Environmental Justice

Daniel & Beshara bring cases on behalf of homeowners and residents of Black and Hispanic neighborhoods whose homes, properties and health have been impacted by illegal dumping and industrial uses. These environmental justice cases highlight the disproportionate environmental harms that residents in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods often face.

They represented the Black homeowners who lived next to and near the Deepwood dump who successfully challenged the City’s role in what became the largest illegal landfill in the State of Texas in Cox, et al. v. City of Dallas, et al., 256 F.3d 281 (5th Cir. 2001).

Other representative environmental justice cases include their representation of a coalition of residents in challenging the EPA’s decision to store lead contaminated soil next to their homes during an emergency lead soil removal effort. Currently, Daniel & Beshara represent a homeowner in a challenge to the industrial zoning adjacent to her home that led to a shingle recycling facility dumping tons of shingles next to her home. The efforts to remove “Shingle Mountain,” the hundred feet high piles of asphalt shingles located next to her home in the Floral Farms area of Dallas are set out at Southern Sector Rising at southernsectorrising.org.

Deepwood dump – a case history of environmental injustice

The Black homeowners that brought the case against the City of Dallas to remediate the 85-acre illegal landfill next to their homes originally purchased their homes in the 1970s when the neighborhood was white. Once the neighborhood became majority Black, the City issued a permit in 1982 to the adjoining landowner allowing him to fill the existing gravel pits created by previous sand and gravel mining with solid waste. For the next 15 years, the site was filled with illegal solid waste, garbage, demolition debris, barrels of unknown contaminants, and medical waste.

“We fought it from day one, and nothing ever happened,” said one of the plaintiffs who had moved into a home on Deepwood Street in 1973. “It’s not like it was a dump when we moved in. The dumping started after we moved in — after it became a neighborhood of mostly black people.” – from “Garbage In, Misery Out,” Ft. Worth Weekly, Feb. 25, 2004.

Large trucks bulging with waste went down their residential street every day, starting before dawn and going late into the night. The homeowners petitioned the City, their Councilman and did not get relief. The City put up signs allowing the dumping to take place from 6am to 6 pm each day. The dump twice caught on fire and burned for several months.

Another plaintiff lived for many years on Deepwood Street, raising a young daughter. She said the city’s refusal to act made child-rearing a nightmare. “It wasn’t safe for her to be outside because of the mosquitoes, the wild dogs, the snakes, and the other creatures that the dump brought up,” she recalled recently. “We didn’t have guests come over, no birthday parties at the house, or family things. We certainly didn’t want children to come and get hurt or get sick. We were fearful and embarrassed of the dump.”

A subsequent owner of the dump continued the illegal dumping operations and hired a man who was also a City demolition contractor to run the illegal dump. The City’s demolition contractors disposed of demolition debris at the Deepwood landfill for numerous years.

The class action lawsuit was a citizens’ suit action under the federal Solid Waste Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). This successful lawsuit led to the City’s remediation of the illegal landfill in place with monitoring for methane gas. The site is now the home of the Trinity River Audubon Center, a wildlife preserve and education center. The Fifth Circuit opinion for the RCRA case is here.

West Dallas lead contamination

The firm represented the West Dallas Coalition for Environmental Justice during the 1991-1992 Emergency Soil Remediation in West Dallas. The Coalition of neighborhood residents had brought the attention of lead slag and battery chips in yards, driveways, and throughout West Dallas to the attention of the State and EPA. The Coalition filed suit against EPA and sought the removal of the storage of lead contaminated soil in their neighborhood during the removal effort.

Later the EPA declared the West Dallas smelter site and other locations a Superfund site and included it in a soil removal remedial action.

Lead and national class action

Daniel & Beshara represented a national class of Medicaid eligible children to obtain blood lead testing for screening and determining exposure of lead in children.