“Zero Waste” and Composting feels good. Right?
All the green-washing in the world cannot mitigate the fact industrial-scale composting, as Boulder County is proposing to develop on Rainbow Open Space, can be a highly toxic and impactful use of otherwise productive agricultural lands. The Rainbow Open Space lands are immediately adjacent to wetlands, to conservation easements, to other Open Space parcels and to the pristine lands of numerous neighbors. Some locations are better than others for waste processing and some locations are completely unfit. The Rainbow Open Space lands are completely inappropriate for the County’s +$10,000,000 composting experiment.
The proposed County waste processing facility is ill suited for Rainbow Open Space due to adjacent wetlands, Leggett Ditch and uniquely significant agricultural lands. Contamination of adjacent private lands and degradation of conservation easements would expose the County taxpayers to potentially costly litigation and damage claims.
