Colorado’s quarter-century-long legal tussle over groundwater pollution at the former Rocky Mountain Arsenal ended Thursday with the announcement of a historic $35 million settlement.
Shell Oil Co. and the U.S. Army — which produced all manner of chemicals from 1942 to 1982 at the arsenal, northeast of downtown Denver — have agreed to pay the state $35 million in damages for polluting groundwater at the site, state Attorney General John Suthers said Thursday. The amount is the largest environmental settlement in state history, and it comes in addition to work the two organizations are doing to clean up leftover groundwater and other pollution.
“The settlement was 25 years in the making, but we believe it was very much worth the wait,” Gov. Bill Ritter said at a news conference announcing the agreement.
The settlement amount dwarfs the $10 million the state received in 2006 for pollution at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.
Money from the settlement will go to a variety of open-space and land-restoration projects around the arsenal. Part of the settlement will be paid with a land donation to Commerce City valued at $1 million. The city, which borders the arsenal on three sides, will use the donated land as a gateway to a network of trails and greenbelts known as the Northeast Greenway Corridor.
The final settlement figure includes $6.6 million the Army paid to build a water-treatment plant on the site in 1989.
As the arsenal has been cleaned up, much of it has been turned into a wildlife refuge and some of it has been sold to Commerce City, where city leaders have built a new professional soccer stadium and city hall.
“The money is nice,” Commerce City Mayor Paul Natale said of the long-awaited settlement. “But I think for our city, it’s more that it’s over.”
The Army created the 27-square-mile arsenal in 1942 out of Adams County farmland to produce chemical warfare agents including mustard gas and lewisite. In 1952, Shell began leasing portions of the arsenal to make pesticides and other toxic chemicals.
In that production, Suthers said, the Army and Shell put chemical waste into pits that had inadequate or no seals, causing chemicals to leak into the groundwater. Several plumes of contaminated groundwater flowed to the north off the arsenal site.
In 1983, the state attorney general’s office sued Shell and the Army over the environmental damages. That lawsuit dragged on for more than two decades, and in recent years the state legislature approved more than $2.4 million to continue fighting the suit.
“We weren’t going to let us be intimidated by the litigation costs,” said Rep. Bernie Buescher, a Grand Junction Democrat who is the chairman of the Joint Budget Committee.
Initial estimates had been that the state could be due more than $100 million in damages for the groundwater pollution, but officials said several factors led to the lower settlement amount.
Jim Martin, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said the plume of contaminated groundwater is shrinking as cleanup work progresses. Shell and the Army have pumped more than $2.1 billion into cleaning up the site since 1995, and are expected to finish the job in 2010.
U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, who began settlement negotiations in the suit when he was Colorado’s attorney general, said many state leaders wanted to see results.
“These are a number of things that can make Colorado a better place,” he said of the settlement, “rather than spending that money down the rathole of litigation.”
Officials praised Shell president John Hofmeister for his willingness to negotiate an end to the lawsuit.
“For Shell, this is the ending of one chapter and the beginning of another chapter,” Hofmeister said at Thursday’s announcement. “We move on together.”
For those who had worked closely on the cleanup and the lawsuit, Thursday was a welcome relief.
“I think it’s a great closure,” said Jeff Edson, who served for 22 years as the cleanup project manager until retiring earlier this year, “to a very long road.”
John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com
