by Camille Colatosti

Red Mountain Pass, Yankee Girl Mine, 1866

"When you visit Denver, be sure to take a tour," says Laurel Mattrey, assistant program director of the Colorado People's Environmental and Economic Network (COPEEN). But the tour Mattrey describes differs from the ones that most vacationers would immediately consider. "We call it the 'toxic tour,'" explains Mattrey. "We want everyone to see what it is like to live in a neighborhood where the air, soil and water are polluted, and the noise and smell of industry dominate."

Since 1990, COPEEN has been not only giving "toxic tours," but also working for environmental justice in Colorado.

"Environmental justice" was most clearly defined in the 1987 groundbreaking study of the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice. This study, "Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States," found that "race served as the determining factor regarding the siting of polluting industries and dumps." This study also revealed that "three of every five African and Hispanic Americans live near uncontrolled toxic waste sites, and that facilities were more likely to be in poor and minority communities because they were seen as paths of least resistance."

A 1994 study of the National Wildlife Federation Corporate Conservation Council drew the same conclusion: "People of color and low-income communities are disproportionately exposed to health and environmental risks in their neighborhoods and in their jobs."

COPEEN, says Mattrey, "assists communities in Denver and throughout Colorado who are dealing with environmental issues. We work with mining issues outside of metro-Denver; we work with people who have a Superfund site in their neighborhood and want to be sure that the Environmental Protection Agency monitors and cleans that site effectively."

A beautiful state -- with an 'unimaginable toxic burden'

When you first picture Denver, you probably don't picture pollution, says Mattrey. Colorado has a national reputation for its beautiful mountains and vistas, but the state suffers from a wide span of toxic, hazardous and radioactive pollution. As Susan LeFever, the director of the Sierra Club Rocky Mountain Chapter explains, the mining that began in 1859 -- mining for gold, lead, silver, coal, tungsten, vanadium and uranium -- "left much of the state polluted by human, animal and industrial wastes." While only one mine remains active in Colorado's San Luis Valley, a valley once dominated by mines, many have left their mark. Mining companies used cyanide to leach silver and gold out of the rock. Then they took the mine trailings -- the waste products -- and left them in a heap. Trailings from a number of Colorado's old mining sites have polluted groundwater, riverbeds and streams.

"In addition," says LeFever, "U.S. government agencies such as the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy also manufactured chemical and nuclear weapons in Colorado, and in the process generated toxic, hazardous and radioactive wastes. Colorado has been left with an unimaginable toxic burden that may take generations to remedy."

COPEEN's "toxic tours" show people this burden. The tour includes the four Denver neighborhoods that the Environmental Protection Agency has declared Superfund sites. "These are four entire neighborhoods -- not just factories or buildings -- but four neighborhoods that received this status," says Mattrey, because substantial concentrations of cadmium, arsenic and lead have been found in the soil.

Grassroots victories

Despite this bleak news, COPEEN has a number of successes to show off during its "toxic tour." One of the earliest victories concerns RAMP Industries. COPEEN board member Beth Blissman notes that when she first became involved with COPEEN in 1994, "RAMP had just abandoned over 6,000 barrels of undocumented toxic waste in a North Denver neighborhood called Sunnyside. RAMP posed as a recycler and they were going to act as a middle-man to take low-level radioactive waste from colleges and universities, treat it properly and then dispose of it. Instead, they just abandoned it."

There was a quick response. "The EPA declared RAMP a Superfund site and it has since been cleaned up. Rarely do we see such fast action by the EPA," adds Blissman.

Asarco

Another great victory was Asarco. COPEEN supported the efforts of a group of environmentalists -- Neighbors for a Toxic Free Community -- in the Denver neighborhood of Globeville, which in 1994 sued Asarco and won a jury verdict of $24 million in damages. "This was the largest citizen lawsuit ever won against a major corporation," says Blissman.

When a 1989 State of Colorado public health evaluation revealed that Globeville was sitting on contaminated land, community leaders asked the state to clean up the land. But, says Margaret Escamilla, a plaintiff in the case, "the state told us that the lead, cadmium and arsenic released by Asarco created only a small risk. We didn't believe them."

