The Fort Worth City Council did not deliver the result a vocal group of southeast Fort Worth residents wanted, instead approving FedEx’s trucking site for another two years.
FedEx was granted a conditional use permit in a June 24 meeting with council members voting 10-1 in favor. The permit will allow FedEx to continue operating a trucking storage site on Martin Street in the Echo Heights neighborhood.
Council member Deborah Peoples was the only one to vote against the permit extension. She said she understood residents’ concerns surrounding environmental racism as she has fought against similar issues.
She pointed to council member Jeannette Martinez’s effort to find a solution to serve both the company and residents.
“Know that I don’t consider this or any zoning case lightly,” Martinez, who represents southeast Fort Worth, said just before the vote.
In its effort to address community concerns about air pollution, FedEx’s attorney Sean Tate, of the Tate Law Group, reassured council members the company was working with the University of Texas at Dallas to install an air quality monitor in the neighborhood.
“This has been an ask of the community for a long time and I’m excited it will also be an educational experience for the students” (at W.M. Green Elementary School), Martinez said. The school sits about a mile from FedEx’s storage site.
FedEx first requested Fort Worth leaders to consider granting the company a permit to operate at the site for an additional five years in a May 15 zoning commission meeting. In that meeting, Tate initially announced company leaders were working on installing an air quality monitor. He also said FedEx officials were dedicated to maintaining communication with residents in response to their concerns and meeting city ordinance requirements.
The shipping company began operating the 9-acre facility as early as 2003, but the site’s use resulted in code compliance violations, according to a zoning report.
FedEx was issued a special exception permit in 2015 to operate at the site until March 2020. Since then, the shipping company has been operating on an outdated permit.
In the May meeting, commissioners demanded to know how FedEx failed to recognize the initial permit was outdated. Tate described the illegal use as an oversight from a “huge corporate entity” and said company leaders immediately submitted an application for a conditional use permit once they were notified by Fort Worth officials this year.
The oversight was likely because of a change in zoning authority, said zoning case manager Stephen Murray. FedEx’s first permit was issued by the Fort Worth Board of Adjustment. Conditional use permits, which began as early as five years ago, now go through the zoning commission and city council, said Murray.
EJ Carrion, CEO of Student Success Agency, questioned FedEx’s responsibility to monitor air emissions from the trucking site.
“FedEx’s truck yard has polluted the air, damaged the roads and endangered families without a valid permit for five years,” said Carrion. “If they couldn’t keep up with a simple permit, how can we trust them to maintain an air monitor, install signage and manage a formal complaint process?”
Council member Chris Nettles said city officials need to prioritize enforcing ordinances to ensure businesses do not operate on overdue permits.
“I feel like there should have been some type of penalty to go (over by) five years, but if it’s the city’s wrongdoing as well, we have to make sure we guide that better,” said Nettles.
Several other residents also took the stand before council members made their vote, emphasizing Fort Worth’s neighborhoods are not the appropriate place for industrial operations, such as FedEx’s.
“You got a billion-dollar company with a history of going into Black and brown communities, polluting those communities,” said Letitia Wilbourn, an Echo Heights resident and co-founder of the Echo Heights Stop Six Environmental Coalition. She’s previously cited community members suffering from health issues brought on by industrial pollution.
Members of the neighborhood, the company and city leaders have been at the center of a yearslong battle, with residents demanding Fort Worth officials stop permitting industrial businesses to move into the area, where trucking facilities and natural gas drilling sites already reside.
Wilbourn was joined by several community members who participated in a protest outside City Hall on June 10, when council members were originally set to vote on granting FedEx its permit before it was tabled until June 24.
Environmental advocates and residents also said in the meeting the city has failed to meet with advocacy groups Downwinders at Risk, Northside Fort Worth Air and the Echo Heights Stop Six Environmental Coalition to discuss how environmental justice would be incorporated into Fort Worth’s 2050 comprehensive plan. They began requesting to meet with city officials in September 2024.
Fort Worth planners intend on meeting with residents through focus groups once a consultant has been assigned to drafting the comprehensive plan, FWLab assistant Eric Fladager said in May.
“We want to sort of be more focused, be more efficient with our time and get into the solutions, rather than just go over the problems again,” said Fladager.
Nicole Lopez is the environment reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at nicole.lopez@fortworthreport.org.
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