CLLEAN

CITIZENS FOR LOWRY LANDFILL ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION NOW

CLLEAN is a non-profit organization created by the residents of Arapahoe County living near the Lowry Landfill Superfund Site. CLLEAN receives funding through the USEPA Superfund Technical Assistance Grant (TAG) to support outreach and independent technical review of documents. Recent comments and responses are included below along with a more detailed history for CLLEAN

Recent Document Reviews and Correspondence

Response to CLLEAN Comments on 2H2010 RA/O&M Status Report Response to CLLEAN Comments on 2H2010 RA/O&M Status Report

The TAG program, Lowry Landfill, and CLLEAN

Congress made the public part of the decision making process at hazardous waste sites an important part of the Superfund process when the program was established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) of 1980. Congress wanted to ensure that the people whose living environments were affected by hazardous wastes would have a say in actions to clean them up.

The role of the community members in the Superfund process was further strengthened in the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA). With SARA, Congress created EPA's Technical Assistant Grant (TAG) program. The TAG program enabled impacted citizens to hire Technical Assistant experts to assist them in interpreting technical data so that the citizens could participate in the decision-making process in an intelligent and productive manner.

The Lowry Landfill was opened by the city of Denver in the early 1960s as a trash landfill. However, domestic trash was not the only product dumped at the site. City employees would dig huge trenches, some 1/4 mile long and 60 plus feet deep where domestic trash was disposed. Also dumped in to these trenches were liquid chemical wastes from Front Range Industry. The tank trucks hauled six to eight thousand gallons of liquid chemical wastes per load and drained the tanks into the trenches along with the domestic trash. The theory was that the trash would absorb the chemical wastes keeping them in place after burial. In addition, other companies sent trucks with barrels of waste to the landfill 24 hours a day. Some barrels had holes punched in them to allow seepage out while others were dumped in to the trenches sealed.

As time passed, the trenches became so full of liquid waste that the trash no longer could absorb them all. Volatile chemicals from the open pits travelled in the air to homes three and four miles away. At times, the chemicals hung so heavy in the air that people would literally wear the chemicals. An oily residue would deposit on the skin and when they licked their lips, they could taste the chemicals. On very hot days, some of the barrels that had not been punctured would explode, sending a shower of chemicals in the wind and into homes.

During rainstorms, when lightening would strike a pit, fires would flare up. The smoke from these burning chemical pits would fill the homes of people three and four miles away. Sable Altura Volunteer Fire Department would respond to the site, but were not allowed to go on site to work the fire because the landfill was on City of Denver property. The Volunteer Firemen were forced to wait for Denver to send their Firefighters. During one episode, while the Volunteers were waiting, six of the Volunteer Firemen were overwhelmed by the toxic smoke and taken to the hospital. When these situations happened, many residents left their homes until the smoke subsided.

The citizens wrote letters and made frantic calls to Tri-County Health, State Health and EPA because some families were experiencing adverse health impacts. The symptoms were random among the families. Severe headaches were common on days when the chemicals were heaviest in the air. Family members would experience nose bleeds severe enough to require cauterization on a regular basis. People were afflicted with swollen and bleeding gums. Children developed Asthma and, at times were rushed to the Emergency Room because they could not breath well and their lips turned blue. Bronchial Pneumonia, with no fever, was diagnosed on more than one occasion. Family Doctors were stymied as to why this would happen.

The impacted residents were frightened and frustrated. Because there were no laws to govern sites like Lowry Landfill, the Agencies (Tri-County Health, State Health, EPA) were unable to control Lowry activities or conditions. When residents called the Agencies, Agency staff told the residents, "It is just a sweet, musky smell from the trash dump, it shouldn't be negatively impacting your family."

In 1980, due to the efforts of the families at the other hazardous waste sites like New York’s Love Canal, CERCLA passed. The residents living around Lowry Landfill finally had a law they could use to begin protecting their families and their living environment.

The same year, Lowry citizens formed a group named Citizens Against Lowry Landfill (CALL). CALL organized meetings and produced fact sheets to provide the public with information regarding the Lowry Landfill Superfund Site. Included in the fact sheet was contact information for CALL Board Members, EPA, and State Health Department Project Managers. CALL released press releases and held meetings. More than 300 people attended the first public meeting at a local school. Residents from the Love Canal were guest speakers. The organizing efforts of CALL brought national attention to the Lowry Site and garnered overwhelming support from citizens and government officials, even those not living near the Site. CALL began searching Tri-County and State Health Department records and found that those agencies has been trying, for years, to make Denver clean up their act. But, the City was so powerful, and with no laws on the books to enforce, the City just laughed at the regulators and told them to back off.

In 1981, the EPA declared that Lowry Landfill did not meet the ranking criteria for a Superfund Site. CALL objected and presented their version of the ranking to the EPA requesting the EPA to reconsider their decision. In 1984, recognizing CALL's ranking as legitimate, the EPA designated the Lowry Landfill a Superfund Site.

After much pressure from CALL, the open chemical pits were covered with dirt and trash. Once the pits were covered, the chemicals no longer carried in the air to homes, the negative health affects went away.

After 13 years of hard work, CALL recognized that organizing the community was no longer a priority. Now, the work of monitoring Site activities for years in to the future, and keeping the public informed of these activities, lay before CALL. In 1993, the Board of CALL made the decision to disband CALL. Board members were moving on with their lives, and many were weary from the battle that had been ongoing since 1980.

