NOTE: Below is an Op-Ed that was published in the Boulder Daily Camera on March 12, 2009. Significant portions of the piece were edited out, indicated below with strike-throughs, so readers can see what was originally submitted, and what the Camera opted to exclude.
By LeRoy Moore
Those who watch Valmont Butte issues closely have been perplexed at recent happenings regarding this troubled piece of city-owned property just east of town along Valmont Avenue. The perplexed include Native Americans for whom Valmont Butte is a sacred site, descendants of Valmont town founders whose loved ones are buried at the base of the butte, animal rights activists focused on treatment of prairie dogs at the site, environmentalists concerned about pollution and, finally, city taxpayers who may be stuck with the bill.
The common thread that links all these parties is the pollution problem. Contamination has occurred cumulatively since at least the 1940s when a mill that for decades processed fluorspar and gold began operations at the butte. Its tailing ponds became a dump not only for waste generated on site but also for gunk brought from elsewhere, some of it radioactive. Two big batches of radioactive waste were taken to the butte from within the city of Boulder itself.
EPA and Colorado Department of Health (CDH) records from the 1970s and 80s show that radioactive groundwater contaminated several residential wells in the vicinity. Chemicals released from the site made their way to nearby Boulder Creek, a water source for downstream farms. In 1975 CDH called for an "impervious liner" to be installed beneath the tailing ponds; evidently this was never done. Valmont Butte was so contaminated that in 1982 CDH proposed it for Superfund listing. And EPA once listed the butte as among the ten most contaminated sites in Colorado.
The foregoing data, and more, were not considered when the city spent $2.5 million for the Valmont Butte property in 2000. City officials instead relied on newer reports in which EPA and CDH, contradicting their own earlier records, said contamination at Valmont Butte was minor. (CDH is now Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, or CDPHE).
Because of this discrepancy city officials have been asked repeatedly since October 2007 to compile and make publicly available all EPA and CDPHE documents on Valmont Butte. To date nothing from CDPHE has been made available. Recently the city received from EPA some 300 documents that can be reviewed on request. In this store, Document #1013415 consists solely of the final page of a 3-page letter from an EPA officer thanking "all of the City Offices for their cooperation in reassessing the Site." This fragment bears a hand-written date of 10-31-00, the year in which the city acquired Valmont Butte. The missing two pages of this letter, which must be in city files, have been requested but not yet received.
What remains unknown is the actual condition of the environment both on and off the Valmont Butte site. This is why having the full record is essential. Yet according to a January 16 Camera article the city is moving ahead with its project to clean up the Valmont Butte site; removal of waste was completed last year, and this year the tailing ponds will be capped over. But how can it be claimed that the waste has been removed when its nature and extent are unknown? And what good is a cap over tailing ponds if the brew they contain is contaminating groundwater that may be moving off the site? The city is proceeding as if it knows the site's condition, but it has yet to demonstrate that it does.
Two other topics must be mentioned. First, as part of its cleanup the city plans to remove prairie dogs. But these critters in time are likely to return and to dig, as they did once before, right through the 200-year cap the city is placing over the tailing ponds, in the process bringing to the surface toxins from the depths.
The other item to be mentioned is liability. The city has hired a legal firm to investigate liability. But liability for what? To pay the cost of the questionable cleanup now underway? Liability necessitates identifying the polluters and requiring them to pay their portion of the expense of cleaning up a mess that can be well understood only after the full record has been examined in the light of day. Then there's liability related to the legitimate claims of descendants of Native Peoples and pioneer settlers who want access to treasured land that has been desecrated. Finally, city officials are duty bound to saddle the taxpayers of the city with only their fair share of the burden of liability. All this underscores the necessity of greater transparency regarding Valmont Butte than has yet been demonstrated.
