An afternoon in and near Denver's industrial armpit

All four Democratic candidates vowed muscular work if elected attorney general. As for the sitting AG, Phil Weiser promised to be tough on big corporations if elected governor.

by Allen Best

The Sierra Club and allied groups on a recent Saturday afternoon hosted a gathering in Denver’s Elyria neighborhood. This is just north of Interstate 70 and the dog food factory. If you were on a bicycle, it’s a relatively short — if bumpy — spin down to the Suncor refinery near the confluence of Sand Creek and the South Platte River.

The refinery is located amid what might be called a municipality’s urban necessities, at least as defined in the mid-20th century. Nearby is the Cherokee power plant. You can find a place for steel to be recycled and sent to the Evraz/Rocky Mountain Steel plant at Pueblo. Garbage companies, some of them, keep their trucks there. (Oh, excuse me, we call them trash trucks now).

Suncor has gained considerable attention in Colorado over the years, most notably in The Denver Post. These have not been stories to post in the lobby where visitors are greeted.

There are other places to live, but that argument doesn’t go over well in that neighborhood. One speaker said that the residential neighborhood — small as it is — came first, and that is that. (Although it must be noted that smelters were operating along the South Platte River in that area as early as the 1870s.)

Candidates for Colorado attorney general were invited to share their views, and four Democrats showed as did the existing attorney general, Phil Weiser. After Hispanic-flavored pageantry, they shared their views.

Weiser, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, is the son of a woman born in a Nazi concentration camp. He did not call that out in his remarks but did identify himself as a first-generation American.

“We must stand strong (and) defend the values of a republic that has called first-generation Americans like me to serve and to defend the core principle of equal justice for all.”

Weiser declared his fearlessness. “I will take on anybody who harms Colorado — Google, Meta, big oil and gas companies, corporate landlords — down the list. We will be fearless, and we will fight for people. That has been my true north.”

“As governor, I’m going to make sure we have a Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment that has the ability to protect people proactively. Right now, there is too much of … I call it a reactive posture. I’m going to change that. We to make sure we have the capability to monitor air quality, water quality, upfront and then take enforcement action.”

Weiser, of course, is competing with U.S. Senator Michael Bennet for the Democratic nomination. As Colorado has turned distinctly blue overall in its voting in the last 15 years, one of the two will undoubtedly be the next governor.

Four Democratic candidates who hope to replace Weiser showed up. From their verbal presentations, there can be little doubt that Jena Griswold (above), the current secretary of state is the front runner. A poll in June showed her with a commanding lead, 42% compared to her closest rival, Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty with 8%.

The Suncor refinery operates near the confluence of Sand Creek with the South Platte River northeast of downtown Denver. Photo/Allen Best

Campaigning candidates keep full days. Dougherty had been in the parking lot of a Boulder hospital that morning, passing out free gun safes to gun owners. Griswold had started her morning at the No Kings rally in Fort Collins and visited another before making her remarks along I-70 in Denver. She presumably had more public appearances ahead of her in the afternoon.

Griswold grew up between Estes Park and Drake, on the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park, but in a poor household. “I grew up on food stamps. I’m first in my family to go to a four-year college. I funded my way off of grants, working, and federal loans to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania Law School,” she said.

As had all the other candidates, she described herself as a fighter — and one not willing to back down. She alluded to a state trooper present, thanking him. “Because just last year I received 1,800 death threats or physical threats from standing up to MAGA extremists. And I have not backed down. I won’t say I have not been scared because it’s scary. It is scary, and that’s okay. It’s okay to feel like that. But I will tell you I will be brave.”

Oh, and she delivered some of her remarks in Spanish. “Pardon the accent,” she said.

Afterward, all were invited to board a bus to travel past a data center under construction and to the banks of Sand Creek, there to view the Suncor refinery. A telescope-like instrument was set up.

Peering through the lens you could see what looked like cumulus clouds mounting very, very rapidly. They were emissions of some sort from one of the pipes in just one portion of the refinery. This was pollution —responsible, our tour leader said, not just for elevated pollution in this area of Denver and Commerce City but with impacts to air quality more broadly along the Front Range.

Pollution knows no boundaries.

It seems like this report should have a conclusion, but it does not. And that is just like the Suncor story for the last 15 to 20 years