Justice Department launches investigation into illegal dumping in Houston

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HOUSTON — The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether or not town of Houston has illegally violated Black and Latino residents’ civil rights concerning how town handles illegal dumping of trash, federal investigators introduced Friday.

The Justice Department will look at town’s enforcement and solid-waste administration operations, insurance policies and practices when it responds to residents’ requests for municipal companies — together with how town picks up illegally discarded trash — and whether or not these processes have discriminated towards Black and Latino Houston residents in violation of federal civil rights regulation.

“Illegal dumpsites not only attract rodents, mosquitos and other vermin that pose health risks, but they can also contaminate surface water and impact proper drainage, making areas more susceptible to flooding,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division mentioned in a press release. “No one in the United States must be uncovered to danger of sickness and different severe hurt due to ineffective stable waste administration or insufficient enforcement packages.

“We will conduct a fair and thorough investigation of these environmental justice concerns and their impact on Black and Latino communities in the City of Houston.”

The investigation was spurred by a grievance filed late final 12 months by Lone Star Legal Aid on behalf of a neighborhood in northeast Houston that complained about folks dumping tires, sofas, mattresses, TVs and different objects on the streets, mentioned Amy Dinn, managing legal professional for the environmental justice crew at Lone Star Legal Aid. Some illegal dumping has clogged drainage ditches, which has elevated flooding issues throughout heavy rains.

Huey German-Wilson, a resident in the neighborhood, mentioned it’s powerful to pinpoint why precisely this has been taking place in her group over time.

“We get a hodgepodge of reasons why people are doing it, but why does it stay on our streets for so long?” German-Wilson instructed The Texas Tribune on Friday.

Residents in the neighborhood mentioned they’ve complained for years by means of Houston’s 311 customer support hotline, designed to assist residents name for metropolis companies and report non-emergency considerations. But Dinn mentioned the requests from northeast Houston residents to deal with the illegal dumping have been disregarded.

“It’s not an imaginary thing, and this is not a self-created issue,” Dinn instructed the Tribune. “It’s an issue that comes from the outside.”

The DOJ investigation is the most recent try by Houston’s Black and Latino communities to deal with persistent environmental hazards in their neighborhoods. Black and Latino residents have fought to keep new sources of pollution from shifting into their communities, from concrete batch vegetation to interstate expansions. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan visited one Houston group final 12 months and promised environmental cleanups, emissions enforcement and infrastructure investments.

Although the Biden administration has been making an effort to deal with environmental justice points, German-Wilson mentioned town, Harris County and the state of Texas ought to have been coping with these considerations all alongside.

“They have whole entire budgets and people who deal with these issues — why did we have to go all the way to the Department of Justice?” German-Wilson mentioned. “I’m immensely relieved we could potentially have some resolution here, but can I really rest on that?”

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