Southern Dallas residents could be one step closer to preserving their historic community — and keeping what they say are heavy polluters, out.
That is, if the Dallas City Plan Commission votes to rezone the area.
Floral Farms was once home to “Shingle Mountain” — a 70,000-ton pile of roofing and other construction materials. Residents could see the looming debris from their backyards.
Now the mountain is gone — and the area is undergoing environmental remediation to remove contaminated soil — but residents hope to protect their neighborhood from future heavy polluters.
“The reason why we are asking for a rezoning…is to protect our families,” southern Dallas resident and environmental activist Marsha Jackson said during an early March commission meeting. “To protect our health.”
Jackson was one of the residents who could see the massive pile of roofing materials from her house. And she says her health has been affected because of it.
“I have been permanently harmed because of the environmental issues,” Jackson said during the meeting. “Floral Farms, we are looking for it to go back to greenery — where we first started from.”
But residents didn’t get closure during the mid-March meeting. The commission decided not to vote on the issue — citing administrative errors in listing the agenda item. Now the commission plans on taking up the issue on March 21.
Although the vote was delayed, the commission still allowed for public input during the meeting.
Jackson said the Floral Farms community started by selling greens to the nursery close by. But she said things have changed.
“Now we are just engulfed in environmental [issues],” Jackson said during the meeting. “The reason why we are asking for agricultural rezoning…is to avoid some of these [environmental justice] issues.”
Jackson said during the meeting residents have been constantly fighting heavy polluters. They hope the rezone will help to keep other industries out of the area.
The area’s current zoning includes an Industrial Research District, Industrial Manufacturing District and a Commercial Service District. Floral Farms does include some agricultural zoned areas too.
Dallas city staff’s recommendation is to approve more agricultural and single-family zoning — and also include some industrial and retail zoning as well.
“Light industrial…sounds less industrial than it truly is in reality,” District 6 Commissioner Deborah Carpenter said during the meeting. “It still allows freight terminals, and heavy machinery equipment and…commercial; motor vehicle parking and outside storage and warehouses.”
Carpenter said during the meeting all of the uses under the Light Industrial zoning have the potential – or reality — “of causing extreme incompatibility with adjoining residential” zoning.
“When you already have a reputation and a preconceived idea about the nature of a place, and then you continue to allow through straight zoning, the aggregation of these lower end uses,” Carpenter said. “Do you understand why I can see this as a baby step, its an improvement, but maybe we didn’t quite get there?”
City staff said they were trying to soften the heavy industry and manufacturing in the Floral Farms area.
“There's no perfect solution,” senior planner Sef Okoth said during the meeting. “And we do understand when development comes, we kind of baked in some guardrails for them.”
Under staff’s current proposal, staff says it doesn’t believe the recommendations will make any business currently operating around Floral Farms noncompatible uses.
Some residents say they hope the plan commission takes their concerns about allowing heavy industry to continue to be allowed in their community. The plan to rezone the area is years in the making.
“Only its complete and total neglect of Floral Farms during one of the worst environmental health and justice scandals Dallas has ever seen, made this plan possible,” Downwinders at Risk Director Jim Schermbeck said during the meeting.
Schermbeck said this is the culmination of years of work after residents faced pushback on their plan from city officials. Schmberck said this furthered Dallas’ long, dark history of racist policies.
“Only the continued existence of such racist zoning in the city code allows southern Dallas neighborhoods, like Floral Farms, to be continual victims of polluters,” Schermbeck said. “That’s why this plan is important.”
The plan commission is slated to discuss and vote on the changes during its meeting on March 21 at 9:00 a.m.
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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