Legacy of Polluting: Environmental Injustice in Denver’s Most Polluted Zip Code

• In Event: The Politics of Air: How Gender, Policy, and Injustice Shape Air Quality

Abstract

In 2017, The Denver Business Journal listed the 80216 zip code as the most polluted zip code in the United States. This Denver zip code encompasses the predominantly working-class and Latinx neighborhoods of Globeville and Elyria-Swansea. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Globeville and Elyria-Swansea are 75% non-white and 55% of residents are below the poverty level. Globeville and Elyria-Swansea, like other communities with similar demographics, are sites of environmental injustice. However, this paper looks at how the popular perception of Colorado as a place with a clean, pristine environment collides with the legacy of pollution within the Mile High City.
In this paper, I argue that the contemporary environmental justice issues in these Denver neighborhoods trace back over a century to the city's rise and expansion throughout the twentieth century and the failures of state and federal governments to enforce environmental regulations. This paper examines the early industrial development along the nearby South Platte River in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and their long-lasting legacies; the area’s long history as a transportation hub, including the construction of Interstate 25 and Interstate 70, which isolated these communities from the rest of Denver in the 1960s; and the history of oil refining in the area, including the neglect of and disregard for nearby residents by Suncor Energy and its predecessors.

Author

• Maggie McNulty, University of Colorado Boulder