Asarco, Inc., a multinational producer of cadmium oxide and powder, high-purity and nonferrous metals, was found to have spewed arsenic and cadmium into the air and soil. The court required Asarco to remediate the soil around 567 homes, and replace soil to a depth of 18 inches on 285 properties.

Escamilla, a 45-year-old mother of two, describes her neighborhood, whose population includes Polish-American, Mexican-American, and African-American residents, as "a small community, a pretty poor community. Most everybody knows everybody." Escamilla has lived in Globeville for 23 years; her husband, Robert, is a third-generation Globeville resident. The Asarco plant had been in Globeville since 1886. Although Asarco has since stopped operating this plant, it still operates mines in other parts of the U.S., as well as in Australia, Mexico and Peru.

Ludlow

After Asarco, the "toxic tour" could take visitors past Park Hill, a mainly African-American section of Denver. There, tourists would have to notice what is missing -- the toxic waste transfer station that had once been proposed. In fact, a Denver zoning administrator had granted the station the right to locate at Park Hill before Park Hill for Safe Neighborhoods, working with COPEEN and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, convinced the Denver Board of Adjustment for Zoning Appeals to reverse the decision. Ludlow Environmental Services, Inc., had planned to transport hazardous waste from a four-state region into Denver, where it would be housed for up to 10 days before it was transported for treatment, storage or disposal.

"But Park Hill was already saturated with toxic stuff," says COPEEN's Blissman. "So we raised hell around the zoning permit and we told Ludlow to take a hike."

Shattuck Chemical

Some victories come more quickly than others. The ongoing case against Shattuck Chemical, a processor of radioactive radium and other heavy metals in another Denver neighborhood--Overland--has been a long and hard battle.

People in Overland were pleased with a 1991 recommendation of the Colorado Health Department to clean up the site by shipping radioactive waste from there to Utah. "Everything seemed to be on track," says Helen Orr, who lives just across the street from Shattuck. "Most people thought that was the end of it."

But in 1992 the Colorado Health Department and the EPA changed their minds. Instead of cleaning the site and removing the hazardous waste, the company was allowed to bury the waste and cap the land. EPA documents unsealed in 1999 revealed that this decision was made after Shattuck had private meetings with the EPA.

The remedy that the EPA approved allowed Shattuck to mix radioactive soil with fly ash, then bury this on its six-acre site. A clay cap, covered with rocks, is said to protect and contain the material. The result? A one-story mound referred to in the neighborhood as "Shattuck Mountain" and "the hot rocks." A chain-link fence and barbed wire surround this hill.

Residents continue to pressure the EPA to reverse its decision. Neighbors believe that state officials did not take the time to hear their concerns. At the request of U.S. Senator Wayne Allured and other Colorado officials, EPA ombudsman Robert Martin is investigating the decision to allow the burial and capping of waste.

The Platte River, says Blissman, "is only seven feet below the surface of the soil. This runs right under the capped land, and the river is already showing contamination."

Rocky Flats: 'Would you let your children hike there?'

After Shattuck Mountain, the "toxic tour" could next take tourists outside of Denver, with hikes to two unusual "environmental" sites: the recently renamed Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site (formerly the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant), and the Rocky Mountain Wildlife Refuge (formerly the Rocky Mountain Arsenal). How did two nuclear weapons plants--no longer manufacturing and now declared Superfund sites -- become environmental centers? That's a question that Denver environmental activists are asking. "Would you hike there? Would you let your children hike there?" asks Sandy Horrocks, a member of the Conservation Club's Rocky Mountain Arsenal Subcommittee, charged with monitoring the clean-up. "I sure wouldn't."

For nearly 40 years, from 1952 until December 1989, Rocky Flats produced plutonium triggers, using various radioactive and hazardous materials, including plutonium, uranium and beryllium. Located just 15 miles northwest of Denver, more than 3.5 million people live within a 50-mile radius of the site. Over 300,000 people live in what is known as the Rocky Flats watershed. Rocky Flats also has the distinction, among all nuclear sites in the U.S., of housing the largest inventory of plutonium that is not in final weapons form, with more than 3.2 tons of plutonium spread through more than 8,000 containers.

