “I’ve got nothing to talk to you about” and hung up.

Dallas has the money earmarked to clean up Shingle Mountain at any time, according to a statement from Roxana Rubio, senior public affairs officer in the city’s communications office. But officials, including Mayor Eric Johnson, said they want CCR to contribute to the estimated $2.1 million costs before the city initiates a removal.

“We are committed to using city funds to assist in the cleanup of the environmental disaster known as Shingle Mountain,” Johnson told The Dallas Morning News in a statement earlier this month. “But we are seeking the cooperation and financial commitment of the property owner responsible.”

Southern Sector Rising, the coalition of southern Dallas activists and environmentalists of which Jackson is chairwoman, sent a letter to the city Aug. 5 demanding that it start clearing the shingles by Oct. 1 or face “a more forceful, determined, and calculated response to make sure a Shingle Mountain clean-up begins.”

The letter names City Manager T.C. Broadnax, Johnson and City Council member Omar Narvaez, chairman of the council’s Environment and Sustainability Committee. The letter also said residents in Shingle Mountain’s drift have worsening breathing, skin and brain health because of the site’s pollution.

“An immediate clean-up is necessary to prevent further damage to the residents and children living on Choate Street,” the letter reads. “With each passing day the health crisis for these residents living under the dump worsens.”

Health risks of environmental racism

Amanda Masino, chairwoman of the natural sciences department and associate professor of biology at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, said the residents’ symptoms sound characteristic of constant exposure to dust from ground-up shingles. It can cause not only breathing and heart problems but also expose them to asbestos, a chemical with a strong link to lung cancer.

It shouldn’t replace a long-term solution for Shingle Mountain, Masino said, but at minimum, placing a tarp over the pile of ground shingles is critical to reducing exposure for residents. Unlike whole shingles, wind can pick up the grounds easier and carry them farther, she said.

“We’re talking about chemicals that contribute to cancers and heart attacks and significant lung disease, so these are potentially lives in the balance,” she said. “And so it seems important to be realistic about that when you look at what you can do for the short term to try to curb some of the exposure.”

Masino said the placement and slow response to the mountain is no accident, but instead, environmental racism.

“This immediately struck me as an environmental justice-related issue,” she said. “We know historically, and from looking at patterns around the United States, that the people who tend to live near hazardous facilities tend to be primarily people of color and lower-income communities. Therefore they are exposed to more of the pollutants that those sites introduce into the air or water or soil.”

Last spring, when Evelyn Mayo was a professor at Paul Quinn College, she analyzed data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and published a study that revealed the city’s zoning policies have concentrated air pollution on its southern side. The study, “Poisoned by ZIP Code,” notes that there is a 15-year difference in life expectancy depending on a resident’s ZIP code.

Mayo is chairwoman of Downwinders at Risk, a North Texas environmental activist organization whose founder brought Jackson’s story to light and continues to fight alongside her today. Jackson and Shingle Mountain are in 75241, where 78% of residents are Black and 2% are white, according to the U.S. census. It’s also the ZIP code most polluted with particulate matter, Mayo’s study shows.

One of the activists assisting Jackson’s cause is Frederick Haynes, pastor of Oak Cliff’s Friendship-West Baptist Church, of which she is a member. At a rally in front of Shingle Mountain in June, he called the situation “frustrating,” “disgusting” and “immoral.”

Haynes said the church has joined the fight because it is shameless environmental racism that would never exist on the north side of Dallas.

“I don’t want to hear anything about Black Lives Matter as long as they let them black shingles stay up there, because as far as I’m concerned it’s anti-Black. It’s racism in the environment and it’s saying you don’t really care,” Haynes said. “That’s why racism is not just someone being mean to me or calling me the N-word. This right here calls me the N-word because it’s a policy that is in the system that basically says my life doesn’t matter.”

Ball in city’s court

In April 2019, District Judge Gena Slaughter ordered Shingle Mountain to be cleared and held the businessmen in contempt in November for missing her 90-day cleanup window.

But she said no court order can suddenly give Blue Star and the property owner the funds to clear the mess.

“I wish my gavel was a magic wand that could make it go away,” Slaughter said. She declined to comment further, saying it would be unethical for a judge to publicly comment on a pending case.

Slaughter could up the consequences for Blue Star Recycling and CCR, but if the business owners are truly out of money, the only party with both the resources and the power to clean up Shingle Mountain is the city. It remains to be seen if the city will find the cooperation it’s looking for or move the mountain without it before the activists’ Oct. 1 deadline.

Jackson said she is determined to keep fighting to have the mountain removed and is disappointed at what seems like apathy from city leaders.

“The city of Dallas, it’s like they have a deaf ear,” she said. “They don’t care about any of this.”