The fact that we have had an operating wastewater-treatment plant coexisting with a recreational area and now a world-class whitewater park is an unusual mix of a necessary municipal utility process and public recreational activity. Regardless of how it came about, I have always thought that, other than the odor issues on occasion, this seeming incongruity worked well. With the odor mitigation processes included in the proposed plant expansion and renovation, the major objection of its current co-location should be satisfied, at considerable savings over the cost to relocate it.
The most environmentally sensitive and sustainable solution to the expansion of the sewer plant is not to relocate it and build all new but to reuse all that is reusable, modify what can be improved and build new only that that must be built new. There is a tremendous amount of embodied energy in the current structures. The land has already been disturbed.
Santa Rita is a great recreational asset and city park, but Gateway? Visitors approach the city from all cardinal directions and encounter the city long before they get to Santa Rita. Their experience has already been informed.
The Herald has endorsed voting against Question 2B without any viable alternative that would not cost rate payers significant additional expense and could subject the city to potential action by Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment for the delay in meeting new regulations. We can do better.
Vote “yes” on the city of Durango’s Question 2B.
John Ballew, chair
City of Durango Utilities Commission
Durango
