Nitrogen and ammonia, largely generated by heavy traffic along the Front Range and by agriculture in Larimer and Weld counties, are carried by air currents to the highest elevations of the treasured national park and deposited by rain and snow onto sensitive alpine tundra, where thin soil and delicate plants struggle to buffer the pollution.

If the contamination worsens, wildflowers could disappear and algae could bloom in alpine lakes, changing the waters’ look and endangering fish, scientists told The Denver Post.

“This issue gets worse as you go up in elevation as the sensitivity gets higher,” Jim Cheatham, an environmental protection specialist with the National Park Service’s air resource division, said during a recent meeting with Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission.

Over time, the excess nitrogen — largely from vehicle exhaust — acts as a fertilizer to plants and changes the ecosystem, said Jill Baron, a research ecologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and senior research scientist at Colorado State University.

“You’re fertilizing Rocky Mountain National Park,” Baron said. “But you don’t really want to fertilize a national park.”

Baron, who has spent her career studying excess nitrogen’s effect on the park, said she has seen the beginnings of algae growing in mountain lakes because they are getting nutrients from increased nitrogen in the air.

“It’s a change from pristine conditions,” she said. “We are not at the bright green and stinky stage yet, but we are at the beginning.”

The point of creating national parks was to preserve pristine land across the United States, so scientists want to protect Rocky Mountain’s natural beauty and prevent as much human-caused change as possible, Cheatham said.

“The tundra is the primary resource the park was created to protect,” he said.

Over the years, state and federal air quality regulators have managed to reduce the amount of wet nitrogen — how the main pollutant is identified once it becomes trapped in rain or snow — that drifts into the park. But the amount of wet nitrogen falling in the park is 0.6 kilograms short of a 2022 goal of 2.2 kilograms per hectare per year, according to an Aug. 15 milestone report presented to the Air Quality Control Commission.

Ammonia pollution exceeds nitrogen

One component of wet nitrogen — nitrogen oxides — has been reduced since the project began nearly 20 years ago.

However, ammonia — which is also a form of nitrogen — has increased, according to the Rocky Mountain National Park Initiative’s 2022 Nitrogen Deposition Milestone Report. In fact, ammonia is now a bigger pollutant in the park, exceeding nitrogen deposits since 2013.

The push to clean the air in the Rocky Mountain National Park began in 2004 when the Environmental Defense Fund and Trout Unlimited petitioned the federal government for improvement. Over the years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment have created plans to reduce air pollution that damages the park’s ecosystem.

This project is different than another effort to reduce the haze that is visible from Rocky Mountain National Park and other federally protected areas. That haze is created by severe ozone pollution in the region. And Rocky Mountain National Park isn’t the only Colorado park impacted by the haze.

Every five years, scientists from the National Park Service and the state health department present a report to the Air Quality Control Commission, which establishes rules to regulate air pollution in the state. The most recent report was presented in August, and the next one is due in 2029. The latest Rocky Mountain National Park Initiative report is open to public comment until Sept. 23.

In between reports, scientists monitor the park’s air quality and work with various partners, including the Colorado Livestock Association and Colorado Dairy Farmers, to figure out ways to reduce pollutants flowing into the park.

The bulk of the nitrogen pollution comes from the nitrogen oxides produced by burning fossil fuels through driving gasoline-powered cars and trucks, as well as oil and gas production.

Rocky Mountain suffers from the same severe ozone pollution seen in metro Denver and the northern Front Range, Cheatham said. So any attempts to improve air quality through emissions reductions in lower elevations will help the park.

Scientists have recorded a 15% reduction in nitrogen pollution in the past five years, Cheatham said.

However, ammonia pollution has increased, with the highest recorded levels occurring in 2021, according to the presentation given to the air commission.

That pollution is generated by agriculture, primarily in Weld and Larimer counties. Cattle waste, particularly from feed lots, contains ammonia and fertilizer poured onto crops contains nitrogen. Overall, the number of beef cattle in the region increased between 2018 and 2022, which was the period studied, and the number of dairy cattle reached maximum capacity in 2021, according to the latest report.

In the spring and fall when upslope weather patterns carry air from the south and southeast into the park, the ammonia from the cows is swept into the mountains, said Jeffrey Collett Jr., a CSU professor of atmospheric science.

“All of these things get pushed up the slope of the mountains,” Collett said. “As that happens, the air is expanding and cooling and you often form clouds, and that results in heavy precipitation.”

Agriculture in Larimer and Weld counties generates more than $2.5 billion annually for Colorado’s economy, according to an Aug. 15 presentation by Bonnie Laws of the Colorado Livestock Association.

Preserving “icons of pristine national beauty”

Beef producers and dairy farmers want to do their part in reducing emissions and protecting the national park, but it’s a tricky balance, Laws said during her presentation.

“Sometimes when you control air emissions you could end up creating a water quality problem or you could end up with practices that increase greenhouse gasses,” she said.

Farmers and ranchers try to reduce pollutants by being more efficient with food or fertilizer that contains nitrogen. The more difficult challenge is finding ways to minimize it on the back end.

One of the tools available is an early warning system for agriculture producers that notifies them when an upslope storm is in the forecast. The producers receive emails and text messages days ahead of the predicted storm so they can change how they manage their livestock.

