POLLUTION

In another tracked category, hydrocarbon aring, Suncor was in the middle of incidents recorded from the 12 total re neries, the EPA said. e analysis by a third-party engineer said Suncor’s Commerce City facility may be producing more air quality incidents because of faulty electrical equipment, lack of preventative maintenance, and not testing or inspecting other control systems adequately.

“We will use this information and other targeting tools to focus our e orts for future inspections and enforcement,” said Region 8 EPA Administrator KC Becker, a former Democratic Speaker of the House at the Colorado legislature. e state health department, which reached a large settlement with Suncor over past emissions incidents and failures, also said the new study would result in stepped-up enforcement for the facility under increasing pressure from neighbors and local elected o cials.

“We anticipate the ndings will result in direct actions for Suncor to make improvements,” said Trisha Oeth, the CDPHE’s director of environmental health and protection. Suncor did not respond to messages seeking comment this week.

Clean air advocates said state and federal o cials have plenty of information, and now must toughen their responses to Suncor’s ongoing air pollution incidents and applications for permit renewals.

“We have known Suncor has been a bad actor for years,” said Ean Tafoya, Colorado director of GreenLatinos. “It’s time to plan the just transition, including the retirement and remediation of Suncor. Our leaders have had the data. Now they have more. Will they act?” e EPA has said it will change policies and permitting to pursue envi-

“Sta ng reductions will occur at all levels of the organization and will be based on both performance and business need,” Kruger told sta in the email. “As we do this, we will eliminate work, critically looking at what we do, why we do it, how we do it and the value it adds.”

Kruger said the goal is to cut costs by $400 million by the end of the year.

Suncor Energy named Kruger as president and CEO in February. Kruger was previously CEO of Imperial Oil Ltd. from 2013 through 2019.

Suncor Director of Corporate Communications Sneh Seetal told the Commerce City Sentinel Express that the company is not providing any additional details at this time. She also any announcements on the topic.

“Suncor is always looking for opportunities to drive value and improve performance in our business,” Seetal said. “Cost reduction is one of those opportunities.” e state requires that employers provide warning notices of mass layo s under the Worker Readjustment and Retraining Noti cation Act (WARN). Under WARN, employers must provide details 60 days in advance on how many employees will be laid o . e notices are meant to protect workers, their families and communities from the impacts of e company’s website says it sells nearly 95% of its products within the state and employs over 500 regional residents. e re nery has recently made headlines over the past few months. It was shut down for maintenance for around three months at the beginning of the year. It has also made the news for multiple issues, including a settlement over past emissions violations and criticisms from the community about communications about health concerns. limits for the rst time in a draft of the revised permit. PFAS is an abbreviation for per uoroalkyl and poly uoroalkyl substances, a group of potentially harmful chemicals used as waterproo ng in thousands of goods from stain resistant carpet to rain gear to re ghting foam. ronmental justice for the neighbors of frequent polluters. Commerce City and north Denver neighborhoods surrounding Suncor have lower income, larger minority populations and higher rates of asthma and other health problems related to pollution than other Denver communities.

As of June 12, there were also no formal lings indicating any Suncor layo s in Colorado, according to state records.

Suncor reported pro ts of $1.8 billion in the rst quarter of 2023, a 34% decrease from last year’s $2.7 billion.

Suncor’s Commerce City re nery location produces around 98,000 barrels of gasoline, diesel fuel and paving-grade asphalt each day.

Suncor is the only petroleum re nery in Colorado, producing gasoline for cars and aviation fuel for Denver International Airport. e re nery released potentially dangerous sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sul de into the surrounding neighborhood in late April, the second incident that month, and state health o cials warned the emissions could exceed permitted levels throughout that day.

In March 2020, Suncor agreed to pay $9 million to settle air quality violations at Commerce City dating to 2017, including one in 2019 that blanketed adjacent neighborhoods in an ashy substance. It was the largest penalty Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment had ever levied from a single facility to resolve air pollution violations.

Water quality advocates also monitor leaks of PFAS “forever chemicals” and benzene into waters around Suncor.

