The Magellan Pipeline Company announced Thursday that it is withdrawing plans for a controversial expansion of its gasoline storage facility across the street from a Commerce City elementary school.
Environmentalists and elected officials who had vocally opposed the project said they considered the move a victory for the surrounding community.
The five additional fuel storage tanks are no longer needed because a customer backed out of a commercial contract, Anell Morrow, a spokeswoman for , Magellan’s parent company, wrote in a statement sent to The Denver Post.
“ONEOK will continue to meet customer needs through Magellan’s existing, valuable infrastructure in the area and looks forward to working with stakeholders.” the statement said.
When asked if public pressure also influenced the decision, Morrow reiterated that it was a business decision.
However, community opposition was boiling over just as a public comment period on the application was ending Monday.
“They can say whatever they want, but the fact they pulled it right when all of this is happening speaks volumes. We know that power is within the people and that has an effect,” said Laura Martinez, manager of environmental justice programs at Cultivando, a nonprofit that advocates for the environment and improved public health in Commerce City and north Denver.
Magellan previously said it needed to expand in order to store reformulated gasoline, which is required for Front Range motorists during the summer ozone season in June, July and August. The company’s permit application had received preliminary approval from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s .
However, the company and the state health department were under fire from the Adams County School District 14, neighborhood residents, Adams County and Commerce City elected officials, and environmentalists, who said the new storage tanks would bring more unwanted pollution to a community already overburdened by bad air.
The storage tanks were to be built across the street from Dupont Elementary School, 7970 Kimberly St., and people also complained the new tanks would increase truck traffic in the neighborhood and would negatively impact students’ health.
The various groups also criticized the company and the health department for failing to communicate plans to them, saying the permit was given preliminary approval in secret. The school district and people who live near the storage site were not aware of the expansion plans until they were first reported by The Denver Post in July. The company’s only public notification was a sign recently posted on a fence outside the company’s property on East 80th Avenue.
The Adams 14 Board of Education in August gave approval to its attorney to mount a legal challenge if necessary. And Cultivando recently held two community meetings at which more than 100 neighborhood residents and parents of Dupont Elementary students discussed their strategy for fighting the expansion.
The state’s Air Pollution Control Division had extended the public comment period on the project until Monday after the complaints, and opposition was being filed by the Adams 14 district, the Adams County Commission and the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental nonprofit.
“I appreciate the decision by ONEOK to withdraw these plans that would have only increased emissions, truck traffic and other burdens on our already disproportionately impacted Dupont community,” Adams County Commissioner Steve O’Dorisio said. “We still have a long way to go in these neighborhoods, but we will take any positive outcome we can get whenever we can get it.”
The Air Pollution Control Division is holding a public listening session from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at Eagle Pointe Recreation Center in Commerce City to talk about air quality in the area, and community members said they still plan to attend in hopes of pushing the division to have better communication with the public.
“This is a straight reaction to all the organizing,” said Guadalupe Solis, Cultivando’s director of enviromental justice programs. “They know they were in the wrong — both the (air pollution) division and Magellan/ONEOK.”
Magellan had written in its permit application for the expansion that the additional storage tanks could release 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.
Adams 14 school officials worried that more air pollution would further harm the health of the district’s students, especially the Dupont students, who already live in one of the most polluted communities in Colorado, and they feared the increased pollution could impact their academic performance.
Last school year, 314 of the districtap 5,219 students suffered from asthma, according to data from Kids First Health Care, a nonprofit that provides services to students.
Children living in Commerce City have a 22% higher rate of emergency department admissions for asthma compared to the county overall, and Adams County has higher youth emergency room admissions for asthma than the state average, according to data from the Adams County Health Department.
Adams 14 Superintendent Karla Loría said the permit’s withdrawal was good news, but that the fight for environmental justice is not over. The students’ health is too important.
“We still have an issue that we cannot forget,” Loría said. “We stopped it from becoming even worse, but itap still bad for our community.”
