TopStory
Tailing off Efforts to clean up uranium stagnates due to pandemic, lack of staging site by Jonathan Romeo
B
ack in summer 2019, Colorado’s state health department shocked the community of Durango after releasing a list of more than 100 properties in town that were missed during the massive uranium cleanup of the 1980s. Properties that now, officials said, required immediate attention. Two years later, however, virtually no progress has been made on the effort. According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, just 27 properties have been surveyed, and of that amount, only four had the presence of uranium tailings. All told, in the past two years, less than one cubic yard of radioactive material has been removed. (A cubic yard, for reference, is about the size of two washing machines). “We’ve been fortunate in that many properties didn’t have uranium mill tailings on them,” Tracie White, a remediation program manager for CDPHE, said. “But I don’t know if the magnitude of the issue has really changed one way or the other.” Pinpointing exactly what happened to the cleanup effort involves several moving parts. After first releasing the potential hotspot list, health officials were unable to secure a staging area in La Plata County where people could drop off waste locally. As a result, residents had only one option: drive 260 miles round-trip to the permanent storage facility in Grand Junction, which health officials said discouraged many people from undertaking remediation efforts. And then, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, derailing and refocusing the attention of health officials locally, as well as at the state and federal level, as they worked to contain the virus’ spread. But as the COVID-19 pandemic wanes (knock on wood, Delta), officials in La Plata County are still voicing concern that more than a hundred homes could have
## ) %"
$ %"
Throughout the mid-1900s, a uranium processing mill on the edge of Durango helped the U.S. government’s effort to build the first atomic bomb. But after the mill closed, the waste pile left behind posed serious environmenal and human health risks. And, to make matters worse, people started using the tailings in construction around town. Recently, health officials said about 115 properties could still be contaminated. / Photo courtesy Center of Southwest Studies uranium contamination and pose a serious health risk. “The problem still exists,” Gwen Lachelt, a former La Plata County commissioner from 2012-20, said. “And now it’s two years later. I just worry for people who are living with these tailings, either under their homes or on their property. I worry about people’s health.”
A walk in the park If you’re new to town, and a lot of people are these days, you may be completely unaware Durango has a long and complicated history with uranium production and pollution. Walking the dog park? You might be interested to know you’re on a huge former uranium dumpsite that’s actively being monitored for radioactive ac-
!& )
!
)(" $&) ")&' ))$ !
8 n Aug. 5, 2021
telegraph
tivity. Health officials, though, maintain the area is safe. At the height of the race to build the world’s first atomic bomb in the 1940s, the U.S. government built a mill to process uranium on the northeast side of Smelter Mountain, now the Durango Dog Park. After extracting uranium from ore, however, what’s left behind is a radioactive 4
