City council Tuesday night voted to delay sending a letter of support for a county-owned composting facility, with most council members wanting to include language asking for more collaboration with the Boulder County Commissioners in picking a site.
The letter to the commissioners states a regional composting plant would reduce greenhouse gases, improve soil health, crop yields and water retention. Council members said they support a facility to process compost for residents and businesses.
But Councilmember Tim Waters said the city was caught off-guard by a recent attempt by the county to place a composting center on the abandoned Rainbow Nursery parcel just south of Longmont.
“This was the county staff doing this on their own and there was no interest in our ideas … nor our recommendations nor our aspirations” for a site, Waters said.
A majority of the council — with Councilmembers Joan Peck and Polly Christensen dissenting — voted to include a sentence in the letter to the commissioners, urging the county to collaborate with the city in finding a site for the composting facility.
Councilmember Marcia Martin said Longmont needs to be consulted in county plans for a composting site because the city is a major stakeholder. “I don’t think recommending policy is out of line in any way for us,” Martin said.
The letter will be brought back to the council in two weeks with the changes.
The proposal to build the composting plant at the Rainbow site has been shelved, after the commissioners approved pulling the application for the project.
Two lawsuits by nearby landowners claim the county used sales and use tax revenue to create a conservation easement for the parcel because it was prime agricultural land. The county then bought the property in 2018 to build an industrial-sized composting plant on the parcel and brushed aside the protections offered under the conservation easement, the suits claim.
The county’s efforts to first protect the property from any development followed by plans to build on the parcel is a “classic bait and switch,” Rob O’Dea, a spokesman for Protect Rainbow Open Space, told The Leader.
Christensen said she objected to “shaming” the county into working in concert with the city over the composting site.
“We can always reach out to them, we always have,” added Peck.
