By Renee Millard Chacon

Commerce City unnecessarily suffers under what we call “cumulative impacts” from many sources of polluted air, water and climate pollution. What is choking my community today harms us all because of immoral decisions from unsustainable industries.

Sandwiched between highways, surrounded by fracking wells and inundated with forever chemicals, Commerce City is one of the state’s most polluted places. What does this mean when there aren’t health equity protections for the generations of people who live here? The cost is diminishing quality of life from heart disease, childhood cancer, asthma, daily bloody noses, loss in school and work attendance and many other, deadly health problems for residents has shortened our lives in a cruel no man’s land. State agencies do not want to recognize us with action.

This kind of heavy pollution is supposed to be considered by the Energy and Carbon Management Commission (ECMC) when they issue permits for new oil-and-gas drilling. But the ECMC’s Annual Report on Cumulative Impacts shows fossil fuel companies are giving them bad data. The report states: “There is a lack of consistency in how the Form 2B has been filled out, which introduces at times dramatic data skewing.”

ECMC staff wrote last year’s data was so skewed some of it was unusable for their analysis of statewide trends. This prevents an equity analysis of cumulative effects from being fully realized, as was voted on and recommended by the Environmental Justice Action Taskforce I served on and have promoted for years.

The ECMC can’t make good decisions about where to allow new oil-and-gas drilling when they don’t have accurate estimates of the air and climate pollution that will accompany these operations. This means they may be approving fossil fuel production that will affect communities like mine already dealing with severe pollution downwind of fracking sites from Weld County, from Suncor and the most polluted zip code in the United States. But we deserve respect and a chance to live and thrive with the same quality of life as the rest of the state. I want to remind the ECMC disproportionately-effected communities did not create themselves and it is unnatural to have a community targeted for the profits of industries with no protections from our state agencies.

That’s why Commerce City community members, and other Coloradans from similarly polluted areas, filed a request for the ECMC to address these data inconsistencies. On Sept. 17, the ECMC will consider our appeal for new regulations to ensure reliable reporting from oil-and-gas companies. They should approve the request, which will benefit not only Colorado’s most polluted communities, but all of Colorado residents.

The ECMC’s decisions affect our health and the health of our children. We deserve to know these decisions are made using high quality data and a complete equity analysis of cumulative impacts.

Renee Millard Chacon represents Ward 3 on the Commerce City Council.