Fish Trap Lake, five miles west of downtown Dallas, glistened in the sunlight, ducks and geese swam, and a man with a fishing rod cast his line on a warm January morning. On the trail that circles the 10-acre lake located inside a park, mothers with strollers walk to the sound of water waves and chirping birds.
Across the street from the park stands a row of industrial companies, including plants that turn sand, water and cement into concrete to build highways and subdivisions and high-rises in fast-growing Texas.
While the fish is in the lake’s name, Janie Cisneros, 41, a mother and digital researcher who grew up nearby, said it was common knowledge in the area to “catch them, don’t eat them.” Locals believe the lake is polluted from wastewater runoff from nearby plants.
Cisneros, the director of the neighborhood association Singleton United/Unidos, said many residents who live nearby have long complained about pollution from the plants, and suspect it is contributing to health problems from asthma to bronchitis to throat cancer. They also say the thousands of concrete batch plants located across Texas disproportionately affect low-income communities like theirs.
Desiree Rios
/
for The Texas Tribune
West Dallas’ Zip Code 75212, home to 27,000 people, is 68% Hispanic and 25% Black. Cisneros, wearing her signature cherry lipstick and black neighborhood association shirt, said that for decades an unrelenting stench has permeated the homes of residents in her working-class neighborhood.
Residents have long complained to the state environmental agency about pollution from the plants and say their concerns have been allayed. But now their efforts have caught the attention of the US Environmental Protection Agency.
The agency found that air pollution and particulate matter from concrete batch plants can increase the risk of asthma and cardiac arrest if people inhale too much of it.
Now it has launched a pilot project — the first in Texas — that will test the air, water and soil to determine how the combined pollution from this cluster of industrial sites affects public health in the two neighborhoods. of Dallas that is mostly Black and brown: West Dallas and Joppa in South Dallas.
The EPA says the project is expected to be completed by July 2024. The agency’s final report will be shared with the communities, the city of Dallas and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state agency that regulates batch plants.
But before any of that happens, the first step is fishing.
The fish will be tested for heavy metals
By 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, three EPA scientists, wearing bright orange life vests, retrieved two Home Depot buckets, and rigged them with buoys and fish traps meant to catch the predatory fish such as bass.
They boarded a small beige boat emblazoned with the agency’s logo. When the boat’s motor refused to start, they paddled toward the middle of the lake.
Using cat food as bait, they cast their nets.
“[These nets] is just a really effective way to try and catch a lot of fish in a short period of time,” said Rob Cook, an environmental scientist who has worked for the EPA for 12 years.
Desiree Rios
/
for The Texas Tribune
Cook, a 54-year-old wearing rain boots, reflective sunglasses and a straw hat, said the group needed to catch three to five catfish and predator fish like bass, all of the same size, for a reliable sample. of testing.
Nicholas Scott, 30, an EPA scientist who was on the boat with Cook, said they would gut the fish, freeze the filets and send them to a lab to test the tissue for heavy metals such as of lead and arsenic. The results from the water sampling and the fish tissue analysis will help the EPA determine whether the lake’s water or fish are harmful to human health.
They paddled back to shore, leaving four red buoys floating in the lake, marking the location of their nets. They then pick up trash around the lake for a few hours before paddling back to retrieve the nets.
Kirk McDonnell, a spokesman for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department — which stocks the lake with catfish, bass and other species — said in an email that because the lake is near industrial areas and sometimes is receiving floodwater from the Trinity River, which is under a fish consumption advisory, the Dallas-Fort Worth fisheries division of the department “thinks that fish contamination may be an issue with fish currently in Lake.”
West Dallas resident Cynthia Medina, interested in the scientists’ activities, stopped by the lake during her lunch break. The petite 30-year-old said she was interested in the test results because her husband regularly goes to the lake to fish.
“I tell him: Don’t take it [the fish] at home, we won’t eat it. It’s not safe,” said Medina, who has lived in the neighborhood her entire life and works at a nonprofit that connects children of color with books and promotes reading.
He pointed to a shopping cart partially submerged near the shore of the lake. “I don’t know what those fish eat.”
The scientist hopes the study informs policy
Aimee Wilson, an EPA scientist and project manager in a navy striped blouse featuring an embroidered EPA logo that she sewed herself, said the agency decided to conduct an integrated impact assessment in Texas because the TCEQ was proposing of changes to the state’s concrete batch plant permits, which set air pollution standards companies must follow.
Those changes include lowering production limits, reducing dust coming from the plants and setting minimum distances required from nearby communities, but do not take into account the cumulative pollution created by the plants that are close together, like those near Fish Trap Lake.
For years, environmental advocates have criticized the state for not considering the health effects for people who live near many concrete batch plants.
In 2021, the Harris County attorney and Lone Star Legal Aid, a nonprofit legal group, filed civil rights complaints with the EPA alleging that the TCEQ discriminated against people of color and those with disabilities English proficiency in the agency’s permitting process to build new concrete batch plants and renew permits for existing ones.
“Not much is being studied yet [cumulative impact],” said Wilson, who has worked for the EPA for 14 years. “So we want to see what’s there because we don’t know.”
While TCEQ announced its new requirements for concrete batch plants last week, ahead of the EPA’s study, Wilson hopes their work will help the agency develop better guidance and policies for on how to consider cumulative impacts from industry in future permit decisions.
At noon, as the EPA scientists on the boat approached the lake shore, Cisneros, the director of the neighborhood association, waited with his two nephews and his mother to see what the EPA crew had caught. .
The group didn’t catch the fish they were looking for, but a local resident who caught a bass with a fishing rod donated it so the EPA could test its tissue.
Cisneros said the EPA’s attention to her community is a relief because she sometimes feels her concerns are ignored by state regulators.
“The EPA is brave,” Cisneros said earlier as he sat with his 4-year-old daughter, Lila Rosa Bravero, under the park’s pavilion. “They are not afraid of this [project] might open a can of worms.”
Disclosure: The Texas Parks And Wildlife Department has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial backers play no role in Tribune journalism. Search complete list them here.
This article originally appeared on The Texas Tribune in https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/02/epa-concrete-batch-plants-study-dallas/.
