By Linda Stout

Requesting nearly $30 million dollars to mend a broken redlined community in North Las Vegas is a strong ask, but that’s exactly what State Senator Dina Neal did as she introduced compelling evidence from public ledgers, official documents, and news articles chronicling Windsor Park's powerful and slow moving environmental disaster. At the legislative hearing on April 27, senators heard testimonies from misled residents who recently purchased homes only to discover they could not insure, resell, or even repair their properties. 

Originally home to nearly 300 predominantly Black families, Windsor Park is a subdivision located near Martin Luther King and Carey that was built during the segregated 1960s. Geological faults and overpumping of groundwater have caused the ground beneath their neighborhood to crack, buckle and sink. 

Severed gas lines and fractured foundations made many homes uninhabitable by the 1980s. Homeowners, in exchange for smaller homes and higher mortgages, were offered $50,000 by the city of North Las Vegas to relocate during the 1990s. Many stayed, and the demolitions that followed left their close knit community in disrepair with abandoned lots, crumbling concrete slabs and torn up streets. SB450 is an environmental justice bill that establishes a funded program for relocating the roughly 90 residents who still reside in Windsor Park. 

One of the Sierra Club’s missions is to “protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment.” According to the United States Geological Survey, more than 17,000 square miles across the nation have been impacted by subsidence, and 80 percent of known cases are the result of unsustainable land and water-use practices. Subsidence from groundwater depletion is often gradual and widespread, but in the Windsor Park subdivision, major fault lines and fissure zones exacerbated the subsidence.

Since 1989, and as a result of Windsor Park, The Department of Housing and Urban Development requires special subsidence hazard assessments for property near known subsidence features. Attempts in 2019 to build a warehouse on nearby undeveloped land received strong pushback from the tax paying residents of Windsor Park who are repeatedly denied opportunities to improve or build upon their own land just a stone's throw away. 

For decades, the news media has covered Windsor Park’s deplorable story, shining a light on a shameful corner of Nevada’s history.  “WindsorPark: The Sinking Streets,” an award winning short film created in 2022 by UNLV’s film and law students illustrates a collaborative effort to inform and elevate this community’s struggle to receive fair and just treatment. Senator Dina Neal stands up to demand environmental justice and brings hope to a neighborhood that will not be forgotten.