Demolition begins at infamous South Dallas Toxic Waste Landfill

Demolition began Thursday at the infamous Lane Plating on Bonnie View Road, five miles south of downtown Dallas.

The celebration was attended by a crowd of neighbors, city and federal officials.

The old factory is surrounded by parkland, stream, and the Arden Terrace area across Bonnie View Road.

The website offers daily progress updates and air monitoring data.

Past generations didn’t know about the danger coming from inside the factory, but people suspected something was wrong, said Gloria Bond, president of the Arden Terrace Neighborhood Association.

“We’ve had so many deaths in our area and she said, ‘Something must be wrong.’ She repeated this over and over. So we don’t know how it affected us,” Bond said. “We went fishing there. There were the biggest turtles. So we didn’t know.”

The place was revealed to have been using toxic plating chemicals for over 90 years before closing in 2015 due to violations, investigations and bankruptcy.

The EPA added it to the list of Superfund remediation measures in 2018.

According to Allen McGill, leader of the Lane Plating community advisory committee, the hacks that put trespassers at risk and new EPA guidance helped speed up action on Thursday.

“I know from some of our partners around the country that this project is really moving along at a fast pace,” McGill said. “It is important that we recognize and support such leadership. This has allowed the voices of Arden Terrace and stakeholders to have some influence on decisions about what will happen at this site.”

The demolition of the building is only the beginning of the cleanup process. Further, 11,000 tons of contaminated soil will be removed from the territory and under the building.

“The primary and most contaminated soil is in the treatment area where extensive removal work is underway,” said EPA site coordinator Eric Delgado.

Additional treatment of contaminated groundwater on the adjacent 4-acre portion of the site requires further study.

“It’s a water table that’s about 15 feet below ground level, and no one is using that water,” Delgado said.

Dallas Local Councilman Tennell Atkins, who has been involved in the fight against Lane Plating for many years, said fears about the city’s tainted drinking water are unfounded.

“We had to turn around and educate and inform our community,” Atkins said. “This community deserves to be torn down. This is a process. This is the beginning. We start today.”

Air monitoring results will be published online daily help increase the confidence of neighbors in the work.

Gloria Bond said she was pleased to see progress but was wary of the safety of the cleanup work.

“You don’t have a choice either. You have to trust them and hope that from now on they will do the right thing,” she said.

The demolition of the building should be completed by February, when the cleanup could continue until the summer.