No place for a plant
Acres Homes deserves better than to have a concrete mixing facility in its community.
Christy Archer sat at a picnic table, soaking in the sun, while her three young children scampered in the park behind the Highland Community Center.
On most days, this Acres Homes gathering spot is packed. In the afternoons, there’s football and soccer practice. In the mornings, home-school students swat balls on the tennis courts. At darn near any time, toddlers climb and slide and shriek with laughter on playground equipment, and senior citizens assemble for services and socializing.
The street, just off T.C. Jester, is a quiet residential enclave, where horses graze behind fences in some yards in this historically black neighborhood.
Does this seem like an appropriate site for a dust-spewing, pollution-emitting, possibly carcinogen-producing concrete mixing plant? Neighbors don’t think so. And neither do we.
In a city as vast as this, with untold industrial districts and undeveloped property, there are plenty of other possible locations for Soto Ready Mix to build a plant. Those locations won’t subject the elderly to dust that can lead to greater risk of heart attacks, asthma flare-ups and trouble breathing, put children at risk of being hit by trucks or perpetuate a long, troubling history of environmental racism.
“Race is more potent than income when it comes to who lives in neighborhoods that are most polluted with these facilities,” said Robert Bullard, a Texas Southern University professor known as the “father of environmental justice.”
For the past two years, Acres Homes residents have been lobbying the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to deny a permit for the concrete plant on property about 100 yards away from the park and community center. They have gone to hearings, filed objections and partnered with Air Alliance Houston and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and Texas Rep. Jarvis Johnson, both Houston Democrats.
They argue that this concrete mixing plant, on top of about a dozen others already in District B, which includes Acres Homes, is one too many.
But the deck is stacked against communities of color that want to keep polluters out of their neighborhood.
Over the last five years, TCEQ has denied only two of more than 100 requests for concrete batch plant air emissions permits in Houston, according to Houston Chronicle reporter Erin Douglas. Of all the types of TCEQ air permit applications requested in the city last year, nearly all 7,664 were approved.
TCEQ commissioners have granted a hearing in the Acres Homes case before the State Office of Administrative Hearings. That will slow the permit approval but won’t necessarily stop it.
That’s because state law leaves it to local authorities to determine whether and how to zone property for specific uses. Houston, of course, famously has no zoning. That means opponents must show TCEQ proof that a new concrete batch plant will so harm air quality that it should deny the company a permit. Such proof is hard to gather, and only adds to the already high hurdles — frequent meetings, lawyers fees, expert testimony and mastery of the intricacies of public commenting sessions — required to challenge permits.
“They wouldn’t go into River Oaks or the Heights or Tanglewood or The Woodlands in residential areas and do this,” Uresa Forbes, 29, who lives around the corner from the concrete plant site, rightfully says. “But they think they can come into minority areas, lower-income areas, and get away with it because of the lower socioeconomic levels of the area.”
Still, says Forbes, “we will not give up, we will not give in, and we will not quit. We will persevere until this is resolved.”
We applaud the Acres Homes community for its grit and determination. But they should not be fighting alone.
TCEQ needs to stop rubber-stamping permits. The agency needs to do more outreach and talk to the residents who must breathe the air and drink the water. If it needs more authority, the Legislature should provide it.
The city, county and state could also build in a racial equity lens into its permitting process, such as ones adopted in Seattle and in Fulton County, Ga. Harris County has already passed a similar resolution accelerating flood mitigation for the most vulnerable communities. That same focus should be at the forefront of environmental decisions.
Families such as Christy Archer’s shouldn’t have to worry about getting sick from a day at the park. No Houston family should.