Why Last Year's Balcony Garden Didn't Do So Well: the most polluted zip code in America

So I've long had the theory that the reason my balcony garden last year didn't do well (and very oddly not well, to boot), was because I had gotten seedlings from a community garden program meant to help low income folks like me be able to grow some of our food, and that greenhouse was in a very polluted neighborhood.

When I say "odd," I mean the sage kept growing but killed off old leaves as fast as it grew new ones; at first I thought a bug was eating it, but no, that's just what it was doing; marigolds got to budding stage but the buds never opened and the stalk dried up and died leaving buds hard and brown no matter what I did; my tomato plants got HUGE - the biggest I've ever had in buckets - but I got three tomatoes. Two of them had blossom end rot. I got three chiles, too. The chiles were supposed to be Anaheims, but they were the size of seranos. The green onions took ALL SEASON for ONE to get to a maybe harvestable size, just in time for me to not catch it and it died in a frost. ODD. It was the weirdest garden I've had.

Yeah. Turns out, that area contains THE MOST POLLUTED ZIP CODE IN AMERICA.

image from Earthjustice

You know that part of the highway where you're driving through Commerce City and you have to close the windows, locals? That's the place.

Not the cancer belt in the south: Denver. I knew we had some superfund sites here too, but IN ALL OF AMERICA is saying a lot.

Where they are expanding the highway is where the greenhouse was.

Click on the link to learn about Suncor wanting to not even have to report how much they're releasing of "...hydrogen cyanide. A colorless gas that’s a byproduct of oil refining, hydrogen cyanide is an agent of chemical warfare. Exposure to it can cause both short- and long-term effects like chest pain, breathing difficulties, developmental harm to children, and even brain and heart damage.

Thanks to a national refinery rule issued in 2015 because of Earthjustice litigation, Suncor and other refineries are now required to do a one-time test of their hydrogen cyanide emissions. Suncor’s test in 2015 revealed that, for some time, it had been emitting dangerous levels of hydrogen cyanide.

But rather than limit its emissions, the company instead decided to petition the state to give it a free pass to continue emitting as much hydrogen cyanide as it wants into the community—all without telling its neighbors just how much it's emitting and without ensuring its pollution isn't harming human health."

Also? That's where the weed growing warehouses are. Toxifying your medicine, y'all.

I feel less guilt about last year's garden flop, and more rage at our state being the bitch of oil and gas companies. Get this: SB18-226 PASSED the state Senate agricultural, natural resources, and energy committee, and is now going to the state senate. What is it? It's a bill FORBIDDING Colorado from joining any environmental alliances, like various states and cities promising to meet the Paris accord even though the feds will not.

A couple of years ago, I collected signatures to get on the ballot, rules that didn't even ban fracking, just made some safety regulations, like wells have to be a half mile away from homes, hospitals, and schools. Because meanwhile they are being placed so close to schools, if the well blew, the kids inside would die, not to mention the pollution. A judge looked at a tiny, tiny fraction of the petitions, decided almost all the signatures were invalid, and threw it out. They are trying again this year, but I don't have the heart for it. There's a reason I call the governor Frackenlooper (instead of Hickenlooper, for you non locals).

I have no veggies, only rage.

That Red Fish your momma always warned you about

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