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by Jack Unruh

Remembering her pivotal and tireless work to rid Overland Park neighborhood of the radioactive Shattuck Superfund site waste, neighbors have begun the required petition process to rename the small South Platte riverside park known as Pasquinel’s Landing for Rev. Deb Spaar Sanchez.

DEB SANCHEZ WAS A TIRELESS ADVOCATE FOR THE OVERLAND NEIGHBORHOOD until her death in 2008. Supporters are asking Denver Parks and Recreation to rename a local park in her name to honor the many contributions she made to the health and well-being of her community.

$1.8 million in compensation for environmental damage from Shattuck waste will soon fund habitat improvements near the park.

Deb’s work on the historic EPA Superfund cleanup began in the late 1980s and continued until the agency’s final five-year review declared the site clean in 2006. At the time of her death from cancer in 2008 the 5.9-acre parcel at 1805 S. Bannock St., home to Shattuck Chemical from 1917-1984, was not only free of contamination but was slated for development by new owner, Jon Cook.

Had efforts to force removal of the waste not been successful, south Denver would have hosted the country’s first urban radioactive waste dump. Instead, due in part to Deb’s heroic contributions, Shattuck became the country’s first and only completed Superfund “remedy” to have been declared unsafe and completely replaced by a more responsible solution. Over 250,000 tons of toxic waste on the site was originally covered over by EPA with dirt and a massive concrete cap.

Throughout the 1990s, leaders from Mayor Webb to Representative DeGette, Senator Allard, Governor Owens and Secretary Salazar were embroiled in the struggle for removal of the dump; all were familiar with and fond of Deb. When Deb died, dignitaries from as far away as Washington attended the service in her childhood church (where she had just been ordained: she’d planned to make the rest of her life one of service).

In the late ’90s, as public opinion became impossible to ignore, EPA instituted a “Dialogue Process” with city, state, and federal representatives and counsel for Citigroup (who now owned the waste by virtue of a string of mergers). Deb was one of two community representatives at the crowded table.

During an early session she spoke slowly and at some length of her personal concerns, her sense of injustice, and her fears for her son, Lucas. At the session’s conclusion the chief investigator for the EPA Ombudsman’s office said that in 20 years of sitting through similar meetings he had never seen a room quiet and hold still as it had for Deb’s sharing.

Denver’s Department of Parks and Recreation requires the renaming of a park to begin with submittal of a two-to-three sentence summary of the case – no easy task when 20 years of activism and personal sacrifice is the story being told. In compliance with that guideline, here is why Deb Spaar Sanchez Park is such a good idea:

For nearly the last 20 years of her life the Rev. Deb Sanchez, a Denver native, worked to assure that Denver’s radioactive Shattuck Superfund Site, visible from her kitchen window, would be cleaned up and restored to usefulness. At the center of every stage in the story of the only Superfund “remedy” ever overturned for a more protective solution, Deb engaged all the activists, the scientists, the elected officials and key agency personnel, even the corporate higher-ups arguing to leave the waste in Denver, treating all with respect – blessing meeting spaces and feeding the negotiators – but speaking her truth undaunted. The small park where her family played, three blocks from her home (named on a whim for a fictional character with no Denver significance), Pasquinel’s Landing should be renamed Deb Spaar Sanchez Park in honor of a life of service saving this city from thousands of years of radioactive blight.

As it happens, though, even now there is one more Shattuck shoe to drop. In the waning days of the proceedings, Citigroup was successfully sued by the State of Colorado for damage caused to nearby groundwater. A community advisory process proposed use of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment won by the state, now amounting to $1.8 million, for Platte River habitat improvements to be undertaken by the Greenway Foundation. On October 13, 2011 the state’s trustees accepted the arrangement that state experts, community representatives and the Greenway’s Jeff Shoemaker had hammered out.

The natural resource projects will be part of a sweeping list of improvements the Greenway Foundation has planned with agency and community involvement over the last few years. The Shattuck assessment has already acted as seed money for matching fund development. A portion of the restoration work will be in and near what will come to be known as “Deb Spaar Sanchez Park,” rounding out a quarter century of environmental advocacy in south Denver.