The City of Fort Worth is making significant changes to its 2023 Comprehensive Plan after hearing environmental concerns from a community in the southeast.
The updated plan cuts more than 100 acres off a new industrial development area in the Echo Heights neighborhood, where activists say existing heavy industry has caused decades of health problems for residents.
On one side of the road are an elementary school and a mobile home community; a row of massive industrial facilities is across the street.
Activists told NBC5 this was the norm in the southeast Fort Worth neighborhood of Echo Heights: big business spilling into their backyards.
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“We have so many kinds of industrial chemicals around, and it makes it kind of hard to sit outside and breathe fresh, clean air,” said Teena James, VP of the Echo Heights Stop 6 Environmental Coalition. “It’s just not possible.”
James told NBC5 that for decades, many of her family and friends in Echo Heights have suffered chronic health problems.
She believed it was connected to the high industry concentration in the neighborhood – part of why she was so concerned when Fort Worth released its 2023 Comprehensive Plan early this year.
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“If we had not been in that location at that time to oppose it, it would have passed,” James said.
The proposed plan called for a 671-acre Industrial Growth Center to be zoned in Echo Heights, including a massive plot of open land directly across from W.M. Green Elementary School.
“We’re just asking that you take into consideration what we’re dealing with,” James told the Fort Worth city council at their November 14 meeting.
Activists in Echo Heights took their concerns to the city in early 2023, pushing back against the planned increase in development.
In March, the city council passed the 2023 Comprehensive Plan without the Land Use component and met with Echo Heights community members five times over the next seven months.
At their November 14 meeting, the Fort Worth city council passed a new plan, cutting more than 100 acres off the industrial development zone, which was reduced to 562 acres.
The updated plan also zoned the land across from W.M. Green Elementary School as a residential area instead of including it in the industrial zone.
“Most of the decisions that created the problems we have in Echo Heights were created before I was born, and much of this council is included in that,” Fort Worth mayor Mattie Parker said before the vote to approve the amended plan. “This may be imperfect, but I think we’ve taken some important steps forward.”
Still, some in the southeast Fort Worth community told NBC 5 they want the city to go further.
“You said you were aware of the violations and the impurities and the situations and the redlining that has been going on in the community,” Teena James said. “Change the zoning so these companies, with prejudice, can not come back over.”
