An environmental justice organization that has made huge recent progress toward righting wrongs of the past just made another bold move: hiring its second executive director in 30 years.
Downwinders at Risk was formed in 1994 to fight Midlothian cement plants. Since then the nonprofit has done tremendous work advocating against southern Dallas batch plants and illegal dumping at Shingle Mountain. You better believe they have been at the forefront as Dallas planners have reviewed industrial uses in an update of the city’s ForwardDallas comprehensive land use plan.
And last month, they hired Caleb Roberts, an enthusiastic young urban planner from Milwaukee, to take the helm.
Meet Caleb Roberts
Roberts, 31, describes himself as an “organizer.”
He came to the Lone Star State to earn a master’s degree at the University of Texas at Austin and found a home in Dallas while working for Texas Housers, which “supports low-income Texans’ efforts to achieve the American dream of a decent, affordable home in a quality neighborhood.”
He met Downwinders board co-chair Evelyn Mayo through his work with Legal Aid of North Texas and eventually joined the organization as a board member.
Downwinders began as an all-white, suburban-based group focused solely on stopping the burning of toxic waste in local cement kilns.
“It’s since become a nationally-known campaigner for environmental justice in multiple frontline communities of color, founding a regional air quality monitoring network,” officials said in a press release. “The board and staff are now majority young people of color.”
Lessons Learned in Milwaukee
Roberts was involved in stopping the $1.74 billion Interstate 94 expansion in Milwaukee, but although he and other advocates were successful at the time, the project was recently resurrected.
“You never win anything permanently,” Roberts told CandysDirt.com. “It’s like whack-a-mole over some years.”
Roberts also worked on the creation of the Milwaukee streetcar and advocated for developers to hire local workers.
“Here [in Dallas], development is happening, you know it’s coming, it’s always happening,” he said. “In Milwaukee, it’s like these projects mean a lot to certain people because they’re the only projects in town.”
Roberts bought a home in South Oak Cliff near Beckley Saner Park. He loves being a North Texas but said Dallas has its fair share of challenges. Because the city is “so regional in its thought process, they lose focus,” he said.
“We spend on our infrastructure to go far and wide across the region, and we need to focus on infill development,” he said. “There is vacant land near downtown and in The Cedars that people need to live on. It’s an infrastructure problem. We spend a lot of money on connectivity to other cities. We have deck park after deck park. Why isn’t South Dallas, with its proximity to downtown, not a destination for people?”
One Thing Almost Everyone Agrees On
Dallas plan commissioners spent a considerable amount of time in a June 17 meeting talking about how industrial use is addressed in the ForwardDallas comprehensive land use plan, which was adopted in 2006 and hasn’t been updated since then.
CPC Vice Chair Brent Rubin said the plan has made significant progress in the area of environmental justice.
“The biggest land use injustice that we’ve seen in Dallas history is allowing incompatible industrial uses to be located far too close to areas where our black and brown citizens predominantly live,” Rubin said. “The version of ForwardDallas from 2006 didn’t do enough to address this and the version we have in front of us today is a massive step in the right direction.”
The plan thoughtfully addresses West Dallas, Joppa, and Floral Farms and “calls for targeted zoning interventions in those areas and also addresses some of the increasing tensions that we’ve seen between warehouse logistics uses and existing residential areas, Rubin said.
Elmwood resident Christine Hopkins told the CPC that removing industrial uses and industrial residential adjacencies in the aforementioned neighborhoods is “one thing ForwardDallas got right.”
Roberts said he’s attended several meetings on ForwardDallas and will continue to closely follow the evolution of the plan.
“I think we’ve been one of the few groups that have been involved from the beginning,” he said. “I think it’s a big deal. I’m an urban planner. I understand how this works. It’s crazy that Dallas has taken such a long time to do one of these again. They’re trying to correct many years of things being inadequate. There’s new ways of thinking, and we have a really old system here in Dallas.”
A Focus on Air Quality
Downwinders at Risk aims to educate, raise awareness, and influence policy. The nonprofit is primarily focused on air quality, Roberts said.
Cement batch plants in residential neighborhoods aren’t necessarily solely the result of poor planning, he added.
“It’s the whole legal situation that we were in as a country in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s,” he said. “It’s really environmental racism and redlining. It’s just neglect of policies that were already in place. Redlining allowed industries to build in areas that should be residential, but we didn’t care about certain people. It’s not even that we did it poorly. We knew exactly what we were doing. This was an intentional step.”
Industry is big business that adds to the tax rolls, and it’s up to city leaders to do the right thing, he said.
“Academically, I think we all understand what’s going on,” Roberts said. “I don’t think there’s much debate over that history. I think there’s tension over what we do now. Honestly, I think a lot of people in power don’t want to upset these industries. They bring in money. We’re dealing with the business side of politics.”
When it comes to working with politicians, Roberts remains prepared and hopeful.
“Sometimes we’re on the same side; sometimes we’re not on the same side, but we’re building a relationship,” he said. “They know we’ll be active and loud about our thoughts. They know where we’re coming from and that we’re in the communities. They know who we are and they know what we stand for. They will have to deal with us and we’re going to talk about EJ.”
