Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today dedicated a new visitor center at Dinosaur National Monument. The Department of the Interior said in a release that it expects the new visitor center to increase tourism and generate economic growth and jobs in northwest Colorado and northeast Utah in conjunction with a new exhibit hall to be opened next week.

“With funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we were able to construct a new visitor center and exhibit hall that will enable the park to serve as an economic engine and support jobs for communities in this area,” Salazar said. “And visitors will once again be able to fully enjoy the world-renowned dinosaur fossils.”

The new Quarry Visitor Center replaces an old visitor center that was shut down in 2006 due to structural instability. The closure kept visitors from viewing the Carnegie Quarry, a 150-foot by-50-foot rock wall that contains approximately 1,500 dinosaur bones dating back 149 million years. Partly as a result, visitation at the site declined from slightly more than 300,000 people in 2005 to just under 200,000 people last year.

“The opening of the new visitor center and exhibit will again make Dinosaur National Monument a destination for tourists and allow the public to see the famous rock wall and its extraordinary fossils for the first time in five years,” Salazar said. “Every dollar we invest in national parks and public lands returns an estimated $4 in economic growth, and I’m optimistic that will be the case with our investment in these new facilities.”

The dedication of the new visitor center and the opening of the new exhibit hall mark the 96th anniversary of the establishment of Dinosaur National Monument by President Woodrow Wilson on October 4, 1915 to protect “deposits of Dinosaurian and other gigantic reptilian remains” of the Jurassic era. President Franklin Roosevelt expanded the monument to more than 200,000 acres in 1938 to preserve and protect the canyons of the Green and Yampa rivers.

The new facilities support the goals of President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors initiative to establish a 21st Century conservation ethic and to reconnect Americans, especially young people, to the nation’s natural, cultural and historical heritage, Salazar said.

“I especially hope that parents will bring their children here to stir in them the sense of awe that so many of us experience when we gaze at this unique landscape and its fossil and cultural history forged over millions of years,” Salazar said in the press release. “Places like Dinosaur National Monument can inspire a new generation of archeologists, anthropologists, and conservationists to safeguard our natural and cultural heritage across the nation.”

Scott Tipton

“How can Scott continue to say that this funding didn’t create jobs when it created jobs for his family’s business…?” asks Salazar campaign spokeswoman Tara Trujillo.

Indeed, Triad Western, a business founded by Tipton’s father and uncle — and of which he was once a part owner — has received $12 million in stimulus funding. Tipton says he has had nothing to do with the business since selling his interest in it, but he has accepted $3,700 in campaign contributions from the business this campaign cycle and more than $13,000 since first unsuccessfully running for the CD3 seat in 2006.

The Colorado Independent left two messages with Triad Western President Terry Gorsuch and with Tipton, but they were not returned.

“I think it is one of the ironies of this campaign season that President Obama and Democrats are getting it from both sides on the stimulus,” said Colorado College political science professor Bob Loevy.

He said the liberals are saying the stimulus didn’t go far enough and Republicans say it went too far.

According to a poll released Wednesday (pdf) by The Hill, a newspaper covering Congress, the race is too tight to call, with Tipton clinging to a small lead, 47-43. Fifteen percent said they were still undecided.

The 2010 Midterm Election Poll was conducted by Penn Schoen Berland, with 400 phone calls between Oct. 19-21.

“The only poll we care about is the one on election day,” said Trujillo.

(Photo/U.S. Rep. John Salazar, D-Manassa)

“To get credit politically, the stimulus would have to have been an obvious success, which it wasn’t. It might be true that unemployment would be much worse today without it but that doesn’t matter politically,” Loevy said.

As to whether it is fair for Tipton to benefit from the stimulus while also calling it a failure, and whether it is fair for Salazar to call him a hypocrite, Loevy said fairness has nothing to do with it.

“Politicians all follow the polls and they do what is wise politically,” he said. “Challengers all speak disparagingly of the government but as soon as they get elected they do everything they can to bring government money home.”

As for Tipton having it both ways, he said, “The test in politics is what works, not what is true.”

It isn’t just the family business that has benefited from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, though.

Colleges in the district have received tens of millions of dollars and, they say, the money has helped immensely.

At Adams State College, as at other colleges, the money was used largely to provide a cushion as the state was cutting funding. “We used the money to replace funds cut by the state,” said Julie Waechter, assistant to the president for communications.

She said, for now, the funds have helped the college avoid layoffs. “Stimulus funds have kept people in their jobs. It has not been a failure. It would have been disastrous not to have those funds,” she said.

In Montezuma County, where Tipton lives, the stimulus has pumped well over $10 million into the economy.

