Activity 5.2- Shingle Mountain Case Study

 Define the problem: 

• Immediate Issue(s): The obvious issue is the building of ‘Shingle Mountain’ next to a neighborhood community, along with the very delayed response/action it took to remove said problem. With ‘Shingle Mountain’ in the area so close to their homes, residents were forced to deal with many health related problems that arose from breathing in carcinogenic material in the air caused by activities from ‘Single Mountain’. (Fears, 2020). 

• Context: In 2017, two White business partners, Christopher Ganter and Cabe Chadick, had the idea to set up an illegal shingle recycling operation in an area in southwest Dallas (Fears, 2020). The area that they procured for this operation was situated right next to a majority Black neighborhood community, which ended up bearing the brunt of the environmental hazards caused by the “recycling” project. Dust from crushed shingles contains hazardous material, such as fiberglass and formaldehyde that go airborne when ripped apart… may cause temporary irritation of the nose and throat, as well as irritation of the stomach and intestines (Fears, 2020). When residents of this community brought their concerns up to city officials, their inquiries were largely ignored and action to remove this illegal and toxic dump didn’t start until nearly a year after inquiries were first made (KERA, 2020). 

• Perspective: Marsha Jackson, a resident of south Dallas, noticed ‘Shingle Mountain’ and watched it grow from her backyard. After suffering health concerns from the toxic airborne material caused by the mountain, she took her issue to city officials, where she was ignored for months (Fears, 2020). According to Jackson, she had made inquiries to officials as early as February of 2018, but no action had been taken long after her repeated attempts to get the mountain removed from the area (KERA, 2020). In an effort to generate more attention, she gathered up members of the community, co-founded the environmental group ‘Southern Sector Rising’, and put more pressure on the city officials to take action against the issue (KERA, 2020). 

• Authoritative Responsibilities: As the recycling project set up by Ganter and Chadick was considered lawfully illegal due to not having the required permits to run said operation, the responsibility of resolving the issue falls on Dallas city officials (Fears, 2020). Due to the illegal grounds on which the operation was run, city officials are accountable for not only charging those responsible for the problem (Ganter and Chadick), but are also held to removing ‘Shingle Mountain’ from the community. Additionally, as ‘Shingle Mountain’ is also a violation of environmental justice for residents of the area, as defined by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), officials are also held accountable for removing the issue as quickly and efficiently as possible. 

Conduct an inquiry: 

The issue of ‘Shingle Mountain’ isn’t a one off occurrence caused by the actions of corrupt businessmen, but actually stems from a problem that is deep rooted in Dallas’ history. Since its founding in the 1840s, Dallas has had deep racist backgrounds due to its early leaders being former slave owners and white supremecists. Even though people of color makeup over 60% of the city’s population today, as well as having a Black mayor and diverse council, decisions made by White leaders when constructing the city still have many negative impacts that have continued to last up till this day (Fears, 2020). 

The concept of “Zoning” in cities was first adopted in Washington DC to regulate building height, and then by the city of Los Angeles to separate industrial areas from residential areas. This idea was quickly adapted by areas in the South as a means of “social control”, or “zoning racism”, used to separate/isolate Black communities (Silver, 1997). As time has progressed, zoning has continued to be used as a way of racial discrimination, separating and marginalizing people of color, delegating them to areas that are isolated, or deemed “unwanted”. 

Today, the concept of zoning has led to environmental racism in a lot of cities, where those in charge will place industrial waste dumping sites next to communities of predominantly Black, Latino, or other individuals of color. This can clearly be seen when observing the city of Dallas, with a majority of air pollution permitters located within zones designation for minority neighborhoods. 

Image showing nearly all of the permitted polluters are in minority communities (Fears, 2020).

This all ties us back to the issue at hand, the case of ‘Shingle Mountain’. The mountain was created when two White businessmen, Christopher Ganter and Cabe Chadick, procured an area of land in Dallas and started up an illegal roofing shingle recycling operation under Ganter’s company, Blue Star Recycling (Fears, 2020). The illegal dumping site was located right next to a Black residential area, which ultimately bore the brunt of the environmental hazards caused by the crushing of shingles, which released carcinogenic materials into the air to be breathed in by residents of the neighborhood (Fears, 2020). 

