DENVER - House Speaker Lola Spradley and an attorney for the Cotter Corp. sparred this morning over Spradley's proposal to impose additional requirements on companies proposing to disposal of classified radioactive waste materials.

Spradley, R-Beulah, told the House Transportation and Energy Committee that her House Bill 1358 is needed to ensure that the public in general, and neighbors of a facility such as Cotter's Cañon City operation in particular, will be given details about such proposals and will have "an opportunity to be heard."

Spradley said the environmental assessment that Cotter produced last year for its proposal for accepting contaminated soil from a Maywood, N.J., Superfund site - an assessment required by a bill the House speaker got the Legislature to pass into law in 2002 - was "woefully inadequate."

"There were whole areas totally void in the application they made last time," Spradley said.

However, Carolyn McIntosh, an attorney for Cotter, indicated this morning that that alleged vagueness in last year's environmental assessment stemmed from a lack of "clarification or detail" about what the Legislature meant by the "social and economic impact" required by last year's bill and this year's HB1358.

"Neither bill provides, really, any standards" for Cotter or the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to follow in determining what such social- and economic-impact analyses should include, McIntosh said.

This morning marked the Transportation and Energy Committee's third round of public testimony on Spradley's HB1358. Once again, the committee had to recess its hearing to allow lawmakers to turn to other legislative matters; the hearing is expected to resume on Wednesday.

McIntosh, who also testified last Friday, said HB1358 is not needed because "the vast majority" of the bill's proposed requirements duplicate the information that Cotter already has to provide to the state Department of Public Health, the U.S. Department of Energy under various state and federal laws and regulations.

"All of that information is publicly available" from the Department of Public Health and Environment, McIntosh said, with much of it available on the DPHE Internet web site for people who cannot travel to Denver to look it up.

Last year's bill enhanced the public's ability to ask questions and participate in the process, McIntosh said.

"You don't need an additional law to get that information into the public's hands," McIntosh contended, saying at one point that HB1358 "is really an indictment of CDPHE" because that department already collects the information required by both the federal and state governments.

But Spradley said that "there are legal requirements and there are public (notice) requirements," with differing purposes. She said the purpose of HB1358 is "to allow neighbors and to allow the public to know" what Cotter's plans and proposals are, and to give people "an opportunity to be heard" about those proposals before the state approves them.

McIntosh and Mary Brown, a contract lobbyist working for Cotter in opposition to HB1358, both argued that the additional requirements in Spradley's latest bill - particularly provisions that would require a separate application for receiving material from any new "waste stream" or from any new location outside Colorado - would be unworkable and could put Cotter out of business.

McIntosh said parts of HB1358 are "redundant to what we're already doing" and are not needed for the Department of Public Health's enforcement authority.

Brown said HB1358 would prevent Cotter from operating the processing and disposal business that it's licensed for and could prevent Cotter "from continuing business in Colorado."

Brown said the bill's proposals would be similar to requiring a grocery store to get a new retail license every time that grocer tries to sell a new line of food or changes its wholesale distributor.

Transportation Committee member Mark Cloer, R-Colorado Springs, asked McIntosh what Cotter has done to try to alleviate community members' fears about what the business intends to do at its Cañon City facility.

"Any time a group doesn't understand something, there's going to be a fear factor there," Cloer said. "What are your current plans to alleviate some of the p.r. problems?"

Cotter described a public meeting she said had been held prior to passage of last year's bill, as well as the meetings held in the wake of the law enacted last year. She said Cotter has provided experts for people to question and said the company has worked to get accurate information to the public.

Rep. Mark Larson, R-Cortez, asked about reports that some members of the community had expected that Cotter would be shutting down its operation in 2002.

McIntosh said that testimony to that effect in last week's portion of the hearing "was news to us."