For example, a feedlot manager could hold off on cleaning big manure piles, which kicks up ammonia, or change their pen cleaning schedules until the storm passes, Collett said.

Some are testing whether wetting a pen’s surface ahead of a storm reduces the amount of pollutants lifted into the air. Others are looking at whether changing the nitrogen and protein in animal feed would make a difference.

“There are people working on trying to test these different practices to find ways to reduce these ammonia emissions without impacting their ability to produce beef or milk or whatever their goal is in the operation,” Collett said.

Megan McCarthy, a senior air quality planner with the state health department, said the combined efforts are slowing the potential damage to the park and the various agencies and organizations involved are a one-of-a-kind effort in the country.

Baron, the ecologist, said there are some things, such as large-scale global warming, that cannot be controlled by people in Colorado. But efforts to reduce nitrogen oxides emissions statewide not only help the park but also people who suffer from respiratory ailments.

“Catching it early rather than waiting until it’s a crisis has been very helpful,” she said. “These parks are important to the American people as well as all over the world. The lakes themselves are icons of pristine national beauty. It’s one of the few places on Earth where things are protected.

“Those things are fixable if we have the social and political willpower to do so.”

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The suit, which names Gov. Jared Polis and state Treasurer Dave Young, was filed in Denver District Court by several mostly rural counties on the Western Slope, plus metro Denver’s Douglas County. They allege that a bill passed by the legislature earlier this year would “substantially deplete” — if not zero out — a portion of severance tax revenue that’s intended “to offset the impact” of oil and gas extraction.

That bill, the bipartisan House Bill 1413, took $25 million in severance tax funds and directed them to the general fund, which is the state’s primary spending account. It was one of a handful of transfers that aided in balancing the budget.

The counties — Mesa, Douglas, Garfield, Moffat, Montezuma, Montrose and Rio Blanco — are asking a Denver judge to rule that the transfer was illegal and to prohibit transfers in the future that would “deplete” the fund.

At a county commission meeting at the end of August, Mesa commissioners accused the legislature of taking the money to balance the state budget, and Commissioner Janet Rowland said it was an “insult to injury.”

The counties said in their suit that they have used the money for transportation, public health, and senior and animal welfare services. The distributions made up between 0.6% (in Montrose County’s case) and 3.65% (for Montezuma County) of the their 2023 expenditures.

“As a result of depletion of the (fund), the (counties) and their communities will be deprived of critical funds on which they have come to heavily rely, and on which they intended to rely moving forward for established and new service programs alike,” the counties’ lawyers wrote in the suit.

According to the Colorado Department of Local Affairs website, $25 million is available for local governments in the Energy/Mineral Impact Assistance Fund Grant program; that’s the account from which legislative staff recommended lawmakers transfer the money. Applications for those grants opened July 1.

A spokeswoman for the department was unable to provide comment Thursday.

The legislature has moved severance tax dollars into its general fund before, as Republican lawmakers who opposed the transfer noted during floor debates in the spring. Staff for the Joint Budget Committee, a group of six lawmakers tasked with creating the state’s budget and guiding fiscal policy, recommended the $25 million transfer in March.

Spokespeople for Polis and Young did not provide comment Thursday. A message left for Rep. Shannon Bird, who chairs the powerful Joint Budget Committee and co-sponsored the bill, was not returned.

Rep. Rick Taggart, a Grand Junction Republican who also co-sponsored the bill, said he needed to double-check the details of the various funds’ background and details before commenting specifically.

But he said the transfers were necessary.

“None of us on the (Joint Budget Committee) were happy about that, at all,” he said. “It’s just — we got some surprises thrown at us at the very end of the session, and we had to balance that budget.”

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At the same time, parents whose children attend Dupont Elementary School are organizing to fight the construction of five additional storage tanks at the Magellan Pipeline Company’s terminal at 8160 Krameria St., which is across the street from the school in the Dupont neighborhood.

The additional tanks would increase the amount of volatile organic compounds, benzene and other hazardous chemicals emitted into the air.

And Cultivando, a nonprofit that focuses on community health and clean air in Commerce City and north Denver, is joining Adams 14 officials at 10 a.m. Saturday to rally resistance during an event at Adams City High School.

About 40 people gathered last week at the elementary school to learn about Magellan’s expansion plans, their environmental impact on the neighborhood and how parents and nearby residents might push back against the new storage tanks.

Parents and neighbors are concerned about how increased pollutants would impact people’s health, especially school children who play outside, and about more truck traffic in the neighborhood — another pollution source.

“Let’s do it! Vamos!” one father shouted as Wednesday night’s meeting concluded.

Magellan applied in the fall of 2023 to build the five additional gasoline storage tanks at the site. Twenty already are there, and those tanks store fuel delivered via a pipeline that is then trucked around Colorado to fuel vehicles. The company wants to expand, in part, to store reformulated gasoline, which is a special blend required from June to September along the Front Range to reduce ozone pollution.

But people in the neighborhood, including the school principal and residents who live next to the storage facility, were unaware of the project until The Denver Post reported on it in July.

School officials, environmental activists and neighbors are furious about the lack of communication from the company or from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Air Pollution Control Division, which has the authority to approve, amend or deny the expansion application.

