WEEK OF JANUARY 30, 2025
VOLUME 36| ISSUE 5
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Colorado names its top five air contaminants Next comes rules to regulate them in streetlevel toxic air program BY PARKER YAMASAKI THE COLORADO SUN
A Google Earth view of Commerce City’s Adams Heights Neighborhood, looking north over Brighton Boulevard.
COURTESY GOOGLE EARTH
Fixing Commerce City roads, economy: Feds approve 60th Ave. study funding • Page 9
• Vestas to lay off 200 employees
BUSINESS
Corridor among several considered for improvement BY MONTE WHALEY MWHALEY@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
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•27J Schools moves online-only Dec. 1
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INSIDE THIS ISSUE
LOCAL
A $1.6 million funding boost from the U.S. Department of Transportation will help Commerce City in its efforts to connect residents to jobs, parks and grocery stores in the community, say local officials. The $1.6 million is part of an overall $112 million funding package to be divided among 11 projects in Colorado that all aim to improve transportation in local towns and cities. “Though investments like these, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduc-
tion Act continue to support Colorado as we work to meet our state’s changing needs – from improving our roadways to strengthening local economies,” said U.S. Senator Michael Bennet in a statement. The funding for Commerce City is going for the East 60th Avenue Multimodal Connection Study for Brighton Boulevard to Vasquez Boulevard. The project will evaluate connectivity needs and determine a solution to reconnect the Adams Heights Neighborhood, which is severed from the community because of rail lines, high-speed highways and an absence of sidewalks or dedicated bike lanes, according to a news release. The study will determine how to link East 60th Avenue to essential educational opportunities and necessary amenities
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such as grocery stores and the recreation center. The city will also lay the groundwork for an environmental study of future construction efforts, the news release states. The East 60th Avenue study will involve a good deal of community engagement as the city’s focuses on what residents’ feel is important for future transportation efforts, Commerce City spokesman Travis Huntington said via email. “That could mean microtransit, multimodal improvements, connections to different parts of the community, or other potential solutions. We’re going into this process without a specific outcome in mind, as we want to hear what is important to the community members who travel through this area to help us plan future
projects to meet their needs,” Huntington said. The East 60th Avenue study is just one of many transportation-related studies and projects the city is collecting public feedback on right now, as Commerce City focuses on improving transportation conditions, safety, connectivity, multimodal and transit access, Huntington said. “We’re also working on a 64th Avenue corridor study, starting a Highway 2 corridor study, and we are in the process of creating a Transportation Master Plan and a Safety Action Plan for the whole community, which we’re combining to call our Pathway to Progress project,” he said. For more information about Commerce City’s work on local roads go to c3gov.com/ TransportationPlanning.
The Colorado Air Quality Control Commission on Jan. 17 named five pollutants as priority air toxics, one of the key steps in a multiyear process to ratchet back neighborhood air pollution. Those hazardous pollutants, known as air toxics, are formaldehyde, benzene, hexavalent chromium compounds, ethylene oxide and hydrogen sulfide. The contaminants are separate from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas and ozone regulations, though four of the five of them appear on both lists. The new list, known as regulation 30, was created to target street-level toxins with adverse health effects on individuals, and to fill in gaps in the federal framework. The list is the latest move to comply with Colorado House Bill 1244, passed in 2022, which laid out a roadmap to a more robust toxic contaminants program. One of the bill’s statutes required the Air Quality Control Commission and Air Pollution Control Division to identify “up to five” priority toxins by April 30, which will become the focus of a yearlong regulation-building process. By April 30, 2026, the commission must create “health-based” standards for each of the toxins, and establish new monitoring and enforcement protocols. The state-led program is meant to be more stringent than the EPA’s regulations, and will be shielded from any federal changes to the EPA. The new program also gives the commission more flexibility in determining which compounds to target. The bill allows contaminants to be added at any time, within reason, and requires a review of the list at least once every five years. Advocacy groups like Green Latinos encouraged the division to review the list on a more frequent, rolling basis. While representatives from Weld County’s Board of Commissioners were concerned about the feasibility of constantly creating new regulations. SEE CONTAMINANTS, P11
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