
Fort Worth zoning commission starts process to tighten concrete batch plant regulations
Employees talk as they wait for their cement product to mix at J7 Ready Mix’s plant in Alvarado in November 2023. Company leaders say they’ve implemented tools to control dust and reduce pollution. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report)
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Concrete batch plants have become an object of concern — and ire — in Fort Worth over the past year. On Tuesday, the city’s zoning commissioners took the first step to limit where the controversial plants can be built.
“It’s a step forward,” Commissioner Rafael McDonnell said at the meeting. “But we’re not done.”
Currently, permanent concrete batch plants are allowed by right on properties zoned for heavy industrial development. The adjustments approved by the zoning commission would require applicants to obtain a conditional use permit before building a batch plant in heavy industrial, medium industrial and light industrial zoned properties. They also clarify that permanent batch plants aren’t allowed at all — either by right or through conditional use permits — in neighborhood and commercial districts.
Tarrant County residents have voiced concerns about the health impacts batch plants pose for years, even as the state has tightened regulations; in April, City Council member Alan Blaylock and Mayor Mattie Parker joined calls for environmental regulators to deny a permit for a batch plant in far north Fort Worth. The proposed site is zoned K.
Blaylock said the city has been eyeing tightening its zoning regulations for concrete batch plants for some time now.
“There’s broad consensus that we need to equip ourselves with tools to better protect our communities,” Blaylock said in a May interview. “And so that was the genesis of the thought for this proposed change.”
Requiring conditional use permits wouldn’t be unique to concrete batch plants; Blaylock pointed to the city’s process for carwash approvals, which also require a conditional use permit in certain zoning districts. Use permits allow the city to more closely examine proposed batch plants, without prohibiting them away entirely.
“We have to provide an option and an opportunity for concrete plants to still exist,” Blaylock said. “The reality is a community needs concrete. We have to have it to be able to repair roads.”
When the proposed adjustments first came before the zoning commission in May, they required property owners to obtain a conditional use permit for both permanent and temporary batch plants. The proposed restrictions on temporary batch plants drew criticism from members of Fort Worth’s development community.
“When you’re building neighborhoods for instance, let’s say you’re building 500 homes, you may do it in phases,” Travis Clegg, director of Westwood Professional Services and chairman of the city’s development advisory committee, said at the May meeting. “You need a batch plant on site to build the roads for the first phase. … If you don’t have that opportunity, then you have to drive in concrete and whatnot.”
After discussion with area developers, the city struck the portion that would have required conditional use permits for temporary batch plants. The temporary batch plants are still subject to six-month operation limits and cannot be less than 600 feet away from residential homes under the existing rules.
Jim Schermbeck, director of the environmental justice group Downwinders at Risk, said he’s happy about the restrictions on permanent concrete batch plants but disappointed that the temporary batch plant restrictions were removed. Any amount of exposure to the materials produced by concrete batch plants is harmful, he said, and should be limited.
“You want to be sure and locate these things away from schools, homes, parks, day care centers, and so on, no matter the designation,” Schermbeck, who was also representing the Fort Worth Environmental Coalition of Communities, said. “Because as I know some of you realize, temporary isn’t always so temporary on some of these highway projects.”
In response to Schermbeck’s concerns, city staff told zoning commissioners they are actively working with code compliance on plans to ensure increased enforcement of the six-month operating limit for temporary batch plants. Zoning Commissioners McDonnell and Jeremy Raines both acknowledged that there may be a need to reconsider temporary batch plant regulations in the future.
The proposed adjustments will now go to the Fort Worth City Council for a final vote. Blaylock said the adjustments, if approved, will help the city see where proposed batch plants fall within Fort Worth’s comprehensive plan and take into account expected development.
“We want to have the ability to say, ‘We want these things to be in industrial parks and removed from residential areas,’” he said. “The CUP allows us to do that.”
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