In their application to build the new tanks, Magellan officials wrote that they would notify the neighborhood of the plans by posting signs on the front gate. When Guadalupe Solis, Cultivando’s environmental justice programs director, mentioned the signs at the Wednesday meeting and asked the crowd whether anyone had seen them, multiple people scoffed and laughed.

“That’s what we thought. That’s why we are here,” Solis said. “They are doing this because we are people of color. We are immigrants, and they are sure we are not going to say anything, that we are going to be silent.”

Annelle Morrow, a spokeswoman for ONEOK, Magellan’s parent company, said the Dupont terminal expansion was in the works when the two companies merged in September 2023.

“Whether the proposed project is ultimately approved or denied, ONEOK intends to be a good neighbor to the school and surrounding community for years to come,” she said. “We have already reached out to the school district, and it is our genuine hope that — over time — we can demonstrate ONEOK’s commitment to engaging meaningfully with the communities in which we operate.”

Determining the environmental impacts

As part of its permit application, Magellan was required to submit an environmental justice impact analysis, to determine whether the work would take place in a disproportionately impacted community.

That analysis determined nearly 45% of the residents in the neighborhood surrounding the terminal qualify as low income, 79% are people of color, 31% are burdened by the cost of housing and 12% speak limited English. The environmental impact on the surrounding community is supposed to be taken into consideration by state regulators when they review the permit application.

The parents, school board and neighbors have an uphill battle.

Magellan filed for a construction permit, which doesn’t require the same level of scrutiny as other permits, and the Air Pollution Control Division already has given it preliminary approval.

Michael Ogletree, the division director, said his staff’s work is defined by the law and they must follow it when making decisions on permit applications.

“We must approve permits that comply with the law,” he said.

In the wake of the complaints over the permit’s secrecy, the Air Pollution Control Division extended the public comment period to 60 days, instead of the usual 30.

Ogletree also said the state health department plans to install air monitors near the school to detect emissions. He told The Post that plan was in the works before the newspaper published its July 22 story about the project, but people at the school and neighborhood residents said they had not heard about air monitors until they started complaining about the expansion project.

When asked about that discrepancy, a division spokeswoman, Leah Schleifer, sent an email to The Post saying Ogletree meant monitors were in place “in the area of the school district,” and he directed his staff to explore the possibility of adding monitors near the school.

Ogletree said his agency will listen to community feedback and offer support.

To that end, the health department is planning a community listening session from 6 to 8 p.m. Sept. 17 at Eagle Pointe Recreation Center in Commerce City. Schleifer said attendees must register in advance at bit.ly/APCDPublicSession. If not enough people sign up, the meeting will be moved to online-only, she said. She also noted that the meeting was not about any specific permit application.

“This is not fair”

Joe Salazar, chief legal counsel for Adams 14, said “the cake has been baked,” but he still believes there is a chance organized opposition could halt the permit. The school board voted unanimously last month to allow Salazar to fight the project on behalf of the district. He said it was unusual for a school board to take that step.

The Center for Biological Diversity will join the parents’ group, Cultivando and the school district in resisting the project, Salazar said.

“We’re up against it right now and we’re going to have to fight really hard to get the Air Pollution Control Division to change their minds,” he said.

Parents who attended last week’s meeting were worried about their children playing outside, but Dupont Elementary Principal Amanda Waller said she hoped to allow outdoor playtime as long as she feels it is safe.

“I pray we are not going to have to go that far,” Waller said. “It’s not fair to our kids.”

Waller broke down in tears as she talked about the gasoline storage expansion, saying she had been caught off guard when she learned about it. She also called it “a big deal” for the school.

“I just want you to know that I love and care for this community so much that this is really painful to me and I’m going to do everything I can to encourage all of us to join together because it’s about the kids,” she said. “This is not fair. This doesn’t happen in Cherry Creek.”

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In September, the ECMC has yet another opportunity to fulfill its obligation to protect Colorado’s communities. But yet again, it appears the interests of the oil and gas industry are being prioritized over the health of Colorado’s communities.

As members of Colorado’s Environmental Justice Action Task Force, we call on the ECMC and Gov. Jared Polis to strengthen these rules to hold oil and gas polluters accountable, stopping the rampant oil and gas pollution that takes place in Colorado’s disproportionately impacted communities.

We represent two of 22 Environmental Justice Action Task Force members appointed in 2021 and acted as co-chairs on the Environmental and Equity Cumulative Impact Analysis subcommittee. The task force worked with community members and state partners extensively for nearly a year, eventually developing a set of recommendations aimed at addressing environmental injustice in Colorado. The ECMC’s latest draft rules lack several essential provisions needed to shield disproportionately impacted communities from the harmful effects of oil and gas development.

We’re not the only task force urging the ECMC to strengthen these draft rules. Western Resource Advocates Building Decarbonization Manager Meera Fickling, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment Health Equity Commissioner Hilda Nucete, GreenLatinos Colorado State Director Ean Thomas Tafoya and Chair of the Sangre de Cristo Group of the Sierra Club Jamie Valdez, all support the opinions expressed in this piece.

