Residents of the Peppersauce Bottoms neighborhood were celebrating in relative quiet Thursday when an industrial operation set at the back fences of some of their homes stood silent.
Margaret Montano Mora, director of the Southern Colorado chapter of the Colorado Progressive Coalition, announced to a small crowd of residents that L.B. Foster has decided to close its prefabricated rail facility.
Mora said she received the call from Steve Hart, an official with the company in Pittsburgh, that the facility will close by the end of the year.
The facility's closure will cost the community about a dozen good-paying jobs.
Mora said that was one of the heartbreaking aspects of the decision. However, she added that if L.B. Foster first put its facility in an appropriate spot and not along the back fences of a neighborhood that had been established for generations, there wouldn't have been a problem.
Mora called the closure a victory for the neighborhood, which has spent years fighting the company and its operations.
Residents have claimed that the rail facility contaminates stormwater runoff to their homes, pollutes the air and causes a racket no one would want in their neighborhood.
"This is a very important day and I would like to celebrate a victory in this community today," Mora said. "Our old neighbor L.B. Foster is moving out. I'd like you all to take a moment and listen to the quiet."
But it wasn't the noise that provided the neighborhood its ammunition, rather the quality of the water and the fact that L.B. Foster had operated its facility for seven years without a discharge permit.
A letter dated Sept. 25 from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment stated that the department did not agree with the way that L.B. Foster stored railroad ties. The state ruled the procedures were inadequate to protect the neighborhood from creosote that could leech from the ties into stormwater that rolls directly into the neighborhood.
The letter, signed by Kathleen Rosow of the department's water quality division, also takes issue with L.B. Foster's contention that creosote could not seep out of the ties and instructs the company to provide a stormwater management plan and comply with the department's provisions for protecting the neighborhood.
Peppersauce Bottoms, a small community located north of the Midtown Shopping Center, was severely flooded in an Aug. 29, 2006, thunderstorm that dumped about 3 inches of rain on Pueblo in an hour.
The neighborhood routinely experiences less severe flooding during the summer monsoon and is at odds with City Hall over flood control measures it has taken, and some it has not, to protect the neighborhood.
Mora said the neighborhood will continue to push the issue with Foster, saying that the Progressive Coalition is asking the state to fine the company retroactively for the past seven years it operated without a stormwater permit.
Mora also pledged to continue pushing the city, state and BNSF Railway to improve flood protection in the area and fight to protect the neighborhood.
She said she has asked the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct an environmental assessment of the property and possibly redevelop the area as a brownfield, which is a property that is heavily contaminated with industrial pollutants.
She thanked the railroad for installing a flood control basin west of the neighborhood and praised its work in looking for other places to build such basins.
"There is still a lot of work to be done," she said. "We don't think this is a community that should be ignored. It is a community that should be included."
Some of the neighborhood residents offered public thanks to Mora and coalition for their work and expressed relief that the Foster operation was closing.
"There's no more noise. There's no more pollution. This gives our family hope that we don't have to live that way any more," said Jose Cornejo. "Hopefully this land can be used for something good for the community."
