Residents of West Fresno Demand Environmental Justice

“The stench is just indescribable. Morning, Noon, and night it penetrates the walls, it comes through the windows. . . I don’t want dead carcases processed in my backyard and I know that people in other parts of Fresno don’t want carcases processed in their backyard.” That was the Pastor B.T. Lewis of the Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church as he described what it is like to live across the street from Darling International, a rendering plant in West Fresno.

Mary Curry, the designated spokesperson of Concerned Citizens for West Fresno called on the City of Fresno to remove the plant saying that this kind of facility would never be tolerated in North Fresno. Speaking in front of the plant on an August morning, Lewis asked “why should I have to endure more flies in this part of town than you endure in other parts of town? The flies gather around here, the dogs gather around here, this is a wasteland and as long as the City of Fresno endorses companies like this in Southwest Fresno, the residents of Southwest Fresno will never experience the growth and prosperity that they deserve.”

Lewis described dogs in the area following trucks that leak blood from the dead animals they are hauling to the rendering plant, where 850,000 pounds of meat is authorized by the City of Fresno to be processed every day. Lewis concluded “this company is a blight, this company is a destroyer of the community, this company can do business somewhere else, that is why we are here.” For more information about this and other environmental justice issues in West Fresno, call (559) 233-9348.