EPA, CDPHE launch brainstorming for future of toxic Cotter mill

By Bruce Finley
Source: denverpost.com


Workers crush the concrete floor of the extraction building at Cotter Corp.'s uranium mill in Cañon City. The facility was declared a Superfund site in 1984. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post file)

CAÑON CITY — One proposal for the future of Cotter Corp.'s toxic Colorado uranium mill would transform the site into an industrial hemp farm.

Residents living downwind and downstream of the 2,538-acre site also are mulling possibilities for a wildlife refuge, a massive wind and solar array, trails for hikers and bikers and a job-rich manufacturing zone.

These ideas surfaced at a community meeting this week as federal and state overseers of the site — a federally designated environmental disaster since 1984 — launched a French-inspired "charette" process of public brainstorming.

Cotter, which owns the land, is responsible for cleaning up an estimated 15 million tons of radioactive uranium tailings and contaminated groundwater migrating toward Cañon City and the Arkansas River.

Cotter vice president John Hamrick said the company is "open to any recommendation" for the future use of the land. "We're not ruling anything out."

He pointed out that a restricted area covering up to 880 acres is so contaminated that it probably will be turned over to the U.S. Department of Energy — similar to what happened to toxic core areas at the Cold War-era Rocky Flats and Rocky Mountain Arsenal weapons plants.

Any post-cleanup use, whether for wildlife or people, "needs to be viable — economically viable," Hamrick said.

The public brainstorming marks a potential turning point in the long struggle over Cotter's mostly dismantled mill, which is 1½ miles south of Cañon City.

But the Superfund cleanup, one of the nation's slowest, is still in the planning stages. A subsidiary of defense contractor General Atomics, Cotter opened the mill in 1958, processing uranium for nuclear weapons and fuel. Cotter discharged liquid waste, including radioactive heavy metals, into 11 unlined ponds until 1978. The ponds were replaced in 1982 with two lined waste ponds.

Domestic and agricultural wells in the Cañon City area have been contaminated. Colorado officials permitted Cotter to keep operating the mill even after it was declared a disaster, until 2011. Mill workers periodically processed ore until 2006.

The Environmental Protection Agency, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and community leaders were meeting this week, trying to enlist two groups of about 30 residents for two charette intensive collaborative planning sessions in April.

During the meeting Thursday, hemp entrepreneur Gunn Haydon proposed planting hemp as a way to remove uranium and other toxic contamination at the site.

Hemp plants would clean soil to a depth of 3 feet, removing uranium and other heavy metals, and opening opportunities for the land.

"Why would you want to move this problem to somebody else's areas?" Haydon asked an advisory panel that included Fremont County Commissioner Tim Payne.

Haydon pointed to the use of hemp to remove contamination at the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Colorado lawmakers have committed to make up to $10 million available to test hemp production in the state.

Eventually, hemp could be deployed at the Rocky Flats site, west of Denver, to address concerns about soil still tainted with traces of plutonium, Haydon told an advisory panel.

Hemp farming at the Cotter site initially sounded "a little bit out there," EPA unit chief Rob Stites said after the meeting. But if Haydon could line up funding, an experiment to help clean the Cotter property could make sense, Stites said.

Community members welcomed the contribution. "We need your name and address to invite you for the charette," said Sharyn Cunningham, leader of Coloradans Against Toxic Waste.

Gov. John Hickenlooper intervened in 2013 to try to spur cleanup. EPA, CDPHE and Cotter officials have signed a legal framework that requires Cotter to complete a remediation and feasibility study of how to deal with the 15 million tons of waste and contaminated groundwater. Options range from removal — Cotter estimates this would cost $895 million — to burial in existing or new impoundment ponds.