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You Can Monitor How Shingle Mountain's Cleanup Is Going On A New City Of Dallas Dashboard

A person wearing construction gear stands on top of the six-story pile of shingles known as Shingle Mountain. They work with Modern Geoscientists, an environmental company that inspects the air quality during the removal process to make sure the air is not harmful to residents.
Keren Carrión
/
KERA News
A person working with Modern Geoscientists, an environmental company, inspects the air quality during the removal process to make sure the air is not harmful to the residents.

The city of Dallas has created a dashboard to help residents track what’s happening as Shingle Mountain is torn down.

The six-story pile of shingles in southeast Dallas should be removed by March. Crews have been making good progress, city officials told City Council members on Tuesday during a special Environment and Sustainability Committee meeting.

In December, the city began to haul away the roofing materials, which had been piling up for three years.

"It's unfortunate that this ever happened,” Committee Chair Omar Narvaez said. “This is not what any of us dreamed would happen. But now we have to be focused on what we are doing now to ensure the social contract we have with you, the public, to ensure this will not happen again.”

The dashboard is a special Shingle Mountain updates page that provides a timeline with landmark dates the city hopes to meet.

The site is being monitored by Modern Geosciences, an environmental advisory group that works in Texas and across the U.S. Their workers are on site, inspecting the air quality during the removal process to make sure it isn't harmful to local residents.

On the updates page, information about environmental hazards like air pollution and storm water runoff is updated daily.

City officials say the dashboard is the first step the city is taking to keep residents informed. Tennell Atkins, the council member that represents the area where Shingle Mountain stands, raised concerns that maybe it's not enough.

"We know it will go away, but aside from the dashboard, are we doing anything else to keep the residents informed?" he said.

Atkins wants to make sure residents know what is going without having to go to a website.

After the shingles are gone, therewill bea deep-environment assessment. Then the city will have 30 days to decide if it wants to acquire the property.

The agreement the state approved for the City of Dallas to clean up the site states that if the city decided to acquire the land, they can do so at zero cost.

"Going forward, we want to engage the community on what we want to do with the piece of land," the Office of Environmental Quality and Sustainability's Sheila Delgado said.

Currently the property is zoned for industrial manufacturing and residents are asking the city to consider re-zoning the site.

Got a tip? Alejandra Martinez is a Report For America corps member and writes about the economic impact of COVID-19 on marginalized communities for KERA News. Email Alejandra at amartinez@kera.org. You can follow Alejandra on Twitter @alereports.

KERA News is made possible through the generosity of our members. If you find this reporting valuable, consider making a tax-deductible gifttoday. Thank you.

Alejandra Martinez is a reporter for KERA and The Texas Newsroom through Report for America (RFA). She's covering the impact of COVID-19 on underserved communities and the city of Dallas.