I don't quite get how we decided it's OK for people to just walk away from their responsibility to clean up after themselves when they've profited from fucking up the air and the water and the soil.
Why do we do that?
Five women in my family lived either at our house on Independence Way, or on Hackberry Hill in Arvada. All five had bouts with cancer, and four of them died of it - and this in a family of some very long-lived old gals. The ones who lived in Arvada got sick.
Northern Jefferson County has been a known Disease Cluster for 50 years - downhill and downwind of Rocky Flats (plutonium) - and I'm just now learning about this uranium shit seeping into the drinking water!?!
What the actual fuck, you guys.
Cleanup company walks away from Jeffco uranium mine, state takes $7.3 million bond
Colorado mining officials say they will take over water purifying that keeps radioactivity and other contamination out of Denver and Arvada water supply.
The company charged with keeping uranium-tainted water out of Denver and Arvada’s drinking supply is walking away from cleaning up Jefferson County’s shuttered Schwartzwalder mine, and state officials are taking over a $7.3 million surety bond they say will continue to fund treatment.
Without water treatment and other uranium reclamation, the Schwartzwalder mine above Ralston Creek and Ralston Reservoir has leaked tainted water into key city supplies, state reclamation officials said in their stipulated agreement with Colorado Legacy Land. The company’s water treatment plant at the mine has been running May to October in recent years, and the state said Friday the previously posted bond will allow work to continue in 2024.
Colorado officials won’t know until the end of next year’s treatment season how many years the surety bond will last in running the plant, said Michael Cunningham, acting division director for Reclamation, Mining and Safety. Colorado could invest the surety bond and use proceeds to continue treatment, but the state may also have recourse to seek more funding from Colorado Legacy Land, Cunningham said.
The state revoked Colorado Legacy Land’s permit to run mine or cleanup operations at Schwartzwalder as part of the stipulation agreement. The stipulation agreement says no civil fines will be issued as part of the revocation and transition to state control. The latest surety bond agreement was for $7.6 million, but the state is moving to take over about $7.3 million left in the fund.
Community activists who have tried to track the uranium cleanups in both Jefferson County and Canon City said they were not surprised about CLL’s surrender of the Golden efforts.
The promises were “never going to be enough for the best cleanup possible,” said Carol Dunn, co-chair of Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste. “I could not guess where CLL got the highly optimistic idea that there was ‘easy money’ to be made.”
Reporters in the past have not received responses to inquiries at Colorado Legacy Land. A message left with Colorado Legacy Land representative Jim Harrington on Friday was not returned.
The walkaway agreement signed last week is the latest in a series of failed cleanup sagas for two major Colorado uranium sites once controlled by Colorado Legacy Land, which in turn had taken over the two sites from Cotter Corp.
Schwartzwalder, about 7 miles northwest of Golden, has not produced uranium since 2000, state officials said, and is in the final stages of rock and dirt reclamation. Water treatment at the Jeffco site must go on for years, according to regulators at the reclamation division and the state health department.
Colorado Legacy Land had also taken over and later walked away from the Cotter Mill cleanup, an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site at Cañon City. Colorado Legacy Land surprised Cañon City residents in February with an insolvency and news it was giving up its share of cleanups at both Cotter Mill and Schwartzwalder.
State action at Schwartzwalder dates at least to 2010, when reclamation officials demanded action from then-owner Cotter Corp. over discharges into surface water. The state’s stipulation agreement last week says that without proper summer water treatment, tainted mine water builds up and then overflows into Ralston Creek, which feeds Ralston Reservoir.
Unless the treatment equipment is turned on again in spring of 2024, the pool of tainted water would begin overflowing in June, state officials said in the stipulation agreement approved by the mining reclamation board on Wednesday.
The land portion of the reclamation has a finite end and will be completed under the surety bond, the state’s Cunningham said. Rock waste is being moved above any water contact on the valley floor, and will be capped with soil to be covered in vegetation, he said.
“The division is going to have a much clearer idea of how long that water can be treated utilizing the financial warranty once we get to the end of the 2024 season,” he said
“The system that’s in place there will ensure that the water that is discharged into Ralston Creek meets water quality standards,” Cunningham said. “This is what Colorado Legacy Land has been doing themselves since taking over this permit. And they’ve been successful in meeting water quality standards up there.”
Arvada water officials said they have been monitoring the discussions about Schwartzwalder and have been advocating “for the protection of Ralston Creek.”
“At this time, we have no concerns about risk to water supply or water quality in Arvada,” said Arvada infrastructure communications manager Katie Patterson. “We are confident that the state and the Mined Land Reclamation Board are committed to continuing to run the water treatment plant in the year ahead and to determining a path for long term management of the site. The city will continue to monitor, support, and engage with the state in the future management of the site to ensure the protection of Ralston Creek.”
Denver Water officials have said in the past that their own water treatment systems for Ralston Reservoir water also keep uranium or other contaminants out of city supplies.
Friday, Denver Water officials said they are “monitoring the situation at the mine and appreciate the leadership of the Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety in its work to ensure water treatment continues at the site.”
Cunningham said the state has known since early this year that Colorado Legacy Land would be leaving the site. “CLL stated and confirmed it does not presently have the financial capacity to perform its obligations under the permit,” the stipulation says, in part.
“We feel well positioned to take the site over,” Cunningham said.
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