Frequent Millennium Bridge elevator outages in downtown Denver strand disabled users, among others

Millennium Bridge elevator outages strand disabled users, among others

On Tuesday, three out of four of the Millennium Bridge (16th St.) and 18th Street Bridge elevators were not working. And the signage is ineffective or ambiguous. For instance, the 16th Street Bridge outage notice says to use the 15th Street or the 18th Street Bridge.

Searching online for reference to these outages, I found a television interview from two years ago with Amy Van Dyken, a former Olympic swimmer who was paralyzed in an ATV accident in 2014. She observed that the bridge elevators at the time were closed from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. by order due to the trashing of elevators by vandals. But knowing from whence she comes, she said such a policy violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The 15th Street and 20th Street roadways are hardly reasonable accommodations for an arm-powered wheelchair-based person, given the climbs are not ADA compliant (1:12 pitch, resting ramp every 30 feet). They are not very safe either due to the speed and nonchalance of the wheeled traffic on the sidewalks.

Other people affected by elevator-to-bridge outages include parents with children in strollers, shoppers with carts, and passengers with luggage on and from the A-Line to the airport.

But to a disabled person who has worked professionally in physical rehabilitation, the lackadaisical approach to signage and to elevator repair on the 16th Street and 18th Street bridge access does speak to ADA issues.

I can do the bridge stairs, slowly and laboriously but I shouldn’t. Who am I unreasonably accommodating?

James R. Fegan, Denver (LoDo)

No upside to fracking wells near major water source

Re: “Neighbors make their final stand,” July 28 news story

There is a reason we have chosen to live in Colorado. Indeed, those of you elected to your posts are steeped in a long record of voicing environmental concerns and ensuring the enaction of protections for the natural resources of our state.

The idea that we would allow up to 166 wells to be drilled adjacent to the drinking water source for hundreds of thousands of people is absurd. Rich Coolidge of Crestone stated, “development can safely occur without impacting groundwater and surface water sources.”  That may be true in the lab or on paper, but unfortunately, it does not hold true in practice in the field. Our media sources have been replete with multiple failures, leaks and mistakes in fracking locales.

Of even greater concern, according to published reports, drilling is proposed near the Lowry Landfill, a Superfund site, where a reported 138 million gallons of waste are buried. Are we out of our minds? Why would anyone ever want to tempt fate by drilling anywhere close to the superfund site?

How will we keep the fracking chemicals and superfund chemicals out of our drinking water?  And once it happens, who will pay for it?