Don't involve everybody in this one.
I'm gonna back up from what
Leslie Harry just mentioned.
We've talked about it a few times.
Global Elyria Swansea neighborhood.
That area deals with the environmental
impact of the Suncor refinery,
one of Colorado's largest polluters.
So I'm a novice at this,
but please raise your hand if you
would put pressure on state and federal
regulators to put additional environmental
restrictions on the Sun Core refinery.
Universally,
everybody has raised their hand.
Earned foyer.
What specifically should be seeking?
Well, I just want to start
off by saying a couple things,
because when you brought up GS before
we talk a lot about public safety.
There are people living in our communities
who aren't safe to breathe their air.
It's not safe to drink their water.
It's not safe to cross the
street to a bus stop because of
the infrastructure we've built.
I also want to say that people
talk a lot about Suncor.
Across the street from Suncor is the Cherokee
Gas plant directly connected to excel energy,
and it's connected to a network with
Comanche gas plant in Pueblo, Co.
The city of Denver didn't do
enough to say we got to.
Shut down these facilities and we
have to move to to new processes,
especially for Comanche,
which is a predominantly
Latino community as well.
We put pressure on them.
We marched for days on on Excel energy.
We can leverage them.
The state and federal.
We've been doing the work and I would love
it if more people would join us in it.
I want to be also clear.
Suncore gets all out of the attention.
There are 189 businesses violating federal
environmental law in north Denver.
I wrote this report and released
it last year.
We sued over I-70.
We've learned about the cumulative
pollution some of the things we
can do immediately around some.
Where they're flaring,
we can stop the flaring.
We can make sure that we're holding
them accountable for the benzene,
that they're admitting they're in the
middle of a water permit right now.
There's still an opportunity
for you guys to get involved.
Debbie Ortega sitting on City Council,
I'm sure some of this has
come in front of you.
What specifically have you done and
what would you do to go after state
and federal regulator regulation
on Suncor or other polluters?
So I want to talk about a
couple other projects as well.
So I LED working with the global
community to deal with the ASARCO cleanup,
which contaminated the
soils in that neighborhood.
It also resulted in one of the largest
class action lawsuits and settled
that did the cleanup of the soils
in the neighborhood to a greater
degree than what the state had been
negotiating with that company.
These neighborhoods have been in
the shadows of I-70 they've been
dealing with the pollution from.
That project, for many years,
my office alone submitted 40 pages
of comments to the environmental
impact statement that was all focused
on mitigating the impact of the
environmental effects of that project.
They were all funded except trees,
and the community was successful
coming back later to get that done
with Suncor as a council person that
used to represent that district,
this is how far back that pollution has gone.
I have worked with those communities
to address that issue.
And continue to do that.
Thank
you. I'm not hearing you address what you're
doing with state or federal regulators.
We have a huge opportunity right
now with your dear caraveo,
a public health professional,
becoming congresswoman representative to get.
And I have worked very closely on this issue.
I haven't seen you in those dialogues.
And we talk about mitigation.
Our communities wanted opposition,
and the only reason we were able to get
what we wanted is because we were opposite.
You've chosen to broker this middle deal.
When the communities that want justice,
we want justice.
Responsible part of that mitigation,
we were able to get $2,000,000 to
replace the housing that was taken.
This was a state project, right?
It wasn't a city project,
so we were successful getting
some of that housing replaced.
We worked on making sure the homes
that were left in the neighborhood had
mitigation to prevent the dust and the
air pollution from coming into their
neighborhood with new Windows and doors.
I mean, I could go on and on with the list,
but there were many things
that happened as a result of.
Fighting to make sure that that
project was being mitigated,
knowing full well that City Council and
the mayor had supported the project to
move forward as it had been planned.
We were looking at a whole different way
of addressing that problem by routing
that traffic away from those neighborhoods.
I wasn't successful in getting
that done through approximation
that was brought to City Council.
Rerouting
is not fair, W because now you're
saying that the brown communities in
Commerce City deserve the pollution
instead of the people in Denver.
We have to have solutions that
regionally bring people together.
They do not create sacrifice zones
because we don't want to hear.
That's more of the not in my
backyard mentality. Thank you.
We had better solutions. 15
seconds to wrap back up if you like.
This was a community process that
everybody got to participate and weigh in.
The decisions were made at the
state and federal level to fund and
move forward with that project.
We're stuck with what they approved,
but my focus was trying to mitigate
the impact on those neighbors
as best we could. Thank you.