The draft rules lack protections for neighborhoods near oil and gas operations, especially those already struggling with pollution and related health problems like asthma, cancer or autoimmune disorders. By failing to require oil and gas activities to take place at least 2,000 feet from disproportionately impacted communities and limiting public involvement in the permitting process, the state is prioritizing industry profits over people’s safety and well-being.

By failing to protect Colorado communities, a crucial part of ECMC’s mission, these draft rules perpetuate environmental racism as the many of the Colorado communities that are most impacted by oil and gas pollution are communities of color and low-income communities. According to Protégete’s Colorado Latino Climate Justice Policy Handbook, Colorado counties with high Latino populations contain a disproportionately high number of oil and gas wells and a disproportionately low number of air quality monitoring stations. These proposed rules ignore the spirit of environmental justice and are not in line with the final recommendations we made as members of the Environmental Justice Action Task Force.

Our final recommendations included that state agencies should use the definition of disproportionately impacted communities (DICs) explained in detail here. But the ECMC’s recent draft rules prioritize a different definition, labeled as cumulatively impacted communities (CICs), that excludes many areas historically burdened by oil and gas activities and almost all of Colorado’s Western Slope communities. The ECMC is not the only state agency using CICs. Several environmental organizations are involved in ongoing litigation with Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission over the use of the CIC term, which encompasses only a fraction of the communities that are included in the DIC definition.

The ECMC should use the definition of DICs that were recommended by the task force and used by state lawmakers. This definition ensures that the communities most affected by environmental injustices are accurately identified and protected.

Additionally, the ECMC should strengthen its proposed draft rules in three ways:

• Close loopholes to ensure no new oil and gas operations are allowed within 2,000 feet of DICs, unless every  resident who lives within that radius gives informed consent

• Mandate air quality testing in a community before approving new oil and gas permits, and deny the permits if the oil and gas operations would push air pollution to unhealthy levels

• Set and enforce strict limits on ozone-causing, toxic air pollutants during the summer months, typically when air quality is the worst along Colorado’s Front Range

Everyone in Colorado deserves the right to live in a healthy and safe environment. Rather than eliminating oil and gas pollution, the latest draft rules by the ECMC provide concessions to oil and gas polluters and ignore community concerns. This is not acceptable. Governor Polis and the ECMC must protect and listen to the voices of the communities most affected by environmental racism, and hold oil and gas polluters accountable.

Renée Chacon is co-founder and executive director of Womxn from the Mountain and serves as the Ward III Councilmember on the Commerce City Council. Beatriz Soto is the director of Protégete at Conservation Colorado and co-chair of the Clean Water for All Colorado Coalition.

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Denver South works with local governments and businesses on economic development and transportation issues in communities along 8 miles of the Interstate 25 corridor in the south metro region. The area, which includes parts of Denver, Arapahoe and Douglas counties, Greenwood Village, Centennial and Lone Tree, has seen steady growth in the number of businesses and housing units in the last few years and expects more.

The area is also projected to see increased traffic, said David Worley, president and CEO of Denver South.

“What we project in the corridor is increased traffic of 15 to 30% in the coming years,” Worley said.

Growth is expected even as many employees continue to work from home for part of the week. Worley said traffic in the south-metro area is above pre-pandemic levels.

A Denver South study of the I-25 corridor forecasts traffic growing from the current daily average of 252,000 vehicles at about the I-225 exchange to 289,000 by 2050. Daily trips are expected to rise from the current 157,000 vehicles to 230,000 in 2050 in the vicinity of Ridgeway Parkway.

The traffic map in the study shows I-25 and Arapahoe Road in red, depicting congested/over-capacity conditions and other streets as congested and near their capacity by 2050.

Traffic at spots along I-25 is beyond the highway’s capacity now, said Daniel Hutton, Denver South’s vice president of transportation and mobility. He said the highway was engineered to handle roughly 200,000 vehicles a day.

The traffic volumes projected for 2050 assume people keep doing what they’re doing now, with few changes in how people commute, Hutton said.

“I-25 is a really significant corridor. A lot of people don’t realize that one-ninth of Colorado’s economy is really based in that 8 miles” in the south metro area, Worley said.

Denver South is encouraging businesses to apply for state tax credits as a means to reduce single-occupant vehicles, relieve congestion and reduce air pollution. The tax credit offers employers a 50% tax credit of up to $125,000 a year for money spent on encouraging workers to get out of their cars.

The maximum amount allowed for any one employee is $2,000 per tax year, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue.

Worley said employers could get tax credits for buying EcoPasses for employees. The Regional Transportation District pass allows for unlimited rides on buses and trains.

“It could be an e-bike program, van pool or a carpooling program designed by the employer,” Worley said. “You could put together an e-bike program with an EcoPass to get to and from work. There are a lot of creative things employers could do with this tax credit.”

Ridership on RTD buses and light rail in the south metro area is below pre-pandemic levels, Worley said. “It’s starting to come back a little, but we have a lot more capacity for light rail than ridership.”

At this point, participation in the tax-credit program is low, Worley said. “We’re struggling with people not being aware of this tax credit.”

The Department of Revenue is compiling the number of claims for credits. The 2023 tax year was the first year that Colorado businesses, nonprofits and others could claim the credit, spokesman Derek Kuhn said.

Legislation passed in 2022 created the Alternative Transportation Options Tax Credit, which was supposed to end this year.

