Veazy III: A told you so moment
Letter to the editor
As your anxieties increase because the news story, “Smuggler Mountain mine waste falls from favor with state” (Aspen Daily News, Feb. 24, 2023), I told you so about the Smuggler Mine Superfund Site in 2019: “Let all be reminded of the Smuggler Mine Superfund site was never cleaned up. You in Aspen and Pitkin County have much in common with Glendale, California. DreamWorks Animation in Glendale, California, is a Superfund site that was never cleaned up. What are the community and population troubles contributed by not cleaning up a superfund site? Plenty. Call the doctors and lawyers.” (“Troubles aplenty,” Emzy Veazy III, Letter, Aspen Daily News, Dec. 9, 2019.)
The Glendale, California, superfund still has 444 toxic chemicals going down at least 2,000 feet and spreads all the way into downtown Glendale.
One with common sense realizes Aspen’s mining history left poisons everywhere — from mountain side to mountain side and in between. How many toxic chemicals are at Smuggler and around Aspen? What a heritage left behind!
If Aspen and Glendale had been prudent like Lockheed, then their air and land would be much cleaner. When Lockheed, the aerospace defense company, left Burbank, California, it cleaned up its manufacturing site like a thoughtful business should.
Trying to be slick doesn’t make for a new “City Slickers” movie, does it? Call the doctors and lawyers as the super-wealthy figure out what’s the payoff for them.
Emzy Veazy III
Aspen
