The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Adams County in a four-year battle with the state over the location of a low-level radioactive-waste site.
The court ruled Adams County had standing to challenge the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s award of a permit to a Massachusetts company to dispose of low-level radioactive waste in a landfill near Deer Trail.
County officials statewide on Wednesday welcomed the ruling and were eager “to see if it applies to any other business,” said Larry Kallenberger, director of Colorado Counties Inc., which represents 64 counties and supported Adams County’s battle.
“Locals need to have a say in siting, in the actual permitting process …. State primacy is not universal,” Kallenberger said.
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers’ office was “still assessing the effect of this decision,” spokesman Mike Saccone said.
Colorado Supreme Court Justice Allison Eid wrote for the majority in the 5-2 decision that the state health department “may be correct that such a limitation on its authority is problematic from a public-policy standpoint. However, such public-policy concerns are properly addressed to the General Assembly.”
Health department spokesman Mark Salley cast the court’s decision as “narrow,” pertaining to Adams County. Now as the matter returns to district court, the health department “is looking forward to the opportunity to present arguments on the merits of its case,” Salley said.
State health regulators in 2005 gave Massachusetts- based Clean Harbors Environmental Services Inc. a radioactive-materials license and hazardous-waste permit without first obtaining permission from Adams County. When county officials objected, state officials fought back. District and appeals courts ruled Adams County lacked standing — and now are reversed.
“If they were allowed to do this, it was going to escalate. Before we knew it, they could have dangerous waste in the county, and the county wouldn’t have any say in it,” Adams County Attorney Hal Warren said.
The state health position “is curious, because they are the regulators, and you’d think they’d jump in on the counties’ side to regulate the operators if the county had some objection,” Warren said.
But state officials took a “we are the experts” approach, he said. “That’s not acceptable — probably not to any of the counties.”
Depending on the outcome in district courts, Clean Harbors now could apply at the county level first to dispose of low-level radioactive waste. No decision had been made on what to do with the waste — much of it containing radium from Denver streets — already buried in the Clean Harbors landfill.
Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com
