Soccer Field Critics Cry 'Foul'

A former landfill near Denver is being turned into soccer fields to be used yearly by more than a half-million people, the Denver Post reports. That has county officials spinning a success story for waste management. But public health advocates are crying "foul." The site, which is part of a several million dollar containment project, will also include a dog park and the county's hazardous household waste facility. "You'll be able to run your dogs, dump your hazardous waste and play soccer all in the same place," Jefferson County facilities manager Lee Suttie said. "This quote should land Suttie a raise," Univeristy of Colorado faculty member Adrienne Anderson writes in a letter to the editor. The military-industrial complex-controlled suburban county outside Denver is "where Coors, Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, and/or Lockheed Martin and other polluters have been able to illegally dump their hazardous and even radioactive wastes into Denver metro area streams, municipal water supplies and 'sanitary
landfills' for decades without criminal prosecution." Looking the other way, Colorado officials cover up instead of clean up the toxic dumps, Anderson writes, designating sites as "suitable playing fields for little kids and their pets."