Air Quality Concerns in North Denver Neighborhood
A new data center campus is under construction in Elyria-Swansea, a neighborhood already struggling with pollution from major highways and Colorado's only oil and gas refinery.
Pam Valenza, chief health officer at Tepeyac Community Health Center, was initially unaware of the construction's purpose. Her office is part of a larger redevelopment project in the heart of Elyria-Swansea, a working-class and largely Latino neighborhood in north Denver.
Until last summer, Valenza assumed the excavators were at work on the final phase of the project: a long-planned affordable senior living facility.
However, she discovered through social media that the construction was actually for a future data center, raising concerns about the potential impact on local air quality.
The neighborhood is already vulnerable to pollution, and the addition of a data center may exacerbate the issue.
Author's summary: Data center construction sparks air quality concerns.