Frustrated over months of unpaid bills, state environmental regulators stopped work at the former Lowry Air Force Base earlier this month, threatening to delay the $82 million cleanup and complicating efforts to wrap up construction of the Denver-area neighborhood.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment will not go back to work until the Air Force pays $100,000 for state cleanup work conducted since September, state health officials said Tuesday.
“What’s really confusing is that the Air Force has looked at our billing practices before and didn’t signal anything was wrong,” said Howard Roitman, the department’s director of environmental programs.
Some Lowry residents say they worry about the state’s absence from the former base, which is contaminated with asbestos and TCE, an industrial solvent that seeped into the groundwater.
“It’s absolutely vital that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s oversight is constant,” said Anne Callison, a member of the local cleanup advisory board. “Without it, the property owners at Lowry have no one to turn to for answers or for the protection of their health.”
The state environmental regulators have final oversight of nearly all cleanup activities. Without their participation, projects don’t move forward.
Lowry’s cleanup and redevelopment began after the base closed in 1994. When complete in 2009, the neighborhood is expected to include a mix of businesses and 4,500 homes and apartments.
In 2002, the Air Force privatized much of the cleanup work on site, turning management over to the Lowry Redevelopment Authority, a nonprofit organization established by Aurora and Denver to oversee the redevelopment.
Under the agreement, the authority supervises the groundwater and landfill cleanup, while the Air Force focuses on the old fire-training zone and firing range, maintaining ultimate site liability.
The agreement was the first of its kind for the Air Force, which touts Lowry as a model for redevelopment.
While the authority has completed much of the work, it needs the state health department to review technical data from the cleanup to move forward.
The bulk of the authority’s remaining environmental work is cleanup of TCE contaminated groundwater.
Authority officials say the department has walked off the job at least two times before, with work stopping for about two weeks in 2002 and almost a month last year.
“It’s very unfortunate this bureaucratic sideshow is occurring,” said Tom Markham, director of the authority.
While the authority hopes the Air Force and state can resolve the funding fight, it is more concerned about making sure the health department remains at the negotiating table to finish privatizing the remainder of the cleanup, Markham said.
If that happens, he said, the cleanup will be expedited, and the authority can move forward with construction of 800 acres of neighborhood parks and trails.
“That is being held up, even though the money is in the bank,” said Markham, explaining that the city of Denver wants assurances about the cleanup before the parks can be built.
Roitman, of the state health department, said that despite the standoff with the Air Force, his agency is willing to continue negotiating with the authority about taking the lead on the remainder of the cleanup.
That’s good news for many Lowry residents who are more concerned about the delay in developing the park system.
“They really sold us on the fact that Lowry was much more than a bunch of homes. It was community,” said Amy Ford, a Lowry resident. “And for the most part, they’ve been right.”
Ford said she and her neighbors support the authority in privatizing the remainder of the cleanup because they believe it will jump-start park construction.
“In the big scheme of things, one work stoppage is not a big deal,” she said. “The parks are a big deal.”
Roitman said state regulators will meet with the Air Force next week to discuss the unresolved bills.
A spokeswoman for the Air Force declined to comment on the dispute until after those negotiations have taken place.
Staff writer Kim McGuire can be reached at 303-820-1240 or kmcguire@denverpost.com.
