COMMERCE CITY, Colo. — When the Magellan Pipeline Company wanted to expand its storage operations in Commerce City, families and environmental advocates pushed back.
The company, an ONEOK subsidiary, announced on Thursday it ditched those plans, blaming a customer for backing out of a contract.
"The proposed tanks are no longer necessary based on the customer’s decision to back out of the commercial contract," ONEOK a spokesperson said.
The Magellan Pipeline Company operates a property on Kimberly Street in Commerce City, across the street from Dupont Elementary School. Right now, there are 20 gas tanks on the site. The permit the company posted described a plan that would add five more gas tanks, 25 total.
The environmental justice group Cultivando said the company posted the permit at their entrances on the property. When Cultivando began engaging families, none said they were aware of the plans.
Teachers and families have longstanding concerns about the long-term health impacts related to the exposure of toxic chemicals.
"About two times a year, I usually have vertigo episodes where I can’t get out of bed. It could be caused by a lot of things, but when you look up benzene exposure, the first thing is vertigo," Jason Malmberg, Dupont teacher and President of the Classroom Teachers' Association in Adams 14 Jason Malmberg. "It's hard for me not to see a correlation there."
Malmburg knows how much the concerns weigh on families within the district, most of whom are from a working-class background and people of color.
"Spending the last two decades plus working in Adams 14, I have heard concerns about other staff, families, everybody about all kinds of environmental influences that we have influencing us," Malmberg said. "This recent proposed expansion of the facilities here is just the most recent event that continues to prioritize corporate profit over community."
Based on the research by Cultivando, chemicals in the air in the Commerce City area continue to put children in the emergency room with asthma-related illnesses at a more disproportionate rate across Colorado.
"All of these different chemicals that exist in the air are known to have health impacts in the community," Guadalupe Solís, Director of Environmental Justice Programs at Cultivando, said.
Families began learning not from the posted announcement, Solís says, but from a notice from Cultivando. At a community meeting they held this past weekend to gather feedback, none of the families said they were made aware.
"No one out of the 80 individuals who attended raised their hand to say that they had had the opportunity to read this piece of paper or this announcement or that they even knew," Solís said.
With little community engagement, Cultivando asked that the permit not be approved.
"I think the division, the Air Pollution Control Division, should deny this permit 100 percent," Solís said. "The way that it was done was not with the involvement of the community."