DENVER - A Colorado House panel is considering a bill to clean up a law that requires Cotter Corp. to get state approval before accepting tons of radioactive material from New Jersey.

The Transportation and Energy Committee started a hearing Thursday on House Speaker Lola Spradley's radioactive waste bill, HB1358, and planned to continue it this morning.

Supporters of the bill who generally oppose Cotter's plan testified Thursday.

Today's witnesses will include Cotter officials, and other opponents of the bill.

"It doesn't put anyone out of business, regardless of what you hear," Spradley said. "It does say (uranium processing and disposal plants) have a responsibility to inform the public if the community is going to be negatively impacted."

Last year, the Beulah Republican sponsored a bill that became the current law.

Spradley admitted that the law proved inadequate to answer all the Canon City residents' concerns about Cotter's plan to accept up to 470,000 tons of radioactive soil from a Maywood, N.J., Superfund site.

So, she's back with another bill aimed at improving the situation - at least from the neighbors' if not Cotter's perspective.

The current law required Cotter to conduct two public meetings on the application. It also required the company to pay Fremont County $20,000 for an independent environmental assessment.

This year's HB1358 calls for additional hearings - this time, sponsored by the county - and $50,000 for the independent assessment.

Cotter has complied with current law, although it's uncertain if it would have to go through more public meetings and a costlier independent assessment by the county if Spradley's new bill passes.

As it stands, Cotter's application to accept the Maywood, N.J., waste is pending before the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, directed by Doug Benevento.

Benevento said the first application was incomplete and he rejected it. His department ordered a complete application which, he said, is due next September.

Spradley said she believes Cotter should comply with the new requirements, if HB1358 passes, because the application next fall may be totally different from what the public has seen.

Her new bill also expands the kinds of radioactive waste that would be governed by the public process and state review.

Spradley was motivated partly by the public's alarm upon discovering that two loads destined for Cotter were parked in the middle of Florence, containing contaminated Amazon sand from South America.

What's more, Cotter has 3,120 barrels of calcium fluoride from a Honeywell nuclear site in Illinois that's been sitting in Canon City for more than two years, testified Sharon Cunningham, co-chair of Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste.

She said the Lincoln Park-area group was organized last year upon first learning of Cotter's plan to take the Maywood, N.J., waste.

Cunningham did some checking and reported that it could cost $30 million to move the barrels of calcium fluoride to a Texas disposal site yet, she said, Cotter's financial warranty requirement is only $14.5 million.

This is a concern, Spradley said as the HB1358 sponsor, because the Cotter site is expected someday, when its use as a uranium processing plant is exhausted, to be turned over to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Spradley's bill requires a written statement from the Department of Energy that processing and disposing of classified waste won't adversely affect the federal government's receipt of title to the site under terms of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954.

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