Colorado Voices
Community-led air monitoring reveals gaps in environmental regulation
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Results from a community-led air monitoring project affirmed decades-long claims of health ailments.
A nonprofit in Commerce City ended an independent air monitoring program last summer. Now, the data is being used to help improve statewide processes and community engagement. Video by Lizzie Mulvey
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Colorado Voices is a local public television program presented by RMPBS
Colorado Voices
Community-led air monitoring reveals gaps in environmental regulation
Clip | 6m 43sVideo has Closed Captions
A nonprofit in Commerce City ended an independent air monitoring program last summer. Now, the data is being used to help improve statewide processes and community engagement. Video by Lizzie Mulvey
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipIn 2019, there was this shower of clay, yellowish clay around the community so children couldn’t go out to play you couldn’t go outside the cars were filled with this film.
Outside of Denver you will find Colorado's only major petroleum refinery.
Owned by a Canadian oil and gas company, Suncor Energy, the facility processes around 98,000 barrels of crude oil every day.
In fact, it provides about a third of Denver International Airport’s jet fuel supply.
The refinery is located in Commerce City, a Denver suburb that many Black and brown residents call home.
Commerce City and really other parts of Adams County and even Denver County around Suncor, we know have some of the highest levels of pollution in the state.
I fight environmental racism.
When you walk around my community, we are highly Latino community, Spanish-speaking community, Mexicans and also a low-income community.
In 2020, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environm... reached a $9 million settlement for air pollution violations.
The largest settlement against a single facility in Colorado's history at that time.
Suncor was required to pay $2.6 million for community grants.
$5 million on improvements to the refinery based on findings of a third-party investigation into the cause of pollut... And $1.4 million in penalties to the state.
One local non-profit, Cultivando, was awarded $1.8 million.
Cultivando is a nonprofit organization based in Ad... and our mission is to increase and create sustainable leadership within the Latino community.
The community does not trust the city.
The community does not trust Suncor and much less trust the state.
We started the air monitoring program in 2021, we monitored for toxic volatile organic compounds.
We monitor particulate matter 2.5 radioactivity, things that were affecting our community.
Cultivando contracted a private.. an air monitoring program independent of the one conduc... Our work builds on procedures, protocols and equipment that will deliver highly accurate data.
Boulder Air's analysis revealed results that were starkly different from what the state reports to ... One key pollutant is PM 2.5.
Particles of pollution that are so tiny, they are easily inhaled and are highly associated with lung cancer.
The data published by the state tracks PM 2.5 levels once an hour and that data hovers below ten micrograms per cubic meter of air, well below the 24-hour National Ambient Air Quality Standard of 35 micrograms per cubic meter of air.
But when Boulder Air measured it, every minute, they found extreme spikes that can be missed when you regulate pollution on an hourly average like the st... We report out based on an hourly concentration because that's where the National Ambient Air Qual...
So EPA sets those standards.
We as a state are a delegated entity to EPA.
We do that monitoring and report it that way as a requirement.
There is currently no federal standard for regulating PM 2.5 on a shorter time interval.
And according to the state, there's not enough acade... linking extreme pollution spikes by the minute to poor health outcomes.
Boulder Air’s methodology went beyond what the state had done in the past in several other key ways.
We measured very close to the Suncor refinery.
The state hasn't in the past.
And we included measurements of hydrogen sulfide, of methane.
We measured radioactivity with two different instruments.
They found higher levels of nitrogen oxide, methane, ethane, propane and benzene than what you typically see in more rural communities.
So we're using this data in different ways.
The first will be, one of the most important one,... the final results to the community.
CDPHE, the state, the government can say the guidelines are not be...
The thresholds are where they're supposed to be, but they're not taking into account the cumulative impacts.
I think the major conclusion is just that so many of these really important localized sources... can have really important local impacts, which need more granular data.
I think there's always room for improvement.
I mean, these communities are are and have historically been overburdened by pollution.
So I think there's always ways we can do better.
There's a bill that's in the legislature right now that gives us additional enforcement mechanisms.
We're looking for all of the additional resources we can to help make sure that we're protecting ... Cultivando hopes to use the year-long dataset to ... on state representatives to make policy changes.
Instead of feeling anger, hot anger and just wanting to explode, we want to use that data to empower our community to empower ourselves, our organization.
Because this data collection, not only was it an emotional toll for our community, but also for us.
We're so angry at it that we're using it as a positive form of power.
To empower our communities, empower our organization, and show that we have a voice and we’re going to use it.
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Colorado Voices is a local public television program presented by RMPBS