The board of a three-state Western compact will decide in coming weeks whether to turn Colorado’s only hazardous waste dump into a regional facility that could accept low-level radioactive waste from Nevada and New Mexico.
Colorado environmental regulators have asked the Rocky Mountain Low-Level Radioactive Waste Compact board to consider designating the Clean Harbors-owned hazardous waste dump near Last Chance as a regional disposal facility for a specific kind of low-level radioactive waste.
That waste – from mining, milling, or similar processing of radium ores – would primarily come from a Denver Superfund site, which currently sends its waste to Idaho.
If the compact board approves the state’s request, however, it would open the door for the other two compact states to send radium waste to the Last Chance landfill, worrying members of a local citizens’ group that their community is about to become a dumping ground for the West.
Residents say that since the landfill began accepting hazardous waste in 1987, they have repeatedly been promised that the landfill would never accept radioactive waste.
Since that kind of waste now appears to be headed to Last Chance, they wonder if much more dangerous waste is headed their way.
“We are not sparsely populated,” said Pam Whelden, with Concerned Citizens of Eastern Colorado. “We are not a desert. We do have water here.”
But compact officials and state regulators say no one in Nevada or New Mexico has indicated they have any radium waste for disposal at the Last Chance dump.
The apparent sole source of the waste, they say, is Denver, where radium waste is buried under layers of asphalt streets near Cheesman Park.
Crews began removing the contaminated materials a few years ago, but have been forced to send the waste to an Idaho facility because no suitable disposal site exists in Colorado.
“This (Clean Harbors) facility could provide a significant cost savings and risk reduction for the Denver radium-streets project,” said Joe Schieffelin, a compliance program manager for the state health department.
The Last Chance facility is about 70 miles east of Denver.
Schieffelin said the waste would contain very low concentrations of radioactivity – not much higher than normal background levels.
Clean Harbors officials say the landfill has more than enough capacity to accept the waste, which comprises a very small portion of the total waste stream the facility intends to accept.
Executive director Leonard Slosky said the compact will consider whether the Last Chance facility has the capacity to accept radium processing waste and if there is a need for its disposal there. The board meets June 8.
Staff writer Kim McGuire can be reached at 303-820-1240 or kmcguire@denverpost.com.