“But we worked really diligently to try to get it extended. It’s now extended through 2027,” Worley said. “One of the reasons we’re working really hard to promote it is that the tax credits need to get used in order for it to stay on Colorado’s legislative landscape.”

Denver South hosted Josh Pens, director of tax policy with the Department of Revenue, Tuesday to talk to area employers about the incentive. The organization joined several metro-area business groups in 2021 to oppose rules that would have required large businesses to set goals to reduce the number of miles that employees drove to work.

The state Air Quality Control Commission planned to write rules for businesses to help implement a 2019 law that set goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26% by 2025; at least 50% by 2030; and at least 90% by 2050 from the levels that existed in 2005.

The rules would have targeted metro Denver and the northern Front Range, which is out of compliance with federal standards for ground-level ozone pollution. The pollution is prevalent on hot, sunny days when volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides from oil and gas operations, vehicle exhaust and fumes from industrial chemicals react in the sunlight.

Denver South, along with a broad coalition of businesses, strongly urged the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission to use voluntary measures instead, Worley said.

“While we supported the State’s efforts to improve air quality, protect public health, and mitigate climate change, we also recognized the business community’s constraints, limitations, and continuum of needs,” Worley said in a statement.

The rulemaking for the so-called Employee Trip Reduction Program didn’t happen. The Colorado Chamber of Commerce hailed the withdrawal of the proposal by the state Air Pollution Control Division. After taking input, the division said voluntary measures “can build a foundation for the future success” of the program.

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It would be the first time in nearly 50 years that Colorado would not be under federal oversight for carbon monoxide emissions that largely were caused by heavy rush hour traffic and cars made without catalytic converters. On Thursday the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission voted to remove federal oversight and repeal monitoring requirements. The Environmental Protection Agency must approve the plan.

“Colorado experienced high levels of carbon monoxide pollution in the 1970s and 1980s, and this milestone shows how far we’ve come in protecting and improving air quality for all Coloradans,” commission chairman Patrick Cummins said.

In the 1970s, Colorado Springs, Denver, Greeley, Longmont and Fort Collins were plagued by high carbon monoxide emissions, mostly from automobile exhaust. Throughout the decade the region exceeded federal standards for carbon monoxide more than 100 times with most of those violations happening during daily rush hours.

Those cities were placed under Environmental Protection Agency oversight to reduce carbon monoxide, an odorless, tasteless gas that can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea and chest pain, and can exacerbate pre-existing conditions such as heart diseases.

Colorado was able to reduce carbon monoxide in the air as more automakers installed catalytic converters in cars and trucks and by using gasoline that burned cleaner. The state also started requiring auto emissions inspections.

In 1999, the state hit the federal standard for carbon monoxide emissions but it was required to stay in compliance for 20 years. It is now 80% lower than the federal standard and has stayed that way, allowing the federal oversight to be relaxed.

But that doesn’t mean the Denver Metro area and northern Front Range are in the clear. Nor will it stop finding ways to reduce carbon monoxide pollution, which also is created by oil and gas production.

The region still is considered in severe violation of National Ambient Air Quality standards for ground-level ozone pollution and measures continue to be in place to reduce nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds — the two ingredients that form smog on hot summer days.

Still, commissioners found the success in reducing carbon monoxide encouraging.

“Hopefully, it will inspire us to tackle the outstanding challenges that we have,” Commissioner Elise Jones said. “We can see that it is possible to achieve them.”

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The extension comes amid criticism that regulators at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and executives at Magellan Pipeline Company did not communicate with people about plans to expand gasoline storage at the Dupont Terminal at 8160 Krameria St. in unincorporated Adams County.

The expansion would increase the amount of toxins released into the air in a community that already suffers a disproportional amount of pollution compared to the rest of the state.

The public comment period on the expansion at Magellan’s Dupont Terminal has been extended by 30 days until Sept. 16. That gives members of the public an extra month to challenge the state Air Pollution Control Division’s preliminary approval for the project.

The extension comes after The Denver Post reported in July that community members were angry that they were not aware of the proposed expansion near an elementary school and in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

Along with the extended public comment period, the state also plans to organize a community meeting about the project, although a date and location for it have not been determined, said Michael Ogletree, director of the Air Pollution Control Division.

“We want to be sensitive to the people in the community,” Ogletree said. “For us, it’s important to have those communities at the table.”

Ogletree invited people who are concerned about the project to speak Thursday during the public comment period at the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission‘s monthly meeting. People can register for public comment online at tinyurl.com/46se6tvy.

The commission, however, is not involved in the approval process of the permit and the project is not on the commission’s monthly agenda.

Jeremy Nichols, senior advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the extension for public comment is unusual but necessary.

“It was welcome news,” Nichols said. “They kind of did it quietly. It just kind of showed up on the website and they didn’t really announce it. It’s unusual, but seems really called for in light of the circumstances.”

Magellan wants to add five more storage tanks at its Dupont Terminal, which sit across the street from Dupont Elementary School. Twenty storage tanks already are on the property where the company stores fuel delivered to Colorado via a pipeline.

Magellan says it needs to expand its terminal so it can store reformulated gasoline — a special blend required in the Front Range from June to September to reduce ozone pollution.