Image showing how close ‘Shingle Mountain’ was to resident homes (Google Maps, n.d.)

Marsha Jackson, a resident of the neighborhood, filed complaints to city officials to have the mountain removed but her complaints were largely ignored. Undeterred, she rallied support from the community and, as a unified group, put pressure on those in-charge to take action (Fears, 2020). Ternell Atkins, a Black city council member, told interviewers that he was unaware of such an issue despite the mountain of waste being visible a half-mile away from the local freeway. This statement from Atkins proved to be even more unbelievable after a certificate of occupancy issued from the city to Ganter and Chadwick was found, which requires a public hearing by the district council because it's a request for an industrial zoning permit (Fears, 2020). 

When ‘Shingle Mountain’ was proved illegal, the city of Dallas when then charged with the task of cleaning up the toxic dump from the residential area, since the operation of the project shouldn’t have even had the ground to operate in the first place with the city if Dallas giving them the permission to build an industrial area next to a residential area (Fears, 2020). The city was presented with 9 different contracts ranging from a half a million to 2-3 million from different companies willing to do the cleanup, eventually approving a 480,000 contract to clean up ‘Shingle Mountain’ (KERA, 2020).

Nearly 2 years after Jackson made her first complaints to city officials, the city finally got around to cleaning up ‘Shingle Mountain’, but many are still unsatisfied by how long it took for officials to respond to the issue. Historically, back when white supremacists kept minorities out of office and without power, it was very common to see industrial plants and sites built next to Black and colored communities (Fears, 2020).  Now that Latinos and African Americans hold power in office, but environmental racism is still commonplace, many are left wondering when the status quo will change. 

Identify and evaluate alternative solutions:

The most obvious solution is for officials to listen to the complaints of Black, Latinos, and other groups affected by environmental racism in Dallas. Clearly, representation on the council is not enough to solve the problem, as seen in the case of ‘Shingle Mountain’, where the complaints of a Black community were largely ignored by a Black city councilman. It seems that when people from these marginalized groups successfully gain authoritative power, they begin to adopt the mindsets of those around them and become part of the problem. If any change is to be made on the issue, then the individuals from backgrounds affected by the issue need to stop integrating themselves in corrupt politics and instead focus on listening to the voices of the communities that put them there in the first place. 

Another, more simple solution would be to enforce tighter regulations on city zoning laws. In the case of ‘Shingle Mountain’, the area was only able to become such a problem to residents in the area because the city of Dallas approved an industrial zoning permit to those responsible for building it. If the laws on zoning were more restrictive, such as drawing a hardline on how close an industrial area can be built next to a residential area, then incidents like this would/should decrease drastically. 

Present conclusions:

From the early days of our nation, racism is an issue that has always been present, highly debated, and highly problematic. Historically, as a southern state, especially one that used to be the epicenter of slavery, it is no surprise that the issue of racism is still highly prevalent in one of Texas’ most prominent cities. As mentioned many times prior, Dallas is a city with a history of racism, and even though it has come a long way since the time it was first founded, there are clearly a lot of changes that still need to be made. While racism may have died down when considering political candidates, its negative effects are still effective on the Black and colored communities in the form of environmental racism. Changes need to be made and action needs to be taken to protect these communities from the corruption that seeks to harm them, since the right to protection from environmental hazards isn’t a racial right, but rather a human right. 

Sources:

Fears, D. (2020, Nov. 16). Shingle mountain: How a pile of toxic pollution was dumped on a community of color. Washington Post.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/11/16/environmental-racism-dallas-shingle-mountain/?arc404=true 

Google Maps (n.d.). https://www.google.com/maps/@32.6811794,-96.7345331,211m/data=!3m1!1e3 

KERA. (2020). Shingle mountain radio series. https://www.keranews.org/tags/shingle-mountain 

Shingle Mountain Address: 9527 S Central Expressway (EXPY), Dallas, 75241 https://goo.gl/maps/7JQGa8NYuJGdKGqQ6

Silver, C. (1997). The racial origins of zoning in American cities. In M. Thomas, J. Ritzdorf, & M. Ritzdorf (Eds.), Urban planning and the African American community: In the shadows. SAGE. https://www.asu.edu/courses/aph294/total-readings/silver%20--%20racialoriginsofzoning.pdf