Growing up in Commerce City, Colorado, 21-year-old climate activist Alessandra Chavira remembers always adhering to one specific rule: Don’t drink the tap water. “Nobody in Commerce City drinks it,” says Chavira, who identifies as Chicana. “For me, that was normal—and it’s still the case.”
Throughout her childhood, Chavira wasn’t aware of the exact reason why this was such a widely followed rule, though she got a better sense later on. Located in Commerce City is the Suncor Energy refinery—Colorado’s only oil refinery—which remains one of the state’s largest emitters of greenhouse gasses and toxic air pollutants. The refinery continues to have adverse effects on the air, soil, and water quality in its surrounding neighborhoods, all the way from Montbello to Reunion. “Growing up, I only knew Suncor because we would pass by it and it stank,” says Chavira. “It smelled like rotten eggs—I would know to hold my breath. For a while, I didn’t even claim Commerce City because everybody would call it Commerce Shitty.”
While the Commerce City refinery has been in operation since 1931, it was acquired by Suncor Energy—a Canadian oil and gas company—back in 2003. According to Suncor, the facility now houses three plants over two refineries. Plants 1 and 2 are major suppliers of gasoline and diesel fuel in Colorado, while Plant 3 is the state’s main asphalt producer. The refinery as a whole processes approximately 98,000 barrels of oil a day and claims to contribute more than $2.5 billion to the state’s economy annually. But it’s an output that comes with significant environmental caveats.
From December 15, 2022, to March 15 of this year, for instance, Suncor reported 37 days where the refinery exceeded its allowable levels of chemicals released into the atmosphere, such as hazardous hydrogen sulfide and cancer-causing benzene. People living in the area claim they are being disproportionately affected by cancer, asthma, migraines, and diabetes; a 2017 study from ATTOM Data Solution also ranked the zip code just south of Suncor as the most polluted in the entire country. Chavira, who now lives just outside of Commerce City, has witnessed these effects firsthand. “My cousin and uncle all have asthma, and you get constant headaches because of the air,” says Chavira. “It’s to the point where everyone who lives in Commerce City got a free air monitor, and some days it’ll tell you, ‘Don’t go outside.’ The only reason we have [the monitors] is not because of the city, though. It’s because of the organizations advocating for its residents.”
Certainly a group of young climate activists in the Commerce City area—which is home to a predominantly Latinx and Indigenous population—has been integral in propelling the fight against the Suncor refinery forward. In March, Chavira—who is a part of the Brown Berets, a pro-Chicano civil rights group—worked alongside young people from organizations such as the International Indigenous Youth Council, Future Coalition, and Womxn From the Mountain to host a pop-up event in Denver featuring BIPOC vendors and musicians. “During the event, we talked about the issues we’re facing with Suncor,” says Chavira. “I would give a lot of props to the Indigenous Youth Council—they’ve been holding the fight for a long time. There are a lot of youth movements here that are very intertwined. Community works that way.”
Chavira’s involvement in community and environmental work extends further back than just this year, however. Raised by Mexican parents, she says her Chicana upbringing has played a big role in her becoming socially conscious from an early age. “Being raised by a cholo dad, he taught me to claim my hood,” she says. “I’m very proud of the communities I come from, so I’ve been tapping into the issues that are impacting [us].” Back in high school, Chavira first got into activism when she started exploring doing work around policies within the education system. “I was working on teacher retention in my school and trying to get policies that included students in the teacher-hiring process,” she says.
It was in high school that Chavira became more deeply involved in climate activism. At the time, she was hired as an assistant at a community garden in Montbello, a neighborhood just a short drive from Commerce City, where she first became aware of the Suncor refinery. “My boss was talking to me about Suncor and how it was fucking up the soil to the point where they can’t plant out there,” says Chavira. After watching the short documentary Suncor Sundown last year—which exposed how, among other things, the refinery is located just beside the South Platte River, which serves as a main water source to Colorado’s eastern plains—Chavira felt a renewed drive to do something about it. “That’s when I began piecing together reasons why we couldn’t drink the water or why we were getting migraines on certain days,” says Chavira. “The documentary helped me realize what was happening to me and my family who grew up in Commerce City.”
This is not to say the environmental concerns around the refinery haven’t been addressed by state officials on some level. In 2012, Suncor was ordered to pay a $2.2 million fine to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment for releasing high levels of benzene, a cancer-causing compound, into the environment; more recently, in 2020, Suncor also had to pay $9 million for excess emissions of volatile organic compounds, including hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide. Yet there continue to be major frustrations from locals, as the refinery can continue to operate and essentially pay its way out of its multiple violations. “A call to action would be for the city to hold accountability toward Suncor,” says Chavira. “They [can] have a certain amount of emitting pollutants in the air, and they always surpass it, and the city doesn’t really hold them accountable. [We need to] get the community aware about it—all across Denver or even nationally.”
The refinery isn’t the only thing sparking environmental concerns in Commerce City, either. On the north side of the city, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal—which is now a wildlife refuge—is also located on more than 15,000 acres of contaminated soil. (The US Army once manufactured chemical weapons at the arsenal.) “It’s all caged up because you can’t dig the soil,” says Chavira. For the activist, it’s Suncor and Rocky Mountain’s proximity to housing developments in Commerce City and Montbello that is a major concern. She’s not surprised, however, that it still isn’t a statewide concern. “Both communities are low income and communities of color, so who’s gonna say anything?” she says.
Despite this, the cost of housing in Commerce City and its neighboring communities has been on the rise. It’s what has pushed Chavira and her family to the outskirts of Commerce City. (Within the city, an average home sells for more than $500,000.) Chavira has been working with the Brown Berets—“we’re the youngest chapter nationally”—to tackle this affordable-housing crisis in the area. “Last year we did a lot of work with the Indigenous houseless population and getting them resources,” says Chavira. “We had a thing called a Safe Outdoor Space, where the city permits a safe space for houseless people to have tents and food. We would go every Sunday and bring home-cooked food.”
It’s that sense of community and togetherness that Chavira has known Commerce City to hold since her childhood. “I need people to realize that it’s such a beautiful community,” says Chavira. “It’s one of the only communities in Denver right now that hasn’t [been] pushed out—it’s one of the only communities where you could go and get some good tacos. For me, it’s so important to protect that space and make it healthy.”
Chavira chooses to envision a brighter future for the city she’s always called home, and it begins with tackling the environmental issues that threaten it. “It brings a lot of sadness to me because the Commerce City I grew up in was so joyful,” she says. “It rewrites my childhood—the way we would play outside and ride our bikes.” She sees potential in the youth—such as herself—to make these necessary changes happen. “I want people to know that it’s possible to fight these big, multimillion-dollar entities,” says Chavira. “The first step is being aware of what’s going on. Community can win and stand up for each other.”
