Recycling Gone Bad - City Park Lake - Denver
The Metro Wastewater Reclamation District has granted a permit to the Lowry Landfill Superfund Site to flush 158 pollutants and 10 radionuclides into Denver Sewers at a rate of 25 gal per minute. Then, with the normal sewage, it is run through the Recycling Plant, where none of it is removed, and then piped to Grasmere Lake in Washington Park and Ferril Lake in City Park, and sprayed on grasslands there and elsewhere. The secret agreement between the major polluters and the City of Denver is still secret, and has 43 years yet to run. Approximately 13 million gallons per year flow from Lowry Landfill to the parks of Denver. Denver is the only place in the US where this is being done. Now before you jump all over me with "the algae is feeding on the nutrients" and not the Lowry radio active elements, I say prove it. Test the water and the algae for every pollutant that is being allowed. Adding more chemicals, as is planned, will not solve the long-term problem. We can have recycling without the Lowry carcenogenic toxins. Call your City Councilperson, the Mayor, your Colorado State Representative and State Senator. Tell them the Lowry permit must be revoked. Its only purpose is to protect the original polluters.
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That is so unacceptable and disgusting. I live right by the park and take my 3 small children there on a regular basis. I love that park but if it means that we are going to end up with cancer as a result, no thank you. What about all the people who go there for Jazz in the Park? They are eating of the ground!! I can't believe that this was permitted!!! I guess somebody greased somebody's palm.
ReplyDeleteCan't the toxins be kept in the airhangers at Stapleton and Lowry? They are major toxic sites anyway.
Yes, how right you are. I too live a block away and feel somewhat grief stricken that the very reason I bought my home here 37 years ago, the beautiful City Park, is now a hazardous waste dump.
ReplyDeleteThe kids playing soccer, the Jazz fans, and even the Tent State college students for which a permit has been granted, are all at risk.
And you are right about the money trail. To understand who and how, you must read the Westword series which you can find here: http://denverdirect.blogspot.com/2008/01/purplewater-plus-part-4-memory-loss.html. The major polluters were and still are the same as it always was: Coors, Lockheed-Martin, etc. and way down the list, the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, which explains why you don't see the stories in their columns.
All of this dumping was legal at the time, but the cost of clean-up was staggering, so the practice of dispursing these toxins to public land was adopted in a secret 50-year agreement, to the sole benefit of the polluters.
The Colorado Department of Health and Environment will tell you that these levels are "acceptable", but acceptable to whom? is my question. How much tritium is acceptable to your children?
And although they like to compare the amounts of Lowery effluent to the large volume of ordinary sewage, the fact is that at current rates of dispersal we are getting 13 million gallons of toxic effluent per year.
No environmental impact statement was required although one was strenuously requested at the time.
For now, the best you can do is to start making these facts known. I'll be leafletting in the Park soon, so let me know if you'd like to help.
I am involved with an organization to end the holocaust in Darfur (savedarfur.com) one of the things they do is provide a direct link to a message that is forwarded to the proper politicians. What do you think about a message link that would be sent to council persons, the mayor, etc on your site?
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