A southern Colorado city could lose its
newly clean reputation
PUEBLO, Colo.
– Cecil Ross remembers when his city was known as “Pew Town.” The
wheat farmer says pollution from the state’s largest steel mill
once filled the city’s air with foul-smelling odors and chemicals.
Today, standing on his ranch three miles from Pueblo, Ross proudly
points out the haze-free view of the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains.
Pueblo’s air has cleared since Rocky
Mountain Steel cut production by a third during the ’80s. The city
has worked to restore its historic downtown area and replace
manufacturing jobs lost through lay-offs with retail and service
jobs, according to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.
The efforts proved successful when the national group Partners for
Livable Communities chose Pueblo as one of the nation’s top four
places to live in the year 2000, citing its conversion from an
industrial to retail-based economy.
But
industrial pollution may find its way back to some of the city’s
approximately 130,000 residents. The Rio Grande Portland Cement
Corp., a U.S. subsidiary of the Mexican-owned Grupo Cementos de
Chihuahua, plans to build a new cement manufacturing plant less
than one mile from Cecil Ross’s property line on state-owned land.
Along with its coal-fired cement plant, the company plans to
strip-mine the property for limestone, the main ingredient in
cement. Rio Grande would be the first major industrial plant built
in Pueblo since the 1950s. With Colorado booming, cement is in
demand for new roads.
Ross and his wife, Leona,
along with 18 neighboring families along the St. Charles River, are
digging in their heels and mobilizing support. Thanks to the
nonprofit group Citizens for Clean Air and Water, 600 people packed
a public hearing on July 20 to oppose the plant. They said
increased sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and particulate
emissions from the coal-burning cement plant would dirty the air
and water they’ve worked to restore.
“We like to
keep our windows open all the time, and we think we have the right
to keep the windows open,” Leona Ross says. If the plant moves in
next door, for health reasons she and Cecil may have to move from
the place they’ve called home for 47
years.
Supply and
demand
While protesters continue to fight for clean air,Colorado continues to grow and need cement. Ron Hedrick, vice
president of operations for Rio Grande, says that while Colorado
consumed 2.8 million tons of cement last year, it produced only 1.9
million tons. With only three cement plants in the state, cement
has to travel long distances to construction sites. The farther it
moves, the more it costs.
The state stands to
gain more than just cement from the new plant. Rio Grande will pay
the State Land Board $400,000 in mineral royalties for limestone
mined on the 3,900 acres, and that money is earmarked for public
schools. The land board is mandated to capitalize on its holdings
for the education system, and Rio Grande’s mineral lease is more
profitable than past agricultural land uses, says Kate Jones of the
State Land Board.
“I have not seen or read any
documents that would make me opposed to the plant,” says Corinne
Koehler, head of the Pueblo City Council. She says the $150 million
construction project will greatly increase tax revenue for the
county and will create approximately 100 jobs. While Pueblo’s
unemployment rate has decreased substantially since 1980, as of
1998 it was still 3.8 percent higher than the average for the
state, according to the Colorado Department of Labor and
Employment.
Environmental
injustice
“This town has been working to improve itself… to move away from the large industrial polluters,” says
Margaret Barber, president of Citizens for Clean Air and Water, the
group founded last spring to fight Rio Grande. “This (cement plant)
is a throwback to the smokestack industries.”
Even though hundreds of public comments against
the plant were heard at the July 20 meeting, city council members
and representatives from Rio Grande are confident the state will
approve the air-emissions permit sometime in September. They say
the plant’s emissions will fall well within the federal
Environmental Protection Agency’s guidelines, and compliance with
these rules is the determining factor.
City
council member Al Gurule says the protesters are hypocritical. “I
have a problem with groups who say, “Let them pollute somewhere
else, (in) Third World countries, (and) we’ll use the product
here,’ ” he says. “(People say), ‘I don’t want a cement plant in my
community, but I’ll go home and park on my cement slab.’
“
Members of the citizens’ group willingly admit
they don’t want the plant in their neighborhood: They say they’ve
suffered the effects of major industrial polluters long enough.
“It’s a type of racism that’s going on here, a type of
discrimination against this vulnerable community,” says Alvin
Rivera, vice president of the group. He explains that the
low-income, high-minority community is often dumped on by polluting
industries because they have a reputation for sitting back and
letting it happen.
The Rosses, however, aren’t
just waiting to lose a way of life they’ve known for nearly 50
years. The couple is preparing to take legal action if the state
air-emissions permit is approved. “Have you ever heard of Erin
Brockovich?” Leona says. “If this thing goes through, that’s going
to be me. I’m going to have to get a short skirt, though at 66
years old, it might not be as effective.”
Kayley Mendenhall is an HCN intern.
YOU CAN CONTACT
…
- Margaret
Barber, P.O. Box 11584, Pueblo, CO 81001
(719/545-3284).
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Cement glues citizens together.
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