North of downtown Pueblo, between the newspaper plant and the railroad tracks, lies a tiny neighborhood known to outsiders as Peppersauce Bottoms.
Maybe because the name evokes a Dickens setting, or maybe because it sounds so depressing, residents call their community "the village" instead.
Most are related and have kept to themselves since their grandparents moved from Mexico in the 1910s and '20s, lured by jobs in the nearby brickyards and steel mills. They settled in the lowlands named for the hot peppers planted by Japanese railroad workers years earlier.
The villagers sucked it up when the Great Flood of 1921 washed away most of their adobe shacks. They didn't complain when they were still using outhouses in the 1960s. And they have barely protested the lack of curbs and sidewalks that remains to this day.
Then came a soot-spewing, industrial giant that operated illegally there for seven years. Finally, they rose up.
"We took on a massive company and we're running them out. You don't mess with the village," says third-generation resident David Baros.
Neighbors grew agitated last year when a flood ravaged most of their 26 homes even though Pueblo had a federal grant to control floods in the area. Turns out the city diverted most of the $99,500, spending only $11,000 on a berm locals describe as a pile of rocks.
Officials question the need now to spend $4 million for real flood control because the homes there, collectively, are worth only $1 million.
"They just think it's a house with no history. Your life, your father's life, your grandfather's life, living in a place where everyone's your good neighbor, anything that means something to you doesn't mean anything to them," Baros says.
Enter Margaret Montaño Mora with the Colorado Progressive Coalition, who prodded neighbors to write letters and make phone calls. She forced a level playing field by scheduling meetings with city officials in the village, where they reluctantly projected their PowerPoint presentations on the door of a resident's garage.
Like any good organizer, Mora made the neighbors' anger somehow productive.
Meeting weekly over green chile and Bud Lights, they found themselves griping not only about flooding, but also about LB Foster, the Pittsburgh-based railroad manufacturer working in a rail yard behind their homes, pounding metal tracks into timber railroad ties coated with creosote. The resin is a probable carcinogen and spews a thick, greasy stench like burnt oil.
"You can't catch a good fresh air," says Edward Leanos, 60, a village lifer.
Jose Cornejo also has lived his 75 years in the village, except for the two he spent fighting in Korea. The grimy soot has kept his wife from hanging their clothes outside to dry. And, he says, the sound of metal pounding both day and night has rattled them in their old age.
"There is no quiet. It would wake up the dead."
The state did little in response to neighbors' complaints about the dust, noise and smell. But it couldn't ignore their finding that LB Foster was operating without a pollution-control permit.
An LB Foster spokesman calls the permit problem "an oversight," and asserts the company "did not pollute" the neighborhood.
It finally got a stormwater permit in June. But facing further complaints about air pollution and a recent fire, it has decided to shut down by the New Year. It cites business reasons — and not its wrangle with neighbors — for the retreat.
LB Foster got off easy. The city awarded it $261,000 in economic development money to help set up another plant, making a different product, in Pueblo. And the state announced Thursday the company will be fined $10,500 for operating seven years without a permit. State law would have allowed a fine of up to $10,000 a day.
State officials say the penalty is fair, especially given that LB Foster is cooperating. But for a company with $13.5 million in earnings last year, that's barely a slap on the wrist.
"Not even a pinch on the pinky," Mora says.
Still, the villagers are relishing the fresh air and quiet that has come as LB Foster starts moving out. They celebrated last weekend with a pig roast in Baros' snowy backyard. Sipping cinnamon schnapps and warming themselves over the fire, they toasted to righteous indignation and to Mora.
Home, she has taught them, is worth fighting for.
Susan Greene writes Sunday and Wednesday. Reach her at 303-954-1589 or sgreene@denverpost.com. |