On its application for the expansion, Magellan said the additional five tanks would release up to 16.5 tons per year of volatile organic compounds, which combine with nitrogen oxides on hot summer days to form a smog that blankets the region.

The tanks also would release benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene — all chemicals that cause various human health problems such as breathing difficulty, eye and nose irritation and inflammation.

The permit already has received preliminary approval from the state’s Air Pollution Control Division.

Ogletree said the application meets all of the rules and regulations required under state and federal laws. The public comment period gives environmental groups and concerned citizens a chance to point out errors or challenge instances where they believe the law has not been properly applied.

Because the permit already received preliminary approval it will be difficult to stop the project, Nichols said.

“When we see a draft permit come out, that’s a red flag that things are moving forward,” he said. “It’s really hard to turn that around.”

Still, Nichols is pouring through the technical documents to find provisions that need improving. For example, he is critical of a section that would authorize Magellan to release tons of volatile organic compounds when the company needs to clean the tanks over two days.

The Air Pollution Control Division plans to install high-tech air monitors near the elementary school to determine which pollutants are in the air and at what volume, Ogletree said. He said those plans are being formed by a community outreach team and were in the works before the community raised questions about the project.

The Magellan storage site is located in a neighborhood that is disproportionately impacted by air pollution, meaning people there represent different ethnicities and socio-economic levels that are traditionally left out of decision-making on projects that affect their quality of life. They argue they bear a higher burden of pollution for oil and gas projects for the benefit of the entire state.

In Colorado, companies that want to apply for air-pollution permits in those communities must include environmental justice summaries in their applications. Magellan’s summary reported that nearly 45% of the residents qualify as low-income, 79% are people of color, 31% are burdened by the cost of housing and 12% speak limited English, according to the company’s permit application.

In its application for the expansion, Magellan officials wrote that the company would notify the community about its plans by placing signs on the front gate at the facility.

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The latest clash involves the ongoing debate about how close those wells should be to homes.

Next month, the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission must approve rules that define “cumulative impacts” of pollution and address how they affect what are known as disproportionately impacted communities across the state.

Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill last year directing the energy commission to establish rules regarding the cumulative impacts of drilling by considering how the oil and gas industry’s work can harm air and water quality, wildlife and public health, as well as increase odors and noise, in communities that are disproportionately impacted by pollution.

The cumulative impacts rule comes on the heels of the commission’s decision this week to approve a comprehensive plan from Crestone to drill up to 166 petroleum wells near Aurora Reservoir, despite strong opposition from a nearby neighborhood where homes cost between $600,000 and $1 million.

At issue in the newest debate is a provision that would have required a company to receive consent from every resident or building owner within 2,000 feet of a proposed drilling site. Right now, rules state drilling sites must have a 2,000-foot setback from homes, hospitals, schools and office complexes, but there are exemptions that allow companies to drill and those permits are rarely denied.

Environmentalists say those exemptions provide numerous loopholes that allow the industry to drill wherever it wants, and this latest provision was needed to protect the communities that suffer the most from air pollution, noise, traffic and other issues caused by drilling.

“It creates more room for the industry to continue to produce oil and gas in disproportionately impacted communities,” said Patricia Garcia-Nelson, an advocate for GreenLatinos Colorado.

“Blunt instrument to ban the industry”

The energy commission has been working on drafts of the new cumulative impacts rule for months, and those early versions — reviewed by environmentalists, oil and gas companies and lawyers — included the requirement for consent from neighbors. That changed last week when the commission’s staff released the latest draft.

Dan Haley, president of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said the industry urged the commission to drop the consent requirement.

“We feel those setbacks are unnecessary because they are a one-size-fits-all blunt instrument to ban the industry from Colorado,” he said.

The state already has rules in place to protect communities, Haley said.

Depending on the specific project, the state can require operators to use electric drilling rigs or install a closed-loop system that cuts toxic emissions. Regulators also can impose rules that reduce traffic, noise and odors, too.

“It’s not just about emissions,” Haley said. “Sometimes it’s about truck traffic. Sometimes it’s about odor. There are a lot of tools at the ready to make sure the communities are protected.”

Haley also noted that effectively banning new wells in the state would force Colorado to buy its gasoline and petroleum products from other sources. That would have an environmental impact, too, because the product would have to be shipped, trucked and piped into the state.

Colorado is the fourth-largest state supplier of crude oil and eighth-largest natural gas producer, according to the Energy Information Administration. The industry contributes nearly $2 billion in state and local tax revenue in Colorado.

“The commission has listened to their concerns for years, which is why we have the most protective environmental standards in the world right here in Colorado,” Haley said of environmentalists. “Some of these groups are not going to be satisfied until there’s a ban on oil and gas in Colorado.”

Considering cumulative impacts

Environmental advocates say the state regulators who make decisions on drilling permits ignore communities where residents are mostly Latino, Black or Indigenous and whose income levels are often lower than the state average. A consent provision would have given them a stronger voice in decision-making for drilling permits.

“I’ve been doing testimony in front of the commission since 2017 and we keep hearing the same ‘the sky is falling’ claims from the industry, but… the concerns of the community have never changed, and they’re never been addressed,” Garcia-Nelson said. “It’s really heartbreaking.”

