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No green light yet for radioactive soil
By Dick Foster, Rocky Mountain News
State health officials on Tuesday rejected an application by Cotter Corp. to bring 470,000 tons of radioactive dirt to its uranium processing mill in Caņon City.
But the health department left the door open for later approval if Cotter amends its application with additional information.
Cotter applied last February to receive the low-level, thorium-laced soil, which was being removed from industrial properties on a Superfund cleanup site in Maywood, N.J.
Cotter's Caņon City mill had refined uranium from 1958 to 1987. It was declared a Superfund cleanup site in 1984, when radioactive contamination of surrounding land and domestic wells was traced to the mill.
An uproar by Caņon City residents prompted Gov. Bill Owens to block the Maywood shipments last February, pending state health department review of Cotter's application. The shipments have never begun.
State health officials told Cotter Tuesday that the application was rejected not for the properties of the waste itself, but for the inadequacy of Cotter's environmental assessment.
One key element of the application - the analysis of the public health risk posed by the radioactive material - was acceptable, state health officials said.
But other issues regarding transportation of the material and "socioeconomic impacts on the community" were inadequately addressed, said Douglas Benevento, the health department's acting executive director. Cotter executive vice president Rich Ziegler called the rejection a temporary setback and said that Cotter will try to provide the necessary information.