In the past, living with the chemicals in the air had been a horrible experience, but at least the residents could tell when they were being impacted and they could take some action. But now, the threat is more insidious. No one is certain what is happening with the 130 million gallons of chemicals that are now buried beneath a 100-foot lift of trash and clay. Are the chemicals moving down through sand lenses, fractures and fissures? Are they moving laterally to the north in the groundwater? Some of the local Farmers had testified that there were at least two old domestic wells at the Site that have never been sealed. Are the chemicals moving down towards the aquifers through the old wells?

The Record of Decision (ROD) for the Lowry Site does not mandate a cleanup of the chemical wastes; rather it requires containment of the more than 130 million gallons of liquid wastes disposed at the site. Residents still living by the Site and utilizing well water, continue to have concerns about the ability of the existing Site technology to effectively contain the chemicals.

After the CALL Board disbanded in 1995, some former CALL Board members believed that, in light of the fact that the chemicals have not been removed from the Site, it was necessary to form a new group to carry on the monitoring of the Superfund Site with the emphasis being to make sure that the chemicals do remain within the Point of Compliance, and that the chemicals do not contaminate the aquifers that serve their homes and the entire Front Range of Colorado.

The new group chose the name: Citizens For Lowry Landfill Environmental Action Now (CLLEAN). CLLEAN's goals are similar to CALL's: to inform and provide guidance to the EPA and the public, to develop CLLEAN fact sheets for distribution when important issues at the Site develop, to work with the EPA to develop Agency Fact Sheets, to advise the regulatory agencies as to how the public expects their living environment to be protected, and to hire a Technical Advisor to assist CLLEAN in reaching these objectives.

The Board of CLLEAN consists of residents living within a five-mile area surrounding the Lowry Landfill Superfund Site. Some of the Board members have been involved with the Lowry Site since 1974. CLLEAN’s Board is comprised of at least one, sometimes two, representatives from each of the four Homeowners Associations (HOA). All Board members live in developments that utilize well water for their domestic uses. The water they use could potentially become contaminated if the more than 139 million gallons of chemicals remaining in the landfill infiltrate the aquifers which provide water to these homes. The high concentration of gases in the landfill threatens to pollute the air in the event of accidental release or an explosion at the Site. CLLEAN is continually offering ideas and suggestions for technologies that will neutralize, destroy or remove the chemicals from the area. Until the chemicals are gone, the threat to the aquifers will remain for perhaps a hundred years.

CLLEAN is a Non-Profit organization, current and in good standing with the State of Colorado. CLLEAN does not pay Board Members for their participation, does not solicit memberships and does not receive membership dues. Therefore, CLLEAN has not applied for 501 (C) (3) status.

CLLEAN Board members are available to meet with anyone who expresses an interest in participating in monitoring and providing guidance to the Agencies to protect the aquifers beneath the chemical pits at the Lowry Site. CLLEAN Board members are available to speak at press conferences and quite often give presentations before HOA Board meetings, Arapahoe County Commissioners and schools. CLLEAN participates in technical meetings hosted by EPA. The EPA sponsored meetings include the City of Denver, Waste Management (representing the Work Settling Defendants), Colorado Department of Health 7 Environment, Tri-County Health, City of Aurora and Arapahoe County.

The EPA has conducted two Five Year Reviews. The Site failed the first Five Year Review and passed the Second Five Year Review. In 2012, the EPA will perform a third Five Year Review.

According to an Environmental Law Institute (ELI) report released in 2000, public safety measures used at many Superfund sites sometimes fail in the long run, possibly jeopardizing human health and the environment. The measures, which are called "institutional controls," are often used at hazardous waste sites where for a variety of reasons some contamination (in the Lowry Superfund case, a majority of the chemicals are still there) is allowed to remain in place.

The ELI research revealed that although EPA is required to review every five years all remedies at sites where contamination is left in place, this might not be frequent enough to avoid failures of some institutional controls because circumstances can change rapidly.

Recent developments at the Lowry Site support the findings in this ELI report. It has now been confirmed, by the EPA and State Health Department, that 1,4-dioxane and nitrates have carried in the groundwater more than 2 1/2 miles north of the Superfund Site Point of Compliance. One of the Institutional Controls, the North Boundary Barrier Wall (NBBW) was determined to have failed. This allowed chemicals to travel north past the Point of Compliance.

Over the years, CLLEAN has continually requested an investigation into a possible vertical migration of the chemicals down toward the aquifer. Recent data from work completed by the Work Settling Defendants has validated CLLEAN's concerns that there may be downward migration. The Colorado Department of Health and Environment has concurred with CLLEAN that there is evidence that there may be vertical migration of contaminants.

Due to off-site chemical movement past the Point of Compliance and the uncertainty regarding vertical migration towards the aquifers, it is imperative that CLLEAN receive additional funding to continue their participation, with guidance from a qualified Technical Assistant, to assure that the public interest is truly represented. CLLEAN will be assisted in outreach efforts due to the generous offer of two new HOAs now established in the area to allow CLLEAN to put flyers, newsletters and announcement in to their newsletters at HOA cost. This cooperation with CLLEAN will allow CLLEAN to notify and to educate at least 3600 new households as to the past, current, and future activities at the Lowry Landfill Superfund Site, and, it will provide CLLEAN's contact information to these residents, thus fulfilling the mandate of community education and participation.