To explain how cumulative impacts on a community should be considered, Garcia-Nelson, who lives in Greeley, offered as an example the neighborhood near the JBS Foods meatpacking plant on the north side of the city.

Three oil and gas operations sit within a half mile of the plant. There are homes less than a half mile from the plant and the drilling sites, and they’re all close to the Cache la Poudre River, she said.

If cumulative impacts were to be considered before issuing a drilling permit, regulators would need to consider how all of those industrial operations combine — air pollution, water pollution, traffic, noise and foul smells — to affect nearby residents rather than solely judging the impact of the single permit under consideration, as is the practice now.

Allowing residents to give consent would help people in a city surrounded by oil and gas drilling, Garcia-Nelson said.

“In Greeley, you can’t get away from it,” she said.

“Only one set of concerns being addressed”

When the energy commission’s staff released the latest draft on Aug. 2, the provision that would have required consent to override setbacks was struck from the proposal.

Environmentalists were livid that the provision not only was gone, but that it had been removed seemingly out of the blue after months of drafts included it. Now, their written rebuttals are due Friday and they have little time to organize opposition ahead of rulemaking hearings that begin Sept. 3.

“It literally seems like the ECMC accepted every one of the industry’s concerns and stripped out every one of the community’s concerns,” said Rebecca Curry, an attorney for Earthjustice, a nonprofit law center that takes on legal cases for environmental groups. “They made a bunch of changes that go in the wrong direction.”

Andrew Forkes-Gudmundson, senior manager for state policy at Earthworks, said about a third of the oil and gas developments in the past few years have been within 2,000 feet of neighborhoods. And most of those neighborhoods qualified as disproportionately impacted by the state, which uses a population-based formula that takes into account ethnicity and race, income, housing costs and language barriers.

Those communities are least likely to fight back because they do not have the time and resources to read hundreds of pages of technical material and sit through lengthy meetings.

“They’re most susceptible to having developments move in with little pushback,” he said.

That’s why regulators need to consider measures that protect those communities that suffer the most from toxic air pollution, Forkes-Gudmundson said. And it seems those regulators are going to ignore a legislative mandate to consider those neighborhoods in their decisions, he said.

“There’s only one set of concerns being addressed, and it’s certainly not to the disproportionately impacted communities who could have oil and gas developments in their backyards,” he said.

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“We are devastated by the commission’s decision to approve the Lowry Ranch Comprehensive Area Plan,” said Marsha Goldsmith Kamin, president of Save The Aurora Reservoir or STAR in a statement. “This is without doubt the wrong decision for the health, safety and environment of our community.”

The Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission, after considering and rejecting a request for an additional delay, voted 3 to 1 on Wednesday afternoon to approve the Lowry Ranch CAP, or comprehensive area plan.

The approval was conditioned on Crestone using electric-powered rigs and equipment at all pad sites rather than the three out of 11 it had gotten guarantees from Xcel Energy to supply. Electric rigs generate less noise and air pollution and are now common when drilling occurs near residential areas. Sound walls would add another level of noise mitigation.

Crestone must still win regulatory approval for individual pad sites and local approvals from Arapahoe County, and Kamin vowed that her organization would keep up its fight. But the CAP approval removes a major hurdle for Crestone.

Commissioner John Messner, who cast the dissenting vote, expressed concerns that Crestone left several important questions unaddressed, including wildfire mitigation, which has become a more pressing consideration after the 2021 Marshall fire in Boulder County destroyed more than 1,000 homes.

“I’m not sure the applicant has met the burden of proof in this application,” he told the other commissioners. In short, Crestone wasn’t comprehensive enough in its planning and seemed more focused on checking the boxes, Messner argued.

Wildfire mitigation plans aren’t required under state CAP rules and emergency response plans are typically addressed with local pad requests. Given the dry grass and high wind conditions in the area, STAR has expressed a concern about the fire risk.

Other concerns raised by opponents include the contamination risk to the Aurora Reservoir, potential seismic activity and disruptions to the Lowry Landfill, a 480-acre Superfund site at the northeast corner of Quincy Avenue and Gun Club Road owned by Denver. Crestone has addressed that last concern by agreeing to not drill under the landfill.

Increased road traffic in the area is another worry. Crestone plans to pipe its brackish “produced” water to a central location and then truck it up to Weld County to process, said Mike Foote, an environmental attorney representing STAR. More than 100 million barrels will be moved on local roadways.

Crestone, a subsidiary of Denver-based Civitas Resources, plans to drill up to 166 wells on 11 locations across about 32,000 acres.

The State Land Board owns most of those mineral rights on that land and will use proceeds to fund schools. Lowry Ranch represents one of the state’s most lucrative holdings with solar, farm and oil and gas leases, including 17 existing Crestone wells that have generated more than $200 million for state coffers.

The original mineral rights agreement with the state land board dates back to 2011, but opponents argue strong growth in the area has altered the conditions behind the initial approval.

Crestone, which obtained the mineral rights at a later date, filed its application 645 days ago and its plan has faced public scrutiny from multiple parties for more than a year, said Jamie Jost with Jost Energy Law, which is representing Crestone in its application.

