DENVER—A company locked in a legal battle with Adams County over permission to dump low-level radioactive waste at a landfill near Last Chance was joined in its fight by the state health department, officials announced Thursday.
The attorney general’s office, representing the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, filed a motion Wednesday seeking to be a defendant in a lawsuit filed by Adams County. The county’s lawsuit filed in April seeks fines against Clean Harbors Deer Trail LLC for alleged violations at its hazardous waste landfill.
Howard Kenison, an attorney representing Adams County, said they will oppose the state’s effort to join the lawsuit.
“We are actually quite surprised that the state would intervene,” Kenison said.
The state health department in 2005 altered its hazardous waste permit for the company’s landfill and granted Clean Harbors a radioactive materials license for the site nearly 80 miles east of Denver. Two lawsuits filed by Adams County challenging the state’s actions were dismissed by judges and those dismissals were upheld last month by the Colorado Court of Appeals.
In a filing seeking to become a defendant in Adams County’s latest lawsuit, the attorney general cites the appellate court’s ruling that tossed out the other two lawsuits. The courts said the county is a subordinate agency of the state when it comes to issuing hazardous waste permits.
Kenison said the county will challenge that finding.
William J. Geary, executive vice president and general counsel of Clean Harbors, praised the attorney general’s move to intervene. He said the landfill underwent a rigorous state licensing process.
Geary said the permit allowed Clean Harbors to accept the same material allowed at a site near a growing residential population in Bennett, also in Adams County. “The county’s action is baffling and legally indefensible,” he said.
Clean Harbors had filed a lawsuit, claiming the county’s opposition to dumping radioactive waste at the site was hurting its business. That lawsuit was dismissed last month.
Waste the company expects to accept at the landfill includes radium-tainted material from Denver, much of it left over from radium production in the city in the early 20th century and later used as fill dirt for streets and other construction projects.
The company also plans to accept some low-level radioactive material from water treatment plants.
