The Dallas-Fort Worth area is the 10th most ozone-polluted metro area in the country. The effects of poor air quality are felt disproportionately by vulnerable communities, namely southern Dallas and West Dallas, that experience the highest levels of air pollution and increased risks of respiratory illnesses like asthma.

That’s why the Environmental Protection Agency’s termination of a grant program that would have helped support environmental initiatives and air quality monitoring in Dallas communities is so troubling.

Downwinders at Risk, an environmental advocacy group now suing the EPA, has applied to receive federal funds through the Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving Cooperative Agreement to continue gathering data to monitor air quality pollution across Dallas.

Caleb Roberts, executive director of Downwinders at Risk, said the grant would have replaced existing air quality monitors and added at least five new monitors for at-risk communities.

This hyperlocal data would have helped to better visualize and understand the challenges that communities like Joppa face when it comes to air quality. Sitting adjacent to industrial facilities, Joppa is among the worst polluted neighborhoods in Dallas with a long history of systemic racism and neglect.

The loss of this grant program will most greatly impact the communities that need monitoring the most. Richardson and Plano have monitoring in place. What we don’t have is local monitoring that would help the most vulnerable communities like Joppa.

Take the study led by scientists at Texas A&M University in partnership with Downwinders at Risk that found that residents of Joppa are exposed to two to three times as much air pollution and experience higher rates of respiratory illness than the rest of the city.

This study was an important step in understanding the unique air quality challenges facing a community that has long been pushed out of sight and neglected by the city. Without monitoring programs in place, it would have been difficult to conduct a study like this.

Roberts explained that he had hoped the monitoring that would have been supported by the grant program being terminated would have helped propel changes in land use and rezoning, as well as shaping public policy for the most at-risk communities.

For too long communities like Joppa have been told to wait for solutions, for cleaner air, better protections and fairer zoning. But solutions require research and data, and data requires monitoring. Without federal support, it is harder for local groups to do their work, making it even harder for residents to prove what they’ve always known: that they are being left behind.