Denver International Airport
Audio By Carbonatix
The Denver International Airport needs almost $12 million for its tunnels and basements, but don’t worry: DIA officials swear it’s all for an overdue cleaning, and not to feed lizard people, Elvis or the illuminati.
The airport’s underground system is central to several popular conspiracy theories surrounding the Denver airport, some of which have been cheekily leaned into by its marketing staff. The tunnels are used to transport luggage, equipment and staff, according to airport officials, and account for around 3.5 million square feet — more than enough to house Martians, missing children and their lizard overseers, military railroads and apocalypse bunkers for the elite.
Denver Airport safety director Travis Krabbenhoft’s personal favorite conspiracy theory: an underground plane runway, which probably only makes sense in Hollywood (or after a lot of weed). The real reason DIA needs $11.75 million is rather boring but necessary, he explains.
“Ultimately, it’s just a deep cleaning of the dust that is down there. These tunnels are open to the air, and there are a bunch of different entry points just for getting out to air traffic,” Krabbenhoft says. “In your house, when you don’t clean your ceiling fan, everything can get dusty. Our ceiling fan just happens to be five miles long.”
The proposal was approved by a Denver City Council committee on January 28, and needs one more vote for full approval. Belfor Environmental will perform the cleanup job with about fifty workers, according to Krabbenhoft and the city contract, which calls for a “lead dust cleaning.”
According to DIA’s press office, there could be a “small amount” of lead detected in tunnel dust, but it “is in no way hazardous.”
The final job likely won’t cost the full $11.75 million, according to Krabbenhoft, who says that amount was earmarked in case of unseen expenses. He expects the tunnel-cleaning project to cost just over $3.14 per square foot, or just under $11 million in total. The project should last around sixteen weeks and wrap up before spring break at schools, when air traffic takes off.
Most of the work will be done by hand with wipes and vacuums outfitted with HEPA filters; the job isn’t very foreign to people accustomed to household cleaning, Krabbenhoft details.
“We have a lot of people who work down there. It’s ultimately where a lot of the employee offices and break rooms are; that’s where they work. We don’t want someone to just come down there with leaf blowers. We want them to use highly controlled measures to clean up that dust so we’re not impacting operations,” he says.
Denver is home to the third-busiest airport in the country, servicing almost 88 million passengers in 2024, according to Airports Council International. It was imperative that any company handling the tunnel cleaning could do so without having to shut down any terminals, Krabbenhoft notes.
Or displeasing our reptilian lords.
