Big Wins for the DSP

Conservation and Environmental Justice Groups File Administrative Appeal of Suncor Water Permit. Groups seek lower PFAS limits and shorter compliance schedules to help protect communities.

Suncor gets tougher “forever chemicals” and toxins limits in new Colorado water permit. The refinery’s final water permit renewal sets toxins caps and requires monitoring for benzene, selenium and other contaminants that taint Sand Creek and the South Platte River.

Colorado adds new water quality protections for South Platte, Clear Creek in sharp reversal. Environmental advocates cheer overturn of controversial 2020 decision that wrote off the urban waters as too polluted for saving.

On September 13, the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission moved to reclassify the section of the South Platte River that runs through Commerce City and the section of Clear Creek where Coors facilities release discharges as reviewable, after demoting the stretches to use-protected in 2020.

Hopeless. Irreversibly damaged. A river beyond repair. These were the concepts and phrases uttered by organizations on one side of the room hoping to uphold the status quo ruling of 2020. These companies are monoliths of industry. Household names with deep pockets and much to gain.

After a two-year battle with Colorado’s Water Quality Commision, a group of stakeholders including Colorado and Denver TU groups convinced the commission to reverse a 2020 ruling that had weakened protections for the Platte.

Metro Water Recovery is receiving a National Environmental Achievement Award from the National Association of Clean Water Agencies for the South Platte River Aquatic Life/Habitat Improvements Project.

After 18 months of cleanup around Suncor’s oil refinery, contamination of the South Platte River is diminishing, but concentrations of cancer-causing benzene in the water remain six times higher than the national safety standard.