A Department of Energy promotional brochure describes Rocky Flats as "a small city. It comprises more than 700 structures on a 385-acre industrial area surrounded by nearly 6,000 acres of controlled open space. This open space serves as a buffer between Rocky Flats and the encroaching communities and is home to many species of animals and plants."

Designated by the EPA as a Superfund site, Rocky Flats has been undergoing a massive clean-up since 1995. But there are a number of problems. "It is hard to clean up a federal facility, especially a weapons manufacturing facility, when information has not been declassified," says Sue Maret, who has been working with the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Sierra Club for several years. "Regulators cannot make decisions without adequate information."

In addition, explains Maret's colleague, Susan LeFever, "the plant has a long history of sloppy management practices, and when dealing with radioactive material, there is no room for sloppy."

In fact, management practices in the past were so sloppy that on June 6, 1989, the FBI and the EPA raided the plant to investigate. They found evidence that hazardous wastes and radioactive mixed wastes had been illegally sorted, treated and disposed of at the plant. According to the Sierra Club Rocky Mountain Chapter, the agents also "discovered violations of the Clean Water Act and other environmental statutes through a variety of continuing acts, including the illegal discharge of pollutants, hazardous materials, and radioactive matter into" a number of area waterways -- the Platte River, Woman Creek, Walnut Creek, and the drinking water supplies for nearby cities.

Acting 'above the law'

In 1992, a federal grand jury attempted to indict officials responsible for alleged criminal activities at the site, but indictments were blocked. The grand jury report was sealed from public view until January 1993, when Federal Judge Sherman Finesilver approved release of a redacted version of the Grand Jury report. However, an unofficial copy of the uncensored report made its way to the Net and can be found at <www.downwinders.org/rocky_fl.htm>.

The Colorado Federal District Court Report of the Federal District Special Grand Jury 89-2, January 24, 1992, concludes that, "for 40 years, federal, Colorado, and local regulators and elected officials have been unable to make DOE and the corporate operators of the plant obey the law. Indeed, the plant has been and continues to be operated by government and corporate employees who have placed themselves above the law and who have hidden their illegal conduct behind the public's trust by engaging in a continuing campaign of distraction, deception and dishonesty."

At Rocky Flats, one of the worst releases of radioactive waste took place in the 1950s and 1960s. Officials stored oil laced with plutonium and chemicals in steel drums. Beginning in 1958, the drums were placed outdoors on a concrete pad. Within a year, the drums began leaking, but officials did nothing to address the problem. Winds from the Rocky Mountains, blowing sometimes as high as 90 miles per hour, picked up soil contaminated from leaking barrels and blew it towards Denver.

In the end, the U.S. Justice Department settled with the DOE and its contractor, Rockwell. Rockwell pleaded guilty to five felonies and five misdemeanors and paid $18.5 million in fines, an amount smaller than the bonuses the company received during the time the crimes were committed.

The Sierra Club's LeFever believes that the clean-up is facing many of the same problems that plagued the production at Rocky Flats. "Our concern," she says, "is that the DOE is not looking seriously at the problems and the need for research and testing before clean-up decisions are made. They are so focused on public image that they cast aside safety."

LeFever, a part of the community board that oversees the clean-up process at Rocky Flats, describes some of the latest struggles. "The DOE," she explains, "wants to do a controlled burn at the plant. This means burning a huge number of acres of land." Prairie ecosystems typically have natural fires that help them stabilize and bring nutrients back into the soil. These controlled burns can rejuvenate the national ecosystem and help prevent accidental fires.

But, says LeFever, "the DOE doesn't have much information about what kinds of radioactive issues we're looking at. They are in a rush to get this done and they are not being careful. If there are radioactive hot spots out there and they start burning, those radioactive isotopes will become airborne and people will breathe it. They have done a very limited amount of testing -- 10 or 12 soil samples -- so this is not adequate to say that the whole area is safe."

