Cotter Corp. will dismantle its toxic waste ponds and buildings at a uranium mill south of Cañon City, but it intends to keep its license from state regulators to operate at the site and may re-open, the vice president for operations said Thursday.
Accelerated efforts to close down contaminated facilities at the Superfund cleanup site are aimed at clearing a path for possible uranium processing in the future and do not indicate Cotter plans to leave the 2,600-acre site, vice president John Hamrick said.
“We can decommission parts of the facility without moving towards license termination,” Hamrick said.
“Our intention is … to clear the path for new construction in the future.”
No date has been set or plans submitted for that construction.
A new state law requires uranium mill operators to clean up existing messes before launching new projects. Cotter opposed that law and, before it was passed, warned that it could kill a proposed project to haul uranium from a mine in New Mexico by train and process it at the mill.
Recent Cotter letters to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment regulators indicated that Cotter was moving to close down facilities and no longer would test air for emissions of cancer-causing radon. Hamrick previously did not comment on those activities.
When reached by cell phone Thursday, Hamrick said the stepped-up dismantling of contaminated facilities “is not connected to the law at all.”
EPA officials are reviewing Cotter’s letter arguing that they can stop radon testing at the site as they decommission it. Federal air quality overseers “haven’t had that letter very long. They are evaluating the letter and determining what our response will be,” EPA spokeswoman Sonia Pennock said.
“Our bottom line is, before this cleanup is complete, it’s going to have to meet all of the Superfund standards,” she said.
Fremont County Commissioner Mike Stiehl pointed out that Cotter’s current license to operate is a “standby” license that would have to be amended to allow any new processing of uranium.
“If they were going to operate again, they would need to make it safer,” Stiehl said.
“We would have plenty of concerns that they not repeat past practices. … I still would prefer that they would do it in a different place. But we don’t have very much control over that.”
The mill, which opened in 1958, is one of a handful of licensed facilities around the country that can process uranium used as fuel for nuclear power plants.
Cañon City residents concerned about a long-delayed cleanup of contaminated soil and groundwater have raised concerns that Cotter may try to avoid completing a proper cleanup. They oppose any new processing at the site, located on the south side of town.
Cotter’s dismantling will involve placing dirt on top of existing contaminated uranium tailings ponds. New construction of pads for chemically leaching concentrated uranium from ore could be constructed on top of the capped ponds, Hamrick said.
Contaminated processing buildings and company offices at the site will be dismantled, he said.
“We believe we have a processing future. We are taking steps to achieve that.”
(Bruce Finley: 303.954.1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com)
