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Second suit filed seeking to stop Boulder County from building composting facility at former nursery site

“I think people look at this piece of land as something larger. This is a riparian corridor, this is a wildlife corridor. You can’t just pluck this piece of land out and hand it over to the Public Works Department."
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The former Rainbow Nursery site south of Longmont, where Boulder County wants to build a composting facility.

A proposed Boulder County composting plant is the target of a second lawsuit, this one filed by a couple who operate an adjacent horse boarding and training facility.

Jeff and Nancy Davis, who own Reverie Farms, say the county has no legal right to build a composting plant on the 40-acre parcel where the Rainbow Nursery was formerly located. The county purchased the Rainbow Nursery land with sales and use tax revenue to set it aside for a conservation easement.

The county in 2018 decided to build a large scale composting facility on the site, which is located on the east side of U.S. 287 between Colo. 52 and Lookout Road, even though conservation easements are supposed to protect fragile habitat from being used for industrial purposes, Nancy Davis said Wednesday.

“I think people look at this piece of land as something larger,” Davis said. “This is a riparian corridor, this is a wildlife corridor. You can’t just pluck this piece of land out and hand it over to the Public Works Department.

“Maybe I should put my own little Starbucks on this parcel and call it good,” Davis added. “It’s either for commercial development or it isn’t.”

In January, three nearby landowners filed a lawsuit against the county, saying it pulled a  “classic bait-and-switch” by buying the Rainbow Nursery site using a conservation easement and then deciding to build the composting facility on the land,  Rob O’Dea, spokesman for Protect Rainbow Open Space, told The Leader earlier this month. Protect Rainbow Open Space is a grassroots group formed in opposition to the composting facility plan.

The three landowners in their suit claim the composting facility would attract truckloads of human waste, animal manure and rotting food, while worsening traffic problems on U.S. 287. The landowners want a district judge to reinstate the conservation easement and halt construction of the composting plant.

The county has put the composting plant’s special use review application on hold and has asked a judge to dismiss that lawsuit, county spokeswoman Barb Halpin said.

Halpin said she wasn’t aware of the lawsuit filed by the Davises. 

“As before, since the facility is not even in an active applicant status, the lawsuit appears to be premature,” she said in an email. “There has been no activity on the ‘on-hold’ status since we filed the motion to  dismiss on the first lawsuit.” 

Supporters of the composting facility say it will help the county achieve its goal of zero waste by 2025 by capturing 20% to 30% of compostable county waste and increasing landfill diversion by 5% to 10%.

Longmont City Council on Tuesday approved sending a letter to Boulder County commissioners in support of a composting plant. The letter will not reference the proposed location of such a facility.