In addition, Rocky Flats is shipping nuclear waste to a Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico. In fact, about 2,000 shipments of waste from Rocky Flats will travel down Interstate 25 through Denver to New Mexico, where it will be buried 2,150 feet deep in a salt bed.

The concerns about shipping, says the Sierra Club's Maret, include "risks to folks in traffic, accident concerns and not being able to characterize the waste. A couple of the shipments leaked and some of them have been misanalyzed."

There are also environmental justice issues, she adds. "The shipments travel through many poor communities."

Rocky Mountain Wildlife Refuge?

Traveling from Rocky Flats to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal brings home Maret's concerns. The Arsenal, located just north of Denver's Stapleton Airport, has been called the most contaminated square mile in the world. In 1942, the army began production there, manufacturing mustard gas, lewisite, phosgene, button bombs, gb sarin, and napalm bombs. Beginning in 1951, the army leased space at the Arsenal to Shell Oil, who manufactured pesticides such as dieldrin, aldrin, vapona (also known as DDVP, Shell's No-Pest Strip), DDT, blade and chlorine. Until 1956, hazardous waste effluent was regularly discharged into unlined evaporation ponds; then it was buried, then incinerated. Then solar evaporation was used, then well injection and chemical neutralization. Currently, the Sierra Club, which works to monitor the Superfund clean-up of the site, estimates that there are between 179 and 181 contaminated sites at the Arsenal.

Sandy Horrocks, of the conservation group's Rocky Mountain Arsenal Subcommittee, has serious doubts about the clean-up. "The site is being remediated, not cleaned up," she says. "A lot of it will be landfilled, and some will be capped. I would hesitate to say that there is a perfectly clean area.

"Turning the Arsenal into a so-called 'wildlife refuge' was a brilliant idea," says Horrocks sarcastically. "It reduced clean-up standards, therefore saving dollars, from a residential level of remediation to a less stringent level for wildlife. I view it as a way to do less clean-up. The clean-up is based on cost effectiveness rather than on doing what is best for public health."

It was Shell's idea to transform the Arsenal into a refuge, says Horrocks. "Shell influenced Colorado Congresswoman Pat Schroeder to campaign for the a National Wildlife Refuge designation based on an endangered species -- the bald eagle. Eagles started coming to the site in late fall and early winter. This became a real big deal."

Some say that the eagles were baited and encouraged to nest at the Arsenal just to win the refuge status. Many also note that the other wildlife in the refuge is there unnaturally. It was pushed there as urban and suburban sprawl eliminated more and more open spaces. According to the Sierra Club Rocky Mountain Chapter, the wildlife was then trapped there with a "million-dollar fence."

"The health of the animals is a real concern," says Horrocks. "There is a problem with animals who don't leave the arsenal for their food. For the eagles, they eat elsewhere and are only at the Arsenal for two to three months. Other birds, who are there year round, are being hurt and many are dying."

Despite the problems with the clean-up, Shell has been funding a visitors center and the Audubon Society has been conducting tours. In fact, groups of school children take nature trips to the refuge. "Parents sign permission forms thinking that the clean-up is complete," says Horrocks.

The Sierra Club sent letters to schools informing principals of the health risks and asking them to stop taking field trips there. The Sierra Club has also asked that refuge tours be suspended and trail building and volunteer activities cease until dioxin levels get under control.

"But it's been very confusing," says Horrocks. "There's an awful lot of publicity given to the eagles and the wildlife center."

Horrocks adds, "One of the most dangerous things we have to deal with is the hazardous waste that we produce and most people don't understand this -- the complications that come with trying to clean it up. The military has more than 10,000 sites to clean up. Unless we start coming up with better ways to clean up sites, unless we put real money into clean up, unless we really clean sites and stop just burying waste and covering it up -- unless we do this, we won't have much earth left."

Camille Colatosti is The Witness' staff writer, <colakwik@ix.netcom.com>.