Residents living near the former "Shingle Mountain" site in southeast Dallas have been waiting for years for officials to help protect their land. The city council voted to delay deciding whether to rezone the area — a move that could limit future industrial polluters from setting up shop.
And when the council voted to delay, the discussion centered on for how long.
Till January? March?
The final vote was for mid-February. City officials said that gave time to review other processes currently going on that could affect the rezoning decision.
The council’s decision came after a lengthy public comment section and debate from elected officials. Floral Farms residents told the council the zoning change from industrial uses to agricultural would significantly limit the possibility of future industrial polluters.
Evelyn Mayo, the co-chair for the environmental advocacy group Downwinders at Risk, told the council the Floral Farms community has done “nothing but follow processes and procedures laid out by the city.”
“All we’re asking for is the city to…make good on the process to prevent another Shingle Mountain from happening,” Mayo said before the council voted.
Since 2018, the mountain loomed over the predominantly Black and Hispanic community in southeast Dallas. Residents said the toxic pile of construction materials negatively impacted their health. Marsha Jackson is a Floral Farms resident and community leader who became the face of the Shingle Mountain fight.
Jackson said during the meeting that there were homes in the area before there were industrial operators. And she said the city had several chances to remedy the zoning that was born out of segregationist policies.
“…But [the city] chose not to do so, and instead continued the harm,” Jackson said.
Along with Floral Farms residents and environmental advocates, numerous industrial facility owners who operate in the area also came to City Hall to oppose the zoning change.
Neil Goldberg, who owns and operates a business in the surrounding area, told the council before it voted that “this proposed solution won’t solve the problem of social justice or environmental justice.”
“This is a very complicated problem that the city is trying to fix with a simple solution,” Goldberg said.
He added that “simple solution” was the Floral Farms zoning change.
Eli Amzallag, another business owner in the area, was also in opposition to the zoning change.
“I’m a 29 year old man, I own this property with my brother, this is a very, very large investment for us,” Amzallag said. “You guys are trying to demonize who we are…you’re really going to destroy everything I worked so hard for, and I’m a young man.”
To make the decision more complicated, the zoning change vote required a supermajority vote. That means 12 council members needed to vote in favor. Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson had left the meeting by the time the Floral Farms zoning case came before the council.
'Ants compared to the towering mound'
‘Shingle Mountain’ was the product of the Blue Star Recycling Company that started operation in 2018 behind Floral Farms resident’s homes. The pile towered over Floral Farms residents’ homes.
“It was pretty monstrous,” District 9 Council Member Paula Blackmon said during the meeting.
Robert Wilonsky, the former city columnist for The Dallas Morning News, wrote often about the community subjected to live around the toxic mountain.
Wilonsky said city staffers — sent to the area to investigate — “looked like ants compared to the towering mound,” in a 2019 column published in The News.
A city process was initiated in 2019 to start addressing the issues posed by Shingle Mountain and the environmental scandal that followed.
In 2020, the Floral Farms community “drafted the first-ever bilingual neighborhood-led land use plan that outlined their vision to deindustrialize the community and protect public health,” according to the press release.
Since then, the community’s plan has been slowly churning through the City Hall policy machine. That includes being vetted by two planning advisory bodies — and the final city council vote.
In May, the city’s plan commission voted to rezone portions of the area. That vote came after some debate over who had claim to that land in southern Dallas. Some business owners said the rezone was unfair and that their operations had been running long before the residents who now live there.
Jerry Soukup, part-owner of a Southwest Perennials in Floral Farms, didn’t agree.
Soukup has been in the area for over 50 years and has operated the nursery for ten years. But he says Floral Farms' history goes back farther than that.
“The operation itself started back in 1928, before…the city took it into city limits,” Soukup said during an early-May City Plan Commission meeting. “There's a lot of people out there that say, ‘Well, I was out there first.’ No there were families there.”
'You need to get into your car'
After upwards of 40 public speakers, District 14 Council Member Paul Ridley offered a motion to delay the item until March 2025. Not all his colleagues agreed with that idea.
“I’m inclined not to support this because it’s been…five and a half years, I’ve toured it and I understand the implications,” Blackmon said. “The city did this, we need to start unwinding it.”
Blackmon asked whether delaying the issue would lead to more clarity on how to proceed. Other council members suggested their colleagues head to the Floral Farms area to see where Shingle Mountain once stood.
“I think it was 2019 when some of us…went out to Shingle Mountain on the bus,” District 4 Council Member Carolyn King Arnold said. “If indeed we vote to delay it, you need to get into your car, because what you’re trying to imagine…you can’t see it, really, from the horseshoe.”
The delays stem from city staffers concerns over SB929, signed into law last year. That law changed the city’s process for dealing with scheduled closures of nonconforming uses — or amortization.
Ultimately Ridley’s motion failed. Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Adam Bazaldua introduced another motion to delay the item until early January.
“What we do need to do is…make sure this SB929 is not one that will have as great an impact as it potentially could, which I believe this small delay will allow us to work through,” Bazaldua said.
District 12 Council Member Cara Mendelsohn told those in the audience listening to temper their expectations about what would happen come February.
“You’re going to come in January and you know what’s going to happen, right?” Mendelsohn said. “It's going to get deferred again because we’re not going to be ready.”
Bazaldua ultimately altered his motion and offered mid-February as a time to bring the zoning case back up.
Along with the “date certain” to hear the Floral Farms case again, Mayor Pro Tem Tennell Atkins also instructed council members to have all their questions about the issue submitted to city staff by the end of the year.
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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