Just a note to let you know that in Denver, CO, we citizens are fighting, tooth and nail, to stop the city of Denver from destroying a designated park that is listed on the Colorado and  National Register of Historic Places.  City Park Golf Course (CPGC) , a part of historic Denver City Park,  was designed in 1913 by Tom Bendelow, the Jonny Appleseed of public golf courses in the USA and Canada. Like City Park, CPGC was designed in the Olmstad tradition.  For decades, it was one of the only golf courses in Denver that was open to non white golfers. Denver has a dark part of its history when the Klu Klux Klan flourished and red lining was the rule. Many non whites still remember those days.   CPGC is beautiful and the 139 acres serve as one of the few urban green infrastructures  in Denver. The big old trees soak up millions of gallons of water, clean our air , provide us with oxygen, cool our hot city and the established, microbe filled soil holds, cleans and stores rain water where it falls, for our future use. This is real green infrastructure. All of this would be destroyed under Mayor Michale Hancock’s plan. CPGC will not remain on the historic registers. The city wants to cut down 264 trees, ( replacing some of them with saplings)close and fence off the course for two years, install a wall to wall irrigation system when we are facing drought, regrade and excavate  ( compact soil)  50 acres into a part of a huge storm drain project that will bring toxic storm water into the park and will flood much of it in the case of a big storm.  We only have to look at Huston to understand that toxic storm water is dangerous and the danger to the park, humans, pets and wildlife  from insects, fungus, mold, pathogens and  toxins can last for weeks or months after the storm water recedes.   Denver wants to  bring this toxic mess into an historic park that is not in a flood plain, does not flood, was designed to survive in our semi arid climate without irrigation and had no water features … just drop dead views. The city tried to convince residents who live upstream from the park that this sacrifice of their historic park  was all about stopping “flooding” in their neighborhoods . This man made flooding results from broken, antiquated storm water infrastructure and over development.  When residents began to dig into the details, it became obvious that the city was stretching the truth. This drain was not about saving neighborhoods. Why then an expensive, old fashioned drain that would destroy our CPGC?  After months of research made difficult because of Denver’s lack of transparency, we discovered that the drain was really designed to keep what has been termed one of the biggest boondoggles  in the USA, the lowering and expansion of Highway I 70 through an inner city, low income, mostly minority neighborhood, from flooding. The highway is to be lowered 20 feet below the water table, next to the river and in the path of one of the biggest unmanaged drainages in Denver. Instead of spending our storm water “fees’ on replacing our neighborhood broken old storm water pipes  and protecting our families with green infrastructure Denver wants to spend $300 million of these “fees” on a state transportation project.  Homes are also being taken and neighborhoods exposed to pollutants as Denver digs through the Vasquez I 70  Superfund site in the most toxic zip code in the USA , 80126,  to install an open storm water ditch in another traditionally minority neighborhood. The highway will sit 50 feet from Swansea Elementary School, attended by mostly Latino children from low income families. Oh, new development in what the Mayor calls his “Corridor of Opportunity” would be spared much cost for storm water management as a result of his new regional drain.  Denver’s NOT a green city.  Yes, it is unjust, insane and wasteful. Why are they doing it?  We could not figure it out for a long time but then we discovered that Denver elites and Colorado Governor Hickenlooper and Denver Mayor Hancock apparently have their heart set, again, on hosting the 2026 Winter Olympic . They are going to blow Denver’s meager storm water budget, destroy an historic park, kick people out of their homes and small businesses and continue to expose minority communities to pollutants that cause sickness and early death at an alarming rate( there are much safer alternatives) all so that they can quickly turn Denver into Olympic Village complete with a direct highway connections to Denver International Airport, Olympic Village at the Western Stock Show and the mountains on the already traffic clogged road to the snow.   The drain that would destroy CPGC was not even a glimmer in Mayor Hancock’s  eye when the 2014 Waste Water Master Plan was released.  All of this was accomplished, unbelievably, without a vote of the people. Denver and the Colorado Department of Transportation alleged that there was no connection between the Highway I 70 project and the big drain even though documents tied them closely togehter ( no federal money, no need to include park and neighborhoods in I 70Environmental Impact Statements , saving money and time). Denver used storm water enterprise fund  “fees” , not considered taxes, no vote needed, to pay for much of the drain and new Denver zoning laws puts all control and power over parks in the hands of the Mayor…. no pesky citizens or city council input to deal with.  Mayor Hancock is pushing rapid development in Denver and  parks seem to be attractive as cheap land. Denver tries to greenwash  the drainage project but anyone can see that a huge drain designed to get our precious rain water out of Denver as quickly as possible , is not green infrastructure. Mayor Hancock alone,  through his political appointee, the Director Of the Department of Parks and Recreation, Happy Haynes, decides what is a park use. Short of a law suit, there is no recourse.  Like the proposed 1964-style Highway I 70 expansion, at a time when everyone knows that expanding a highway, especially one that has been an environmental and social injustice since  it was built in 1964, only encourages more traffic, the drain is another antiquated,  quick, cheap fix for a “flooding problem” brought about  by Denver and Colorado’s highway expansion boondoggle  and by overbuilding and neglect of it s ancient storm drain system.  The $300M  cost of the drain could prevent Denver from building the kind of green infrastructure that  will protect our families as climate change brings drought to an already semi arid, high altitude desert.  There are many bizarre  twists and turns in this case but the bottom line is that Hancock does NOT appear to be  a friend of parks , the environment nor does he seem  concerned about the health and safety of his subjects.  Citizens have collected over $34,000 and have filed a law suit to stop this madness  We have over 4000 mostly local signatures  on a petition to ask the city to use one of many other viable options to deal with their drainage “needs." Citizen advocates, developers, lawyers, paralegals, engineers, hydrologists, geologists, storm water experts, citizen researchers and many others  have donated thousands of hours of free labor to save this historic park from destruction. You might enjoy reading about a benefit we did comparing Denver to events in California memorialized in the film Chinatown. We are fighting very hard to save this park . We have gotten no help from so called park advocacy groups. On the contrary. For example, the Trust for Public Land, Adrian Benepe, testified at the trial to save CPGC,  that the drain was  “green infrastructure”. It came out in cross examination that his testimony was apparently based on nothing more that a conversation with city officials  who he declined to name. He had not read any of the many plans or documents concerning the proposed park construction, was not aware of any of the technical aspects of the proposed project and in fact had never visited CPGC in connection to the planned “redesign” of the course. He then insisted that this drain was somehow “green.”  This story, and the politics, get more and more convoluted the further we look. We want you to know that residents of Denver love their parks and are willing fight to save them from destruction and overdevelopment. Any help, encouragement of advice that you could offer us would be gratefully accepted.