A four-star U.S. officer walks onto an electric school bus. But besides the familiar black and yellow exterior of the vehicle, this isn’t a typical field trip.
The officer in question is Admiral Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the Biden Administration and the first openly transgender federal official confirmed by the U.S. Senate. She visited Boulder for the recent July 10 ridealong with county commissioners, state representatives and scientists to see up close how Boulder County is addressing climate impacts on public health.
Stops on the eco-friendly bus tour included an air quality monitoring site at the Boulder Reservoir and a nearly full electric mobile home in Boulder.
Cindy Copeland, air and climate policy advisor at Boulder County, spoke during the tour about air quality at the Boulder Reservoir monitoring site, which tracks emissions, temperature and humidity to help understand ozone levels. She said it’s hard to tell her kid, who has asthma, not to go to practice because of unhealthy air, especially when ozone is invisible and odorless.
The bus itself is owned and operated by the Boulder Valley School District, which bought Colorado’s first electric school bus in March 2021 with funding from the state and federal government. Now the district has six buses in its fleet, with plans to add more.
Projects like these are commonplace in Boulder County, where residents have long supported environmental initiatives like Boulder’s Climate Tax, which raises $6.5 million per year for climate resilience projects, and the county’s Wildfire Mitigation Sales Tax passed last fall.
Such endeavors help form a narrative that the county’s wheels are turning faster than other local governments when it comes to climate. But a later roundtable discussion hosted by the Admiral at the Boulder County Courthouse revealed that while sustainability-centered programs continue to be rolled out, some local communities are at risk of being left behind.
The ‘underside’
The Centennial State has a reputation of being a beautiful place full of healthy people, but that’s not everyone’s experience.
Poor ozone levels exacerbated by climate change, especially now in the peak of summer, disproportionately harm children, underrepresented communities and people with underlying health issues. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies the Denver Metro and North Front Range as “severe” violators of federal ozone level limits.
Equity was at the center of discussion during the packed, post-tour roundtable discussion. The conversation included representatives from federal agencies like the EPA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), plus state lawmakers, Boulder County Commissioners and officials with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Renee Millard-Chacon, executive director of the environmental nonprofit Womxn from the Mountain, spoke during the roundtable about ongoing environmental threats facing Indigenous people in her area. Those ongoing issues include exposure to harmful chemicals and limited access to clean water.
“[Pollution] is in our everyday life, and how we live is a form of injustice,” Millard-Chacon said at the roundtable. The Adams County resident serves on the city council in nearby Commerce City, an area deemed by the EPA as “overburdened by environmental pollution.”
The roundtable discussion at the Boulder County Courthouse focused on environmental justice and equity. Photo by Morgan Gardner.
Millard-Chacon, whose background includes Diné, Xicana and Filipina heritage, was one of a handful of Indigenous voices who spoke about ongoing problems facing communities on the front lines of the climate crisis. She highlighted national solutions like universal healthcare, alongside local fixes like shifting more resources to community-led initiatives.
“Right now there’s only one narrative out there, and it’s from the top,” says Lorena Gonzalez with Conservation Colorado. “And it’s disconnected from what we know the reality is on the ground.”
Levine says it was “illuminating” to learn about the “underside” of a place with a health-conscious reputation like Colorado. Compared to non-Native communities she’s visited around the country, she says Indigenous perspectives like those she heard in Boulder are unique.
“The communities [across the nation] all want to be empowered to work themselves in their community,” she says. “But the idea that that is part of their culture to heal the earth, and that they have many of the solutions themselves if we’re able to work with them [is different].”
Levine says her office will respond to the roundtable’s input with a community-based approach through the HHS regional department, which oversees six states including Colorado.
Boulder County Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann says the county emphasizes racial equity as its first priority when approaching climate action. According to her, that helps keep diverse community voices like Millard-Chacon and Gonzalez at the table.
“There’s a lot of work that has to be done, and most of the things [pertain] to zero carbon emissions, or everybody [being] electrified,” she says. “We’ll never do that if we leave people behind.”
Of course, most of these conversations and goals aren’t new. Gonzalez says these discussions between underrepresented community voices and governmental officials frequently happen, but are often not followed up with action.
“It becomes tokenization when we’re invited to speak on these things, but there’s no movement to actually address the things that we’ve talked about,” she says. “So then it just becomes a photo op.”
Gonzalez is hopeful this time is different.
Clarification: A previous version of this story said the bus tour visited a fully electric mobile home. The stove and water heater in the home are not electric.
