With pressure building from a court order, a lawsuit and a cacophony of protests, Dallas officials are taking the first steps to clean up a toxic dumping ground known as Shingle Mountain.
The city on Thursday released a bid proposal that calls for loading and hauling away about “175,000 yards of shingles and related debris” from the dump site at 9522 S. Central Expressway in southeastern Dallas. The materials would be moved to McCommas Bluff Landfill on Youngblood Road, about a quarter mile away.
Council member Omar Narvaez said the job is expected to cost the city a little over $2 million.
The heap of discarded shingles lies behind the home of Marsha Jackson, 62, who continues to cough up black gunk more than a year after a judge ordered the mess removed. Jackson told The Dallas Morning News last month that she sees a pulmonologist and has to wear long sleeves to avoid rashes on her skin.
Jackson, who has lived on Choate Street in southeastern Dallas for 25 years, has sued the company that dumped the shingles, as well as the landowner and the city.
“I can’t get excited about anything until it happens,” she said on Thursday after learning about the latest cleanup efforts.
Experts and activists have said that the mountain is a monument to environmental racism. Shingle Mountain sits in the 75241 ZIP code, where 78% of residents are Black and 2% are white, according to the U.S. census.
Southern Sector Rising, a coalition of southern Dallas activists and environmentalists led by Jackson, gave the city an Oct. 1 deadline to begin removing the mountainous heap east of I-45 near Simpson Stuart Road. After that date, the group said the city would face “a more forceful, determined, and calculated response.”
Jim Schermbeck, director of Downwinders at Risk, one of the groups that make up the coalition, said the bid is a positive step but has not changed their plans for more demonstrations if cleanup doesn’t begin next month.
“Until the trucks start arriving and carrying that stuff out, I don’t believe a word the city says,” Schermbeck said. “We remain very skeptical that this is going to happen anytime soon.”
Narvaez, chairman of the city’s Environment and Sustainability Committee, said in a written statement that ongoing lawsuits limit what he and other city officials can say about the matter.
He called Shingle Mountain “an issue of major focus for our committee” and said the city will try to recover as much of the cleanup cost as possible from “the responsible parties in the pending litigation.”
The city has sued Blue Star Recycling, the company that built Shingle Mountain, and CCR Equity Holdings One, which owns the land.
The city has already contracted with an environmental consultant to “provide technical oversight, air monitoring, and stormwater protections,” Narvaez said in a statement.
Companies must submit bids by Sept. 24, and whoever wins the contract will work with the city’s environmental consultant to make sure the removal is done properly to prevent the spread of dust and water contamination, Narvaez said.
Jackson and her neighbors are at risk of breathing, heart, skin and brain health problems, according to her doctor and environmental health researchers.
She said on Thursday she hopes the city makes good on its plans.
“I’m praying they really do it this time,” Jackson said. “I hope they follow through.”
CORRECTION: Jim Schermbeck is the director of Downwinders at Risk, not the founder.
