Kristine 
Record Staff Writer

Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste's claim that an Environmental Protection Agency official was banned from a recent Fremont County Independent Outreach Committee and forced to sit in his car is untrue.

Meeting facilitator Angela Bellantoni gave the Daily Record the following account on Wednesday, which was verified by Ted Linnert, community involvement coordinator for the EPA.

FCIOC members Ken Hamm and Sharyn Cunningham, who is also co-chairwoman of CCAT, contacted Linnert and asked him to attend an FCIOC meeting.

Linnert called Bellantoni on Feb. 19, the day before the meeting, and asked if he could attend.

Bellantoni told Linnert that the committee must approve all guest speakers and the Feb. 20 meeting was going to focus on health department violations, not EPA issues.

However, she did tell Linnert she would ask the committee about having the EPA attend a future meeting.

Linnert told Bellantoni that was OK and he would not come to the meeting.

He did, however, drive several health department officials from Denver to the meeting because they all had plans to attend the Feb. 21 Cotter public hearing on the Maywood soil.

Linnert said he did not sit in his car during the FCIOC meeting; he made other plans and came back later to pick up the health department folks.

"This was no big deal. I'm wasn't mad about not being able to attend the meeting. I didn't know they weren't public meetings," he said.

However, Linnert said he thought it was odd he was not allowed to sit in on the meeting and questioned why the meeting was closed in the first place.