CAÑON CITY - Cotter Corp. crews jack-hammered concrete foundations and ripped apart contaminated remaining buildings at their uranium mill, pushing to consolidate all waste in a massive impoundment pond by year’s end. Cotter’s dismantling activities are happening at a turning point where licensing requirements may force a decision on the future of the mill.
LONGMONT - Gaps in state rules leave Colorado cities and towns in the lurch as they deal with increased oil and gas drilling within municipal limits.
Environmental and sportsmen’s groups, too, are frustrated, because state rules allow drilling near most mountain streams.
All are urging state regulators to live up to a commitment made in 2009 to launch stakeholder groups to finish rules for in-town and streamside drilling. Two years later, nothing has been done.
Colorado water authorities trying to prevent projected shortages have resolved to look further into a proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline to import water from Wyoming.
Meanwhile, the private developer who proposed the 570-mile pipeline — to move water from the upper Colorado River Basin to expanding Front Range suburbs — has applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a license to build the pipeline.
A new poll finds Wyoming residents heavily oppose the pipeline.
PLATTEVILLE — Colorado’s wave of gas and oil drilling is resulting in spills at the rate of seven every five days — releasing more than 2 million gallons this year of diesel, oil, drilling wastewater and chemicals that contaminated land and water.
At least some environmental damage from the oil-and-gas boom is inevitable, industry leaders and state regulators say, with a record-high 45,793 wells and companies drilling about eight more a day.
But a Denver Post analysis finds state regulators rarely penalize companies responsible for spills.
This year, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has imposed fines for five spills that happened three or more years ago. The total penalties: $531,350.
State rules obligate regulators to take a collaborative approach, negotiating remedies when possible rather than cracking down. In fact, the COGCC recently declared four companies responsible for the largest number of spills to be “Outstanding Operators” and lauded them for environmental excellence.
Oil and gas companies have reported 343 new spills this year, bringing the total since August 2009 to more than 1,000 spills, state data show.
CASTLE ROCK — Colorado’s latest tactic in the struggle to forestall water shortages: retrofitting suburban lawns with high-efficiency sprinklers.
As mountain snow starts to melt, trickling toxic acid laced with dissolved metals — arsenic, cadmium, copper, zinc — is fouling Colorado watersheds.
Nobody dares try to stop it.
Among the casualties: Peru Creek east of the Keystone ski area has been pronounced “biologically dead.”
State environmental officials also have listed 32 sites along the Animas River in critical condition. Some headwaters of the Arkansas River, too, are “virtually devoid of any aquatic life.”
The source of the contamination is abandoned mines — about 500,000 across the West, at least 7,300 in Colorado. Federal authorities estimate that the headwaters of 40 percent of Western rivers are tainted with toxic discharge from abandoned mines.
Colorado Department of Natural Resources records show 450 abandoned mines are known to be leaking measurable toxins into watersheds. So far, 1,300 miles of streams have been impaired.
But as bad as the damage is, community watershed groups, mining companies and even state agencies contend they cannot embark on cleanups for fear of incurring legal liability.
PUEBLO — As much as 100 million gallons a day of Arkansas River water trapped in a reservoir for southern Colorado and downriver states is about to take a left turn — to Colorado’s biggest water project in decades.
Construction crews this week began work on the $2.3 billion Southern Delivery System. It is designed to pump water uphill and north from Pueblo Reservoir — through a 62-mile pipeline — to sustain Colorado Springs, which owns the rights to the river water, and other growing Front Range cities.
The cities embarked on this project because water supplies have emerged as a constraint on population growth.
South metro suburbs worried about a slowing flow of underground water are preparing to spend billions to end their reliance on super-deep wells to supply tens of thousands of households.
Today, nearly every glass of water drawn by residents in Castle Rock, Castle Pines and Parker originates deep underground, data from utility managers show.
Twenty-five utilities between Denver and Colorado Springs are together pumping 38,742 acre-feet of water from 449 municipal wells each year, according to data provided by the water suppliers.
That works out to about 400 gallons per second being squeezed from the Denver Basin aquifer.
Developers citing the need to deal with looming water shortages propose to build a massive reservoir in the foothills southwest of Denver.
But they don’t have water to fill it.
Colorado farmers still own more than 80 percent of water flowing in the state, but control is rapidly passing from them as growing suburbs move to secure supplies for the future.
The scramble is intensifying as aging farmers offer their valuable water rights to thirsty cities, drying up ag land so quickly that state overseers are worried about the life span of Colorado’s agricultural economy.
“The status quo has been going to agriculture (interests) and buying and drying. That’s not good,” said John Stulp, a cattle rancher and former state agriculture commissioner who is Gov. John Hickenlooper’s special policy adviser on water. “We need to do it in a smarter way.”
Since 1987, Colorado farmers and ranchers have sold at least 191,000 acre-feet of water to suburbs, according to a review of water transactional data.
For 20 years, journalist Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. A staff writer for The Denver Post, he's currently focusing on environment-related news in the Rocky Mountain West.
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