With the glass recycling station behind north City Market closing at the end of the week, could the site be “repurposed” for something even better? How about using it as a court for all the food trucks that need to find a new home? I’d go there all the time! Sign me as, Foodie
Recycling a recycling site is an intriguing idea, especially with all the homeless food trucks looking for seasonal digs. However, the site could offer some better possibilities.
How about using the space to construct a municipal office to further commercialize the Animas River corridor through town?
Shockingly, there are times in the summer when the river isn’t completely overrun with people, which is not an efficient use of a recreational resource in the city limits.
Therefore, we could build a welcome center to attract more river users and encourage them to stay longer. Let’s call this welcome center the “Animas Boaters and Standup paddleboard Urban River Depot,” or ABSURD.
Our ABSURD facility could offer free pressurize air to accommodate tubers since floating and bloating has become important, high-dollar activity in Durango.
Meanwhile, ABSURD workers could distribute color-coded maps directing river users to go ahead and park all day in the City Market lot. They don’t mind.
Convenient parking is also available in front of Animas City residents’ mailboxes and in their driveways. Don’t worry. No one will notice you’re there for a few hours.
Perhaps the biggest attraction would be complimentary decontamination showers for anyone coming in contact with river water, along with blood tests to detect elevated levels of lead, mercury, Pabst Blue Ribbon and other toxic substances.
That might be a bit much, so a simpler idea would be to convert the recycling station to a “Recycled Ideas Station.”
Here, ideologues, gasbags, zealots and dogmatists could regurgitate their tired rhetoric, old ideas and solutions that don’t work.
Right-wing nutjobs could splutter about the proven virtues of Trickle Down Economics while left-wing lunatics could insist a War on Poverty is winnable if you just throw enough of other people’s money at it.
Naturally, we would have to carefully schedule any “Recycled Ideas” bloviations to coincide with the passing of each Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.
That way, trains coming or going would drown out the hoary oratory with locomotive noises, road-crossing bells and shrill steam whistles.
Best of all, the “Recycled Ideas” rhetoricians would be coated with a sticky film of cinders, coal smoke and ash, Durango’s version of being tarred and feathered.
Alas, the “ABSURD facility” and the “Recycled Ideas Station” are headed to the landfill. The city has other plans for the plot.
“The wall and the pavement pad will be removed,” said our good friend Levi Lloyd, the city’s director of operations.
The recycling station was living on borrowed time anyway.
The site is smack dab where a pedestrian bridge will be constructed cross 32nd Street as part of the Animas River Trail extension and improvement, he said. “So it was gong to go away eventually.”
In the meantime, free glass recycling will be available 24/7 at the Durango Tech Center.
Because the city has had such problems with ne’er-do-wells contaminating recyclables, the glass drop-off will have a surveillance camera.
“Anyone trying to do illegal dumping or push trash through the glass chute will be caught,” Levi said, lamenting the fact that a few foul fools ruined it for everyone, forcing the city to keep a perpetual eye out for pusillanimous perpetrators.
Glass recycling under the looking glass ... now that’s a jarring situation!
Email questions to actionline@durangoherald.com or mail them to Action Line, The Durango Herald, 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. You can request anonymity if you let go of your bottled-up anger over the closing of the glass recycling station.
