Gaines: Clearing the air on vigilante journalism

Who watches the watchmen?  The Roman satirist Juvenal is credited with coining this question, originally in the context of trying to ensure a wife’s fidelity.  It’s meaning has expanded over time and is often used now to express concern over accountability for those in positions of power, a sentiment I often share.

No matter what you might think about the various “watchmen” we have today, you can at least say that there is indeed someone watching.  Our system of rules and laws may not be perfect, but it’s at least open to view by all.

There is a furniture maker in Commerce City–I won’t name them because they’ve had enough unwanted and unfair publicity–whose furniture finish vapor emissions exceeded Colorado’s allowed limits.  Whether or not this was a dangerous amount is not quite so clear.  The chemicals in the finish like toluene are toxic, but there are no Federal standards on outdoor concentrations of chemicals like these.  Dangerous or not, however, their emissions did go over our state limits for a time.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), driving their mobile chemical detector, noticed this and approached the company, telling them to monitor and report their emissions and bring them down.  They did, and CDPHE sought no further penalty or enforcement action.  The problem was resolved to their satisfaction.  Or so you might think.

A recent Colorado Public Radio (CPR) article by climate advocate Sam Brasch detailed a van trip similar to CDPHE’s, characterized as a “scientific road trip.”  While similar to to the CDPHE van, with a chemical sniffer tooling around Commerce City, it was not in any way connected to the government.  It was a group of CU researchers with the goal of seeing whether and how well a small pollution monitor could pick up pinpoint sources of pollution.  This is something I would characterize as foundational science:  a study to help clarify how well we know what we know.

Science can be a nuanced field and, done right, it leaves no doubt as to the scope and generalizability of one’s results. More often than not, a thoughtful scientist will tell you just how narrowly his or her results should be taken.  But you won’t get a sense of this from Brasch.  What you will get is a lot of pictures of the woodworking company and carefully parsed language insinuating that the company is doing wrong.  It took a couple readings for me to pick up all the caveats.

Brasch was careful here, but even with that a lot was left out and the manager of the shop was left feeling (rightfully in my view) targeted.  Quoting him from the CPR article,”We run a very clean shop. I don’t want to say it feels like an attack, but it puts a scare into you about what’s going to happen next,” Gorsegner said. “Are we going to get these entities from all over Colorado investigating and poking us apart while we’re just trying to be a legitimate business?”

As technology gets cheaper and as more and more people seek it, we will likely see more and more individuals and groups monitoring air quality on their own.  It’s already happening.  An activist group out in Commerce City, upset about the Suncor refinery, had their own monitors next to the facility for a time.  I have even seen activists encouraging people to get their own personal air quality monitors so they could better advocate to their members of Congress.

I understand not trusting the government.  I understand wanting to better advocate for change, even if I disagree with the cause.  I am not so sure about air monitors being in the hands of advocates, however.  I say this especially when you pair advocates with a left-leaning press that has already shown themselves to be sympathetic.  Where would the checks in the process be?  Where would the transparency be?  It would be like with Brasch, but potentially without even the limited care he showed.

I’m not even alleging some sort of intent here (though there is also room for it–Suncor has been a perennial target for environmentalist groups for at least 3 years now).  Intent isn’t necessary to have a bad outcome.  Technical equipment requires care and skill to operate correctly.  The measurements have to be interpreted in the context that they were taken and in the context of the limitations of the measuring device.

Even the researchers from CU acknowledge this in their paper.  They note that quantitative results get influenced by the setup of the equipment and that emissions get mixed up when they’re in a city; a specific type of chemical from one refinery would be easy to spot if that refinery were in the middle of an empty field.  Cities aren’t like that, however.  Emissions from industry mix with traffic, sewage treatment, and so on.

Individuals, groups, and the media inserting themselves into the process of air pollution violations is fraught with all kinds of potential problems, enough that I think fairness to all demands that the first stop for people with concerns should be the government.  Additionally, the first thing out of a reporter’s mouth if someone calls in a tip to them ought to be “when it becomes official with the government, I’ll report on it”.

Doing otherwise is just this side of vigilantism, and we should save that for the movies.

Cory Gaines is a regular contributor to Complete Colorado.  He lives in Sterling on Colorado’s Eastern Plains and also writes at the Colorado Accountability Project substack.