The city has done an incredible job on the stuff that is obvious to Durango’s appeal – trails, the rec center, permitting and promoting many events and festivals on the eclectic main street and parks, among other things that make Durango a great place to visit and live.
However, these are easy accolades to claim given the setting of the Animas River Valley and the great people who inhabit this community. The difficult part of city staff and council’s job – the stuff like properly dealing with a community’s waste streams – has been so poorly handled there is now discussion of “emergency rate increases” to try to fix the massive problem of waste water in Durango.
I recently applied to build a metals recycling facility off of La Posta Road. I proposed to cover over 75 percent of the processing and storage areas in roofs and buildings and was denied based on the premise the city has the responsibility of protecting the river from a recycling company with an economic impact of over $20 million dollars per year.
I do not think these same people should be commissioned to administer such a huge investment on the community’s behalf considering their inability to acknowledge waste streams exist, both solid and otherwise.
The staff and the council’s inability to acknowledge we are all a part of waste streams of a community is amplified by the urgency of the wastewater-treatment needs in Durango today. If staff and council have determined the La Posta area is not acceptable to process recyclable metals in a safe and responsible manner, then perhaps the area could be acceptable for wastewater treatment for the city of Durango considering a large waste water processing site already exists in the vicinity.
I too have looked for acceptable property for a large processing facility and the city is right, it is difficult to find a suitable location in Durango, but I contend not impossible. The community needs to know there is at least one active partner, with over 10 acres on the river, willing to have a conversation regarding waste streams.
Greg Fulks
Recla Metals Montrose, Clifton and Durango