Under state rules, only “impacted parties” are allowed to weigh in on an application, including homeowners living within 2,000 feet of a proposed well site. Only one home at Lowry Ranch met that condition and the owner has agreed to allow drilling. Two other homes are within 3,000 feet.

The ECMC made an exception and allowed STAR members to testify on the application despite a lack of legal standing to do so, she said.

Kait Schwartz, director of API Colorado, a petroleum industry trade group, said it was both “disappointing and revelatory” that despite meeting all the requirements outlined in state law, Crestone still faced significant resistance.

“Our operators are proud to produce in Colorado, yet it is disheartening to encounter such opposition even when the regulations and requirements are strictly adhered to,” Schwartz said in a statement.

Members of STAR viewed it differently, saying Crestone’s plan would impact them in multiple ways and that they deserve to be heard.

“Local residents and STAR raised dozens, if not hundreds of concerns with this CAP while expert witnesses pointed out many issues with its analysis, conclusions, and stated facts. In my opinion, this ECMC decision ignores or dismisses a vast majority of these concerns made by the community,” said Jason Ephraim, a resident of the nearby Southshore neighborhood in an email.

Lawyers with Earthjustice, representing GreenLatinos, 350 Colorado and the Sierra Club, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Colorado on Tuesday morning.

Earthjustice and its clients documented at least 9,209 violations of the Clean Air Act by Suncor over the past five years, according to the complaint. The refinery exceeded the amount of emissions of hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, benzene, formaldehyde and particulate matter that it is allowed to release under its federal air-pollution permit.

The lawyers calculated the number of violations by pouring over Suncor’s monitoring reports and documents filed with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

In 2020, Suncor released approximately 20 tons of hazardous air pollutants, 500 tons of carbon monoxide, 50 tons of nitrogen oxides, 125 tons of particulate matter, 450 tons of volatile organic compounds, and 230 tons of sulfur dioxide into the air, the lawsuit alleges.

The ongoing pollution makes people in the surrounding neighborhoods sick with asthma, headaches and stomach ailments, the lawsuit said, and it interferes with their ability to exercise outdoors and let their children play in nearby parks.

The refinery, which processes about 98,000 barrels of crude oil per day and supplies about one-third of the gasoline used in Colorado, is located in a disproportionately impacted community, meaning the majority of residents are Latino, Black or Indigenous and fall into lower-income brackets that the rest of the state, but bear the burden of the pollution.

The refinery’s pollutants also contribute to the region’s smog, which develops on hot summer days when volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides react in sunlight.

Leithan Slade, a Suncor spokesman, on Tuesday said the company’s executives were reviewing the lawsuit.

The environmental groups sent a notice of intent to sue to the Environmental Protection Agency in early June and there was a 60-day waiting period before the lawsuit could be filed. During those 60 days, the EPA or the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment could have filed a lawsuit to override the environmental groups’ intent.

The organizations are filing the lawsuit under a provision within federal law that allows citizens to step in to try to enforce environmental laws when they believe federal and state regulators are not doing enough.

Kevin Lynch, a law professor at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law who works with the university’s Environmental Law Clinic, said the citizen lawsuits give people in the community a seat at the table in enforcement and negotiations when settlements are involved.

“It’s not easy, which is why you may not see it all the time,” Lynch said.

Several years ago, Lynch participated in a similar lawsuit when DU’s Environmental Law Center represented Wild Earth Guardians in a lawsuit against Xcel Energy over the pollution coming from its Cherokee coal-fired power plant in Adams County. The suit was litigated for years before the two parties reached a settlement in which Xcel agreed to spend $447,000 to fund energy efficiency projects in the community, including installing solar panels on a recreation center.

“What you want is something that’s going to improve the lives of the community,” Lynch said. “A seat at the negotiation table is a really valuable benefit to the communities and why they would want to get involved in litigation.”

People who live in north Denver and Commerce City, along with environmentalists, have been critical in recent years of the state’s enforcement of Suncor. They say recent settlements have not been harsh enough to force Suncor to comply and the settlements benefit the company more than the community..

In February, the state health department announced a $10.5 million settlement with Suncor — the largest in state history — for repeated air permit violations between July 2019 and June 2021. Under the agreement, Suncor paid $2.5 million to the state and agreed to spend $8 million to repair its power supply system, which state regulators believe caused multiple violations. However, people in the community were critical because Suncor was allowed to spend the bulk of the money on something it already should have fixed.

In September, the EPA signed a consent agreement with Suncor after the refinery sold dirty fuel to Colorado gas stations. Suncor paid a $160,000 penalty for the violations, plus an additional $600,000 to fund a program to buy electric lawn equipment for local governments, schools and residents in Commerce City and north Denver.

In 2020, the company and the state reached a $9 million settlement over violations that occurred during the previous three years.

The Canadian company remains under investigation for a December 2022 shutdown that released excessive amounts of pollutants into the air and for a string of exceedances in December and January. Under the Clean Air Act, a judge could impose a maximum fine of $121,000 per day per violation.

In July, the EPA and the state health department served a notice of violation to Suncor, the first step in an enforcement action after both agencies discovered violations on the amount of benzene and other hazardous air pollutants.

Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment spokeswoman Kate Malloy declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying the agency does not talk about litigation.

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