Keep Dallas Safe Director Joseph Porter is sounding the alarm on Joe’s Creek, which is contaminated with E. coli.
Keep Dallas Safe’s mission is to “address crime and homelessness in Dallas with the goal of transforming Dallas into the safest large city in Texas for residents and businesses,” per its website.
The organization has informed District 6 City Council Member Omar Narvaez that a vagrant encampment on Lombardy Lane has contaminated Joe’s Creek water with feces and E. coli.
Porter stated in a Facebook video that the homeless encampment by the creek has been investigated for months and has been reported to 311 and even 911.
Porter states that the people there have been seen eating, drinking, and bathing using the creek’s water. As such, Porter and the Keep Dallas Safe team tested the water to see if it was safe to drink.
“We ran a test on the water in the creek; we found that the water there has been contaminated with E. Coli and Fecal Coliform due to the vagrant camp that is placed thereon Lombardy Lane and Joe’s Creek,” Porter told The Dallas Express.
“Councilman Omar Narvaez has failed in his duty to keep his district safe. The results speak for themselves. District 6 residents are now being forced to live with slums in their backyard because of his inaction on Dallas’s chronic vagrancy problem,” Porter told DX.
As previously reported by DX, Joe’s Creek has had homeless encampments, which have polluted the Trinity River due to rains early this year.
“It only takes one bad rain to undo six months of cleanup, especially when homeless encampments are involved,” said Greenspace Dallas CEO Rick Buckley, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Porter says that he is disappointed with the council’s lack of response.
“Dallas has fallen into, this sort of disrepair, very disappointing to see we were here two months ago, we called on Councilman Narvaez to do something about this camp and its only gotten worse since the end of summer,” Porter said.
The Dallas Express reached out to Narvaez’s office but did not receive a response.