Opposition to an oil and gas storage site’s expansion across the street from an elementary school near Commerce City is growing, with Adams County School District 14’s Board of Education authorizing its attorney to pursue a legal challenge.

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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Originally Published: September 3, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.