30 years of grassroots, community-driven organizing and advocacy supporting environmental justice issue.
When communities organize, change follows. Our work has led to meaningful, measurable outcomes—protecting residents, challenging polluters, and improving quality of life across North Texas. These results show what’s possible when people take action together.
Bottom line is that there's never been a will or courageous leadership to bring justice to all the families in West Dallas. And every step in action has potentially cost the city more financially and in adverse health impacts.
This is the issue that we see with the city of Dallas—this is also what happened with Shingle Mountain, when we kept calling and reporting.
For years, we felt helpless, like the pollution was just a fact of life we had to accept. Downwinders gave us the data and the courage to stand up and say 'no more.' For the first time, we feel like we have a voice, and we know we're not alone in this fight.
As fracking operations expanded across North Texas, we successfully campaigned for and won stronger local ordinances in Dallas, establishing stricter buffer zones between drilling sites and homes, schools, and hospitals to protect public health from drilling-related pollution.
For decades, the TXI-Martin Marietta cement plant in Midlothian held the largest hazardous waste incineration permit in the US. We waged a successful 13-year battle to stop the burning of toxic waste at TXI and passed new regulations that made it harder to burn toxic waste in any US cement plant. We accelerated the modernization of all three Midlothian cement plants, including the installation of new pollution controls that have dramatically decreased air pollution from these large sources. We successfully petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to bring Ellis County into the DFW “non-attainment area” for ozone pollution so that cement plants would need to continue to reduce their emissions as part of the larger effort to reduce smog.
We led the fight to remove “Shingle Mountain,” a six-story-high, illegal dump of toxic roofing shingles that loomed over a residential neighborhood in Southern Dallas. Our organizing and advocacy resulted in a city-led cleanup, removal of a major environmental hazard, and a new precedent for municipal accountability. After the mountain was gone, we continued to push for a solution to the root cause of its formation; industrial zoning near homes. With the community, we drafted the first bilingual neighborhood land use plan, advocated for its adoption, and won zoning changes that set up the community for positive growth not industrial encroachment.
We were approached by residents in the heavily industrialized Joppa neighborhood to monitor the quality of their air in 2018 because of two pending concrete batch plant permits. The monitoring results showed dangerous levels of pollution exposure, and thus spurred our commitment to fight for resident health in this Freedman town. We stopped the addition of two concrete batch plants in 2018, launched our air pollution monitor network in Joppa in 2019, partnered with Texas A&M researchers on a 3-year public health study in 2020, won the relocation of a major polluter (Austin Asphalt) in 2023, and successfully changed the City’s land use plan in 2024 to move away from heavy industry. We continue to push for the complete rezoning of the neighborhood and the establishment of a permanent clinical presence.
We worked with neighborhood coalitions to have the City of Dallas create dedicated environmental justice goals within the ForwardDallas 2024 comprehensive land use plan update. This will drive consideration of environmental justice in all land use planning decisions within the city moving forward.
We are committed to transparency and accountability. Our annual reports provide a detailed look at our work, our finances, and the impact we have on communities across North Texas. We invite you to review our progress and see how your support is put into action.
Change doesn’t happen on its own—it’s powered by passionate, dedicated people like you. Whether you have five minutes or five hours, there’s a place for you in the fight for environmental justice.
Your voice, your time, and your support are our most powerful assets. Find the right way for you to make a difference today.
Ready to get involved? Join our volunteers and dedicated neighbors using their time and skills to help build a healthier North Texas.
Our events bring the movement to life, from community meetings to city rallies. Connect with neighbors and add your voice.
Support environmental justice with every Bonfire purchase. T-shirts and totes fund our frontline work and raise community awareness.
