DALLAS — Peace has a way of drawing you in and grabbing your attention.
“We rode through here. We felt the country vibes, so we picked Joppa,” said Temeckia Derrough, a longtime Joppa resident.
She has lived in the Southeast Dallas neighborhood for 18 years.
“I just wanted to retire, settle, wake up in the morning, drink my coffee on my back porch, look at my acres,” said Derrough.
However, for the past seven years, Derrough’s peace has been met with unrest.
“I am impacted by the environmental racism,” said Derrough. “My issue living here is air quality.”
Joppa is a predominantly minority community that neighbors industrial plants such as concrete batch plants. Aimee Wilson, EPA Texas State Coordinator for Air Permitting, said there are well over 20 of those plants both Joppa and West Dallas combined.
“They seem to concentrate in the lower income neighborhoods,” said Wilson.
The EPA often get complaints from residents about the facilities, she added.
“They do cause nuisance conditions," Wilson said. "There is a lot of fugitive dust from them. There’s also complaints about emissions from the vehicles that are idling to get filled."
Her team of physical scientists have been conducting a cumulative impact assessment. It is a pilot project that tests the air, soil, water and fish tissue in Joppa and West Dallas where many concrete batch plants operate.
“We collected bacteria samples. What that’s looking for is the fecal bacteria called E. coli,” said Nick Scott, EPA Water Division Physical Scientist.
“All of that data goes into a report that shows what the chemical and non-chemical stressors are on this community,” said Wilson.
The EPA has named areas such as Joppa and West Dallas environmental justice area. They want local leader to consider those areas when making decisions.
“Look at the communities where facilities are wanting to build and see what is the impact on them,” said Wilson.
It was also an approach Derrough would like to see in addition to environmental reform in order to bring back that peace.
“Environmental reform looks in my eyes for moving forward in the city and in the Joppa community that’s affected by environmental racism is by changing laws, implementing stronger regulations, collecting data as the EPA is doing, implementing air quality monitors as the City of Dallas has done in the Joppa community and West Dallas community,” said Derrough. “Environmental justice looks in my eyes of our voices coming and fighting for the issue of environmental racism.”
Wilson said the Cumulative Impact Assessment is expected to be completed by the end of the summer or start of the fall. All results will be reported back to the community and the EPA.
