Suncor Corporation and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) continue to throw slop in the direction of Commerce City and some Denver neighborhoods. According to headlines, the state has entered into a “historic” agreement with Suncor to pay a $10.5 million fine for pollution emitted from the plant between July 2019 and June 2021. These occurrences happened 32 months ago.

Since that time, Suncor has been on several more pollution binges including a 2022 deep-freeze failure that shut down the refinery for months and the recent bilge from Dec. 15, 2023 to Dec. 22, 2023 that caused another shut down. The malfunction on Dec. 22 lasted for 22 hours during which Suncor released large excesses of hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide.

Another malfunction occurred this year on Jan. 13 when more sub-zero temperatures hit the Front Range. We’re all supposed to feel lucky the disaster from the 2022 event caused Suncor to upgrade its equipment so the 2024 event wasn’t as bad. Even so, the emissions were 169 times the permitted amount of rotten egg-smelling hydrogen sulfide per hour, and 18,769 times by volume on a rolling 12-hour average. Feeling lucky?

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

In another detail, it appears the plant released double its allowed amount of carbon dioxide. All of this smelly releasing begs the question as to why the plant is allowed to pollute at all — but pollution is an inevitability with oil and gas refinery operations.

The residents who live around Suncor should be ecstatic, some think, that Suncor will pay this historic $10.5 million. Except $8 million of the amount will go to repairing Suncor’s own equipment. How does that money count as a fine? Shouldn’t the repair expense come from operations as a cost of doing business? Suncor recently reported $27 billion in gross profit.

Out of the fine’s remaining $2.5 million, only 60% goes to “social justice” for those sucking up the bad air and other gunk. That allotment is $1.5 million. This itsy-bitsy amount could potentially help with an alarm system to notify nearby schools a pollution event is filling the air with bad stuff. Unfortunately, for Adams 14 school district and Denver Public Schools, pollution announcements currently come too late to protect the children. A simple notification would get the kids inside and allow adults to close air vents to reduce harm.

If the CDPHE worked with the state Board of Education on this mess, maybe progress on the notification front would occur. But the Colorado Board of Education spends its time on Adams 14 putting sticks in the children’s reddened eyes. Here’s an example:

Suncor supports the Suncor Boys and Girls Club in Commerce City. The club is in a new building Suncor helped to build. Rather than engage with Adams 14 for early childhood education (ECE), the Suncor Boys and Girls Club will soon be jointly occupied by an early childhood education facility operated by University Prep, a charter school entity that wants to expand into Adams 14’s district. To protect these children from Suncor’s excretions, there is a 3,000-square-foot indoor play yard — no outdoor pollution alarms necessary.

University Prep approached Adams 14 with a charter application last school year but was turned down. UPrep then did what other aggressive charter enterprises do. It went to the state Board of Education and the Charter School Institute for authorization. About the same time, the state Board of Education took away Adams 14’s chartering authority. If University Prep decides to open more charters in Adams 14 as well as expand in the Suncor facility, it need only go to the Charter School Institute for authorization. That’s a lot of potential chaos and poaching for the Adams 14 district to endure when its overall results for school performance are on the way up.

The financial impact of University Prep at the Suncor Boys and Girls Club will hit Adams 14’s budget in the next year or two when the charter recruits kids from its ECE to attend its expanding enterprise. Adams 14 will lose out as Commerce City kids attend additional grades in this newish building, perhaps with bonus “social justice” money coming from Suncor to make the school really special.

Under current circumstances, children in neighborhood schools in the Adams 14 district will remain in buildings needing repair and improvement. If Suncor were genuinely concerned with social justice, it would drop its coin directly on Adams 14 and DPS to help out. At minimum, it would provide an alarm system to warn schools to get the kids inside. Even better, Suncor would build an 18,000 square foot indoor play facility at each elementary school, 3,000 square feet each for six grades, to protect Adams 14 children from the refinery’s fumes.

Meanwhile, according to the recent Adams 14 school district budget, there will be a $16 million shortfall. Some of the deficit occurred because of bad decisions by MGT, the state Board of Education’s choice of management enterprise that operated Adams 14 in previous years. Then there is the recent decision by the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee on the state’s school finance funding. There’s a $60 million-plus deficit that needs to be plugged. The JBC wants that supplemental money to come primarily from local property tax — just what Commerce City needs. How are Adams County legislators going to vote on that bill?

It would have been timely for Adams 14 if some part of the Suncor fine were put toward the district’s $16 million deficit. That’s not how the state negotiated the deal. It appears social justice is not in the backseat of the state’s agreement. It’s hanging onto the back fender getting dragged from behind. That’s why some residents of Commerce City and Denver are upset and angry. As they should be.

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.