LETTER: The Distressing View from Our Back Window

While we understand the importance of staying home, it is harming our health to do so. Please view the attached video clip to see why our neighborhood homes and properties have become dangerous.

Dust, exhaust fumes, and noise are a proven health hazard. We smell exhaust in our houses with the windows closed. Dust seeps through cracks and collects on sills. This is a significant danger, especially at a time when there is a respiratory virus pandemic, and given that some serious lung conditions are already experienced by neighbors. Because of the highly contagious nature of the coronavirus, there is a chance that even more breathing problems will develop.

Our Archuleta County government, by refusing to enforce its air and noise pollution ordinances, is allowing it to happen.

With school closed and kids out, the dirt bike-rock crawler-quad traffic has increased in duration and intensity, as the property owner’s children are using the track he built every day, and the owner’s friends and their children are coming to use it.

Keep in mind, this is taking place in a residential neighborhood, zoned residential.

We are stuck in our homes with unhealthy air and noise levels. We cannot open our windows. We cannot use our yards, especially those of us directly east of the track. We cannot plant our gardens at a time when we would like to limit trips to the grocery store and have home-grown produce.

Our county government has failed us, and our health is at stake.

How would you like to stay home — ostensibly for health — in this situation?

Jessica & Pete Peterson
Pagosa Springs. CO

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