Discharges of toxic “forever chemical” PFAS into Sand Creek and the South Platte River by Suncor’s Commerce City re nery spiked to thousands of times the EPA’s revised drinking water guidelines for three months starting in November, according to lings with state regulators. e elevated discharges came as state clean water o cials are struggling to complete revisions to Suncor’s water out ow pollution permits that were rst opened to public comments more than 18 months ago. Colorado o cials noted then that they had included PFAS e state health department’s water quality divisions have acted quickly recently to address potential pollution in runo from Suncor’s operations, Tafoya said. e air pollution division should use the study and other information to increase enforcement as well, he said. Various health divisions at the state should consider Suncor’s cumulative violations across all agencies. is story is from e Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned news outlet based in Denver and covering the state. For more, and to support e Colorado Sun, visit coloradosun.com. e Colorado Sun is a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy, owner of Colorado Community Media. women across the country. at’s likely an undercount due to bad data, according to the Urban Indian Health Institute. Of the 506, 128 of the women are considered missing while 280 were known murdered. Another 98 are cases of unknown status, according to the Urban Indian Health Institute.

“At the end of the day, we need CDPHE to take the lead,” Tafoya said.

A study from the group that surveyed 71 police stations and one state agency found that 5,712 missing and murdered Indigenous cases were reported in 2016. But of those, only 116 were logged in with the Department of Justice database.

According to the National Institute of Justice, as of May 2023, 84.3% more than 1.5 million American Indian and Alaskan Native women experience violence in their lifetime. Victimization of American Indian and Native woman is 1.2 times higher than white women.

On a mission

Johnson and her family moved to Winnebago when she was ve and she was raised as a tribal member of the Nebraska Ho-Chunk tribe, and given the name Rainbow Woman. She left home when she was in her preteens and has kept moving.

“I don’t know if God would bless me to go further in my trucking industry or this is the end of my travels but when I see family I want to make an apple pie,” Johnson said.

Nebraska is always her home, she said, but Brighton, where her son and my grandchildren live, is her second home. She spends half her time with them.

Johnson started her mission because she was a victim of abuse herself. It was a two-way abusive situation, she said: He was abusive to her, but she fought back.

“He would put me on his lap with a knife at my throat. It was a toxic relationship; I left, and I was done. As soon that door closed, God, or wherever you want to believe, started to open other doors for me,” Johnson said.

She had worked as a construction driver in the summer and fall. She was laid o in the winter but guaranteed to return in the summer. Even so, she said she needed a more consistent job and she needed reliable transportation to do that. She found a pick-up truck she liked and approached a bank looking for a loan.

“ ey never wanted to give me a loan but I told them if you don’t give me a loan, I’m going to go somewhere else,” she said. “ is is income that comes to your bank and comes back out. ey gave me the loan and I purchased a brand-new Silverado. When I purchased the truck, that was when I left the man. I thought I was going to die leaving him and was heartbroken, but I left.”

Johnson said she drove the Silverado for a while and although it was nice to drive a cute truck, she was still broke.

“I went back to the bank and asked for a loan to trade o the Silverado for a used semi to make money,” she said. “I told the banker it was a win-win; I could make money at the same cost Silverado,” she said. “ e woman sat across from me and said, ‘I’m going do it for you’. Usually, they didn’t give business loans.” at opened a door for Johnson, and she started her trucking company, Ho-Chunk Trucking, in 2017. After a couple of years, she was able to upgrade and buy a new semitruck. en, after a couple’s years of hauling other companies’ trailers, she took out another loan and purchased her own trailer in 2020.

“I wanted my own trailer because women in the industry are treated badly; it’s a whole other story,” Johnson said.

Traveling platform

Johnson said that once she had a trailer she started thinking about it as a platform for other Native American women.

“I went through hell and back. What is the message I wanted to say to the world?” she said.

Johnson decided to do a custom wrap on her trailer with a message about indigenous women missing and murdered. She also included pictures of her family dressed in regalia and a friend dancing pow-pow and included information about 500 gone missing or murdered women. One photo, showing a woman with a red hand over her mouth, is her niece Jalisa Horn who was left for dead from abuse and had to crawl to get help. Horn agreed to add her photo to draw attention to the message, “Murdered, Missing Indigenous Women.”

State laws

Governor Jared Polis signed SB22150, a law requiring o cial reports of missing indigenous people within eight hours. Missing children must be reported to law enforcement within two, under the law. e act also requires the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to work on investigating missing or murdered indigenous persons and also work with federal, state, and local law enforcement to e ectively investigate the cases.

In addition, an alert system and an agency called “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives” are responsible for reporting and improving the investigation of missing and murdered Indigenous women and addressing injustice in the criminal justice system.