Commerce City residents and activists want to block a state permit to expand a gasoline storage facility across the street from Dupont Elementary School, but the battle is complicated by consumer demand for affordable fuel and Colorado’s need to comply with EPA ozone rules.
Community members from all around Commerce City gathered Sept. 7 at a forum hosted by grassroots organization Cultivando and the Adams 14 School District to discuss health concerns, environmental injustice and the lack of communication regarding the proposal by the Magellan Pipeline Company. Opponents to the plan say its expansion would increase pollutants harmful to the health of the school and the wider Front Range community.
“What I’m hoping comes of this forum is that the community walks away with a sense of understanding of this issue and the energy and motivation to do what they can to ensure this permit is not approved,” said Guadalupe Solís, director of Cultivando’s environmental justice programs.
The Magellan pipeline terminal across from Dupont Elementary currently has 20 storage tanks. The expansion proposes an additional five tanks. Petroleum handling facilities release volatile organic compounds, including benzene and other hazardous chemicals, into surrounding neighborhoods, and adding a significant number of tanks, pipes and valves will increase emissions, according to permit applications.
Concerns expressed during the forum focused particularly on benzene, which can cause cancer and low birth weights.
Cultivando manager of environmental justice programs Laura Martinez said the area around Dupont Elementary already has consistently higher levels of benzene, even for Commerce City.
“Adding five more tanks and the contamination is going to be elevated and more dangerous for our communities,” Martinez said.
Some of the people who attended the meeting said they did not know all the details of the storage expansion, only that it involved more oil and gas operations in Adams County. Others were more informed and staunchly against expansion of Magellan’s Dupont Terminal. The majority of the presentations were in Spanish, with a few speakers presenting in English. Receivers for live translation in either language were available to attendees.
Solís said Cultivando’s air monitoring efforts increased public awareness and stirred momentum. “We’re here to inform our community. No one else is going to do it. We know Magellan didn’t, we know that the (state air pollution division) didn’t. And so our role is to inform the community, make sure their voices are heard.”
Joe Salazar, chief legal counsel for Adams 14, is drafting a public comment with Cultivando and the Center for Biological Diversity, slated for submission to the air pollution control division by Sept. 16.
“This is a continuation of over a century of environmental racism and Commerce City has always been the target,” he said.
Salazar said the school district is heavily involved in pushing back against the permit. “This is about who occupies that school across the street (from the terminal), our families who come to our schools, hoping that they have kids who go to school and breathe clean air.”
“The cake is baked,” he added, because the expansion received preliminary approval without any public input. “So we’re here to fight to make them change their minds.”
Should the permit be fully approved, Salazar said he will take the issue to court.
The promise of reformulated gasoline
Colorado officials may be in a bind when reviewing the permit for the Magellan Dupont terminal expansion. The tanks will hold more reformulated gasoline than the site could handle for the 2024 season, and thereby help meet other environmental goals of the Polis administration.
Colorado’s northern Front Range counties must use the less volatile gasoline in summer to help bring the state’s ozone-causing emissions in line with EPA limits. Reformulated gas, according to the EPA, can cut back on ozone-causing emissions because it’s denser and doesn’t evaporate as quickly in hot weather.
The Polis administration warned earlier this year consumers could pay up to 50 cents more a gallon for reformulated gasoline because the market is dominated by Suncor’s Commerce City refinery. But petroleum trade officials and even the EPA said companies like Magellan did a good job increasing competition this spring by piping in alternative supplies ahead of the June 1 launch of reformulated gasoline.
The EPA has welcomed that competition. Magellan, now owned by ONEOK, has said the new tanks would help guarantee a diverse supply for the Front Range.
Magellan’s early action to pipe in reformulated gas last spring saved Front Range residents, including those in Adams County, 15 to 20 cents a gallon by boosting competitive pricing, said Grier Bailey, director of the Colorado Wyoming Petroleum Marketers Association. Still, Bailey said, gasoline companies are aware that 9 out of 10 gallons of Front Range gas is delivered from Adams County facilities like Magellan and Suncor.
“I would also say we have an obligation to understand Adams County is responsible for 85% of the fuel sold in Colorado, and we need to make sure we take care of that community as well,” Bailey said.
“A fight for the new generation“
Various community members spoke up at the school district forum to question the plans. Mercedes Gonzalez, who lives in the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, has grandchildren and great-grandchildren with asthma, with doctors noting the severity of their symptoms. Gonzalez has also noticed changes in her own health, such as allergies and nosebleeds, but said it is clear that her grandchildren suffer the most.
“This is a fight for the new generation,” Gonzalez said in Spanish. She compares oil companies to monsters, owing to all the money they have. “We have to fight together to let our voice be heard and to see changes happen in the city.”
Other attendees said they were worried about the increased truck traffic and its associated pollutants, as well as potential explosions from the gas storage tanks.
Cultivando, a Latina- and Indigenous-led nonprofit organization, focuses on advancing health equity. “We’re in this fight because the community has asked us to be in this fight,” Solís said.
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An air monitoring project piloted by Cultivando lasted almost two years and found that air quality in Commerce City is significantly worse than that of other communities in the Front Range. Other research has confirmed that the Commerce City area has one of the most polluted ZIP codes in the country.
Solís acknowledged that the new tanks are meant for reformulated gas, which is supposed to be a cleaner fuel for vehicles, reducing ozone pollution along the Front Range during the hot summer months. But she noted that putting the tanks at the Magellan Dupont Terminal and worsening the area’s air pollution is unfair to Adams County.
Outcry was also directed at the lack of communication from both the Magellan Pipeline Company, which manages the storage terminal, and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Magellan planned to post a notification at its facility gate about the permit plans and to have the application publicly available in both English and Spanish.
While the permit plans are available on CDPHE’s page for air permit public notices, the documents are only in English.
Solís said that the company’s efforts were not adequate ways to communicate to a community that’s primarily Spanish-speaking. They needed representatives to hold forums, knock on doors or provide bilingual flyers to reach people, she said.
“This would not fly in a White community,” Commerce City councilmember Renée Chacon said. “This is environmental racism at its definition. They don’t propose these projects by Cherry Creek.”
Chacon said implementation of Colorado’s Environmental Justice Act, which she supported and was passed in 2021, has been difficult due to a lack of communication between agencies and little to no representation in the lobbying process.
Salazar also criticized the act. “The implementation allows the oil and gas industry to submit the environmental justice report about their own damn project,” he said. “It’s like putting a fox in a henhouse overnight and saying, ‘Hey, why don’t you guard the chickens?’ ”
Commerce City councilmember at large Kristi Douglas was also in attendance.
“(Magellan’s) biggest fear is public outcry,” she said, urging the attendees to spread the word on their expansion. “Everybody knows two people, who know two more people. We can beat the beast.”
Commerce City mayor Steve Douglas also spoke against the terminal expansion, saying that CDPHE needed to step up or step out, “because you’re in the way.”
The public comment period for the permit has been extended to Sept. 16, from the original Aug. 17 deadline. Cultivando and Adams 14 will host a press conference Sept. 17. It will be available virtually for those who can’t attend in person.
This story was reported by The Colorado Sun and The Commerce City Express, a Colorado Community Media publication where it can also be read in Spanish.