Something to sing about: Shingle Mountain, a giant pile of pollution, finally gone

About 2 p.m., a concert truck with a piano on the flatbed will arrive near where the 100,000-ton pile of waste once stood in south Dallas. Quincy Roberts, whose bid won a city contract to clear away the shingles, will team with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra to present a tiny concert for Jackson and her neighbors.

Roberts also happens to be a trained operatic tenor who sits on the orchestra’s board of directors. His friend and Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity brother, Lawrence Brownlee, is an even better tenor who has performed around the world. He plans to sing “All Day, All Night (Angels Watching Over Me).”

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Two symphony violinists will set up near the flatbed and the show will begin.

The intent, Roberts said, is to do what the city of Dallas did not — apologize to the community that was forced to endure toxic pollution for years, and to say to Jackson, in particular, that she’s appreciated.

Roberts broke the news to Jackson on Thursday.

“They told me it was going to be a surprise,” said Jackson, fresh from getting her second coronavirus vaccination. “He’s so sweet. He said invite your friends and family.

“I told him I thank God for him and his team. I thought it was going to take until April [to move the mountain]. He said we had suffered long enough. He feels this passion and my council member doesn’t feel this passion.”

A tiny concert featured musicians with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra where toxic debris once stood. (Denise McGovern/Dallas Symphony Orchestra)

“This is strictly for Ms. Jackson,” Roberts said. “Let’s celebrate getting rid of Shingle Mountain. This hasn’t been publicized. I strategically didn’t invite politicians. I didn’t want anyone out here trying to get votes or anything.”

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Shingle Mountain formed a few miles from a section of Dallas that was settled in 1872 by Black people who had been enslaved. The section, Joppa, like other areas where African American and Latino residents lived, was subsequently redlined as an undesirable Black residential area and targeted by city planners for industrial pollution — railroad depots, concrete batch plants, roofing manufacturing and a massive landfill.

In 2017, two White business partners schemed to dump discarded roofing shingles on a road leading to the landfill, disregarding the state and city permit process. As the pile of shingles rose for two years, city officials failed to take action, even after Jackson complained. Fine particulate matter, including fiberglass, filled the air around her house.

Jackson suspects the pollution is why she suddenly struggled to breathe, saying it feels like tiny bits of glass are stuck in the middle of her throat. She coughed throughout an interview with The Washington Post, and apologized because her voice continues to come and go.

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It wasn’t until environmental activists asked a Dallas Morning News columnist to write about Shingle Mountain that the city finally responded. Two years passed before lawsuits were filed and settled, and Dallas requested bids to remove the waste.

As it turned out, the winning bidder, Roberts, is also a Black Dallas native who grew up a few miles from the industrially zoned area where Jackson lives.

Roberts likened it to a monument for the city’s racist past.

“I say it’s a modern day cross burning in the front yard,” Roberts said. “This guy,” he said, referring to one of the partners, Christopher Ganter, “knowing it was an illegal operation, had no regard for the Black and Brown community it was adjacent to. I’m going to make money in your backyard regardless of your health.”

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After Roberts Trucking Inc. started removing the pile in mid-December, community activists, including Jackson, mobilized an effort to fight zoning decisions that place pollution in the southern sector, where mostly Black and Latino residents live.

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They called on city officials to rezone their community and remove the waste that has built up and fouled the air, so much so that the life expectancy in some areas is 15 years less than in the north, where White residents live.

After one frightening moment, Roberts came to believe what Jackson said about struggling to talk and breathe. While working at the site one day, he removed his mask once.

“The short term effects were not good: your eyes watering, itchy skin, being exposed to the fiberglass in the air,” Roberts said.

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And then his voice gave out.

“It was scary at the time,” said Roberts. He grew even more concerned for his workers, who were making up to 300 trips per day to move the shingles to the nearby McCommas Bluff Landfill.

“I told my guys if you get out make sure you got your PPE on,” Roberts said. “It’s hard to believe Ms. Jackson dealt with this every day for years.”

That’s when he thought about throwing a tiny concert.

“The idea is that [Jackson] is going to be present,” said Brownlee. The tenor and Roberts met when they attended Indiana University and were brothers in a Black fraternity.

“I’m offering my gift as an opera singer,” Brownlee said. “It’s to say she and so many people are important.”