‘It Got Out of Hand': Why That Monstrous Shingle Mountain in Southern Dallas Isn't Likely to Vanish for Another Year

Shingle Mountain, we now call it, like it's some tourist's destination, a joke. When it's anything but. Six months after I first wrote about this monstrosity just south of downtown, we should remember what it is: 55,000 tons, maybe more, of tossed-out roofing material piled high and wide, spilling into a creek, a field and forest. It's an eyesore, yes, but also a "grotesque environmental disaster," as environmentalist Jim Schermbeck once described it. A thing that makes people who live in its shadow sick. Afraid to go outside. By now, I had hoped I wouldn't need to write anymore about Blue Star Recycling's environmental disaster off S. Central Expressway, near the city's dump and the illegal gaming rooms and the metal crushers and by-the-hour motels. I had thought, perhaps naively, that a judge's order to make Shingle Mountain go away by July 9 would do the trick. But I was wrong. The mountain remains, almost every inch and every ounce of it. And it will for another year. Maybe longer.  Continue reading...