DALLAS — It has been a long battle with the Texas Star Ready Mix concrete batch plant and residents of Dallas’ southeast neighborhood, Joppa.
“As a resident, I'm very frustrated with this system,” said Temeckia Derrough, Joppa Freedman’s Town Association President. “We came to public meetings and spoke to TCEQ, expressed our concerns, our health concerns, gauge history of health concerns is the topic community. And they are ignoring them.”
Derrough has lived in Joppa for 19 years raising pollution concerns from nearby plants like Texas Star.
“It needs to be regulated on behalf of the residents of Texas,” said Derrough.
After learning Texas Star had been operating without a permit from July 2022 to August 2023, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) issued a $35,000 penalty to the company; however, they only had to pay $3,500.
Derrough along with the Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas (LANWT) went before the commission in Austin, on Wednesday, to fight for tougher penalties.
“The agency has the ability to find them up to $10,000 per day for these violations, and instead only chose to find them $100 per month,” said Wendi Hammond, Legal Aid for LANWT.
“There were lots of things on-site, including no pavement, no proper fencing, no proper location of the stockpiles, improper use of the actual batch plant itself, that costs money, and that in the standard should be applied as a penalty against them,” said Michael Bates, LANWT.
In addition to increasing the penalty, they asked for a log of the company’s operations. The commission said the company hasn’t operated since last August, but Derrough believed otherwise.
“They open those gates, and those trucks are going in and out. Have I seen them do concrete in the trucks? But if the trucks are going in and out some operation is going on,” said Derrough.
Texas Star lawyers said the permit was voided before they purchased the plant in 2021. They said when they found out, they complied to commissioners’ requests.
“The respondent has paid an enormous cost in this matter. It actually had no culpability in what happened,” said Erich Birch, Birch, Becker, Morrman, LLP.
The commissioners voted to keep the penalties citing Texas Star’s financial inability to pay more.
“If the agency TCEQ isn't going to be doing that, then perhaps we need to go over their head to EPA,” said Hammond.
“I will continue to do this, whatever I need to because my health and the Joppa community here are very important and valuable to our family,” said Derrough. It is a fight that now enters another round.