When he smells fumes coming from chemical manufacturing plants near his Northside home, Richard Perez knows his next step: Call the city’s pollution hotline to file a complaint.
Because the incidents often happen on weekends or after work hours, Perez is usually greeted with a voicemail. City staff typically respond the next day during business hours, he said.
“The stuff has usually cleared by the time they come out. That’s been my chief complaint,” Perez, a leader of Northside Fort Worth Air and the Fort Worth Environmental Coalition of Communities, said. “That’s something I mentioned in front of City Council, and I think people are listening. ‘Maybe there is a problem over there, maybe we do need to look at it.’”
Perez is hopeful the creation of Fort Worth’s environmental services department will mean more employees and equipment dedicated to monitoring pollution concerns throughout the city. Before Oct. 1, environmental services were housed in the city’s code compliance department.
Thanks to the 2024 budget cycle, Fort Worth’s environmental quality, solid waste and consumer health staff have a department of their own led by acting director Cody Whittenburg, a former assistant code compliance director.
Conversations about creating a new environmental services department go back to at least 2019, when code compliance director Brandon Bennett and other city leaders began discussing a renewed focus on environmental quality.
The path of Fort Worth’s environmental services department
Facing budget challenges in the late 2000s, the city of Fort Worth decided to consolidate environmental management staff into other departments, code compliance head Brandon Bennett said. In 2011, solid waste became part of code compliance while environmental quality went to transportation and public works. In 2015 — on Cody Whittenburg’s first day as a city employee — the environmental quality division joined code compliance as well.
Like many other initiatives, the process was stalled by the COVID-19 pandemic and came together during the past two years, Bennett said. With Bennett’s retirement coming up early next year, the time felt right to split the departments, he added.
“When I was a single department head, I just had the time to put out fires, and about the time I would start to focus on something and move forward, another fire would pop up,” Bennett said. “Now, I’m out meeting with neighborhoods and spending time with officers in the field. I’m out doing all the things that I wish I could have done over the last six, seven years but wasn’t able to get to it.”
Environmental issues have gained greater visibility on the city level over the past several years, Whittenburg said.
Mayor Mattie Parker recently announced her Good Natured initiative to preserve at least 10,000 acres of open space in Fort Worth in the next five years. The city increased its environmental protection fee for the first time in 2022, and City Manager David Cooke’s theme for the 2024 budget — “So Safe, So Clean, So Green” — reflected a focus on expanded litter control initiatives and a new fleet of street sweepers.
With those goals in mind, Whittenburg’s priority list runs the gamut from air and land quality to litter control and green space. He expects energy efficiency to be a key focus over the next year.
Whittenburg’s department has already applied for a federal grant to fund a citywide plan outlining energy efficiency strategies for city facilities and systems. These efforts will take all city departments working together, Whittenburg said.
“We’ll be able to be a department that isn’t solely owning the entire theme of sustainability or the entire theme of energy conservation,” he said. “We are going to be able to have a leadership role in bringing departments together to make sure we’re keeping our focus, and be a strong voice within the organization to move those programs forward.”
Some Fort Worth environmental advocates want Whittenburg and his staff to take their actions a step further.
Laurie Stelljes, vice chair of the Greater Fort Worth Sierra Club, would love to see the environmental services department conduct air quality monitoring in communities of color near industrial facilities. She has high expectations for the new department, urging staff to help neighborhoods like Echo Heights, which has fought industrial zoning over the past two years.
“I’d like to see the department get involved when there’s a zoning change and make an environmental assessment,” Stelljes said. “OK, we’re going to put another semitruck facility or cement plant here. What’s going to be the environmental impact? What are we displacing?”
Brandy O’Quinn, an economic development executive who doubles as the North Texas program manager for the Texas Electric Transportation Resources Alliance, fears the new department doesn’t reflect a major shift in how the city approaches environmental issues.
“I think the new name and structure is in name only,” O’Quinn said. “I believe that several city departments are doing what they can to mitigate air pollution, preserve and conserve water, and address landfill, recycling and solid waste issues. But the city needs a comprehensive climate action plan.”
Of the top 25 largest cities in the U.S., Fort Worth stands alone as the only city without a long-term strategy to reduce its carbon footprint or address challenges posed by climate change. O’Quinn sees opportunities for the city manager’s office to hire its first chief sustainability officer and the City Council to give the new department a clear mandate to create a climate action plan.
“This is going to affect recruitment of industry to this area and we can’t continue to do things the same as we always have,” O’Quinn said. “We have this incredible community and we have all of these natural resources. But we’re not going to have them forever as the growth continues.”
Whittenburg points to the city’s participation in a North Texas regional climate action plan as a sign that Fort Worth is paying close attention to environmental challenges. His door remains open to people who have ideas for the department, he said.
“Of course, we’re not going to make 100% of the people happy,” Whittenburg said. “There’s always a little bit of conflict that has to be navigated. But I think we can have civil discourse. I think we can have honest conversations, and I think that everyone on the team has the community’s best interest at heart.”
Haley Samsel is the environmental reporter for the Fort Worth Report. You can reach them at haley.samsel@fortworthreport.org.
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