Denver council to consider $500,000 grant for Brighton Boulevard landfill cleanup planning
The proposed federal grant would fund remediation design at a former landfill and school-bus depot, not the physical cleanup or future redevelopment.
The Denver City Council is scheduled to consider a proposed $500,000 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant for remediation planning at a seven-acre former landfill and Denver Public Schools bus-depot site on Brighton Boulevard.
The grant agreement would run through Aug. 31, 2032, and is listed for the council’s Sept. 15 meeting. The meeting agenda identifies the site as 4800 and 4850 Brighton Boulevard and the proposal as Council Bill 26-1291.
The full City Council had not approved the grant as of Sept. 12. The South Platte River Committee approved the bill by consent on Sept. 9, while the official matter record still listed it as under “Approval Review” with no final-action date.
The grant would pay for design and planning work rather than physical cleanup. In its grant request, the city says the work would produce remediation documents through the “Issue for Bid” stage, including design documents, an engineer’s cost estimate, a project schedule, management plans and technical memorandums. It would also support an application to the state’s Voluntary Cleanup Program.
The request says field investigations in fall 2024 included drilling, excavation, soil characterization and analytical sampling. A later cleanup design anticipates removing about 125,000 cubic yards of landfill material, disposing of contaminated soil at the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site, removing pavement and foundations, installing shoring along the property boundary and replacing excavated material with clean engineered fill.
The city says the project is intended to support a future unrestricted land-use standard, remove an environmental covenant and eliminate methane-related restrictions. Any cleanup and redevelopment would require later funding and construction; the records do not establish a final future use for the property. They also do not establish that the grant has been paid, physical cleanup has begun or contamination from the site has reached the South Platte River.