The City of Dallas is set to receive a federal grant to help clean up brownfield sites in certain neighborhoods, which could help address residents’ concerns over the city’s lack of cleanliness.
Some $1.5 million in taxpayer money was awarded to the City by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for spending related to brownfield site cleanup plans, environmental assessments, and community outreach activities.
The grant includes $1 million from the Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund and $500,000 from the Brownfields Community-wide Assessment Grant.
“Conserving and preserving our environment for future generations is a top priority for the City,” claimed City Manager T.C. Broadnax in a press release. “These funds will help the City continue its work in making our communities healthier and more sustainable, particularly our communities that are most impacted by environmental hazards.”
Still, the narrow focus of the grant leaves several issues related to Dallas’ cleanliness unresolved, especially in low-income neighborhoods.
“[T]here are people who live there who would love safe, clean streets that don’t have prostitution, vagrancy, homelessness and degeneracy as a design feature,” said racial justice activist group Dallas Justice Now’s head of outreach, Adekoye Adams, in a statement to The Dallas Express.
A plurality of Dallas residents believes the City does a “poor” job at maintaining clean streets, according to a recent City satisfaction survey that logged the lowest street cleaning approval rating in several years, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
“Downtown is filthy,” one resident said, according to the survey. “Clean up the city!”
Other residents complained about “infrastructure issues,” including “badly timed traffic lights, broken curbs, potholes and rough street surfaces, [and] dirty streets due to no street sweeping.”
Some have associated the lack of cleanliness throughout Dallas with the nagging problems of widespread homelessness and vagrancy.
“It is impossible to maintain any standard of cleanliness with vagrants sleeping on every corner,” Jake Colglazier, executive director of the local activist group Keep Dallas Safe, said in a prior statement to The Dallas Express. “It’s difficult and expensive to clean up a pile of trash when there is a person inside.”
The aforementioned satisfaction survey from the City of Dallas found that 75% of residents believe homelessness is a “major” issue. Furthermore, most residents said crime, drugs, and infrastructure were also major problems, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