Among funds dispersed in his home county:

o Nearly $400,000 to the county sheriff for drug crime enforcement.

o Over $11 million for highway improvements.

o More than $3.75 million for extensions to unemployment benefits.

o $1.4 million for energy efficiency updates to public buildings and for the homes of low income families.

o More than $1.5 million for public water projects.

o Nearly $1.5 million to county schools.

o Nearly $450,000 in SBA loans to local businesses.

Other counties in CD3 have also fared pretty well in terms of stimulus money flowing in.

Gunnison County got:

o $425,000 for a bike/pedestrian path.

o Nearly $1.6 million in extra unemployment benefits.

o Almost $300,000 to Western State College for upgrades to its heating system.

o $475,000 in loan forgiveness to Gunnison County.

o $150,000 contract to private company for maintenance services in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.

o Nearly $10 million to Western State College to maintain programs.

“Over the last two fiscal years, Western has received approximately $10 million in federal stabilization,” confirmed Brad Baca, vice president for finance and administration at Western State College of Colorado. “These dollars have been used to offset massive reductions in state support. Without them, the viability of the college would have been seriously threatened.”

La Plata County received:

o Nearly $10 million for transportation projects.

o More than $6 million in extra unemployment benefits.

o More than $14.7 million for Fort Lewis College.

o More than $2 million to county schools.

o More than $2 million in loans to business.

“Stimulus funding has been extremely important to Fort Lewis College during these very difficult economic times,” said public affairs officer Mitch Davis. He said the money has been used to pay staff and faculty salaries.

“The most valuable thing we got from the stimulus funding was time,” he said. “We knew cuts were coming but because we had this money we were able to take the time to plan for the cuts and make them in a thoughtful way rather than a reactionary way,” he said.

Elsewhere in the district:

o More than $11 million to Adams State College.

o $2 million to build a medical facility in Rifle.

o Nearly $3 million to Colorado Mountain College.

Tipton didn’t return our calls, but here is what he told the Durango Herald in a July interview:

DH: You’ve been very critical of the stimulus bill. Some of that went to private companies here. There’s the big paving project out at Mesa Verde, there are projects at McPhee Reservoir for redoing roads. Is that all bad?

Tipton: Let’s re-frame that. Are there different alternatives? There were. $787 billion. That is an enormous amount of money that is out there. … We hit a crushing development — we had 9/11, the stock market bubble burst. You had Congress with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Community Reinvestment Act. They were saying everybody needs a home. But before that, shouldn’t you have a job?

So we had an over-extension in credit markets. There was a convergence of a lot of different issues, and government is not exempt from having played a role in some of this through their mandates and some of what they wanted to do that didn’t make any fiscal sense in the marketplace. When we did see the economy starting to retract, the idea was we’re going to take this big block of money. Washington is going to decide who the winners and losers are. We’re going to go with shovel-ready projects. A lot of these projects that were shovel ready, were they going to be built? They were. Yeah, did it create a job for that short time of the construction? It did. But all of a sudden, we had these sectors that were benefiting in the short term, but not the long term.

What was an alternative we might have looked at? One thing I could see as a small-businessperson was our employees were being stressed. Their heating bills were going up. The cost of gasoline at that time was higher. What if we were to say we would suspend the payroll tax for a period of time – six months, eight months — and put money back in the pockets of the taxpayers. It’s money they earned.

The counter-argument to that is that you’re going to be driving the deficit. But you’re telling me that just printing $787 billion isn’t driving the deficit as well? At least we would be putting money back in the pockets of people who were having an awful tough time. Maybe that would have been enough of a bridge … for those people maybe to be able to make that mortgage payment, to make the car payment, to maybe be able to take the family out to dinner and help keep the local restaurant afloat that is now shut, to maybe be able to go down to the local hardware store that has now shut its doors.

The government is slow to respond and when it did respond, everything it came out with had to have dollars attached to it. … (In Fruita’s water plant upgrade) they had the project virtually ready to go, and lo and behold, the discovered that since there was some American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars in there, all of a sudden Davis-Bacon wages applied, meaning union wages had to be paid on that job. It increased the costs on that another $1.3 million. Guess who has to pick up the tab? The people of Fruita. Where are they supposed to get the money? … Maybe that’s part of the problem in Washington — we keep sending so many lawyers back. We need to have some people who maybe actually built a business, had to be able to meet a payroll, know what it takes to be able to create a job, know the foresight you have to have whenever you take a job and commit to something.

Frazier has condemned the stimulus as a waste of taxpayer money. His charter school has received about $100,000 and the City of Aurora, where he is a city councilman, has received about $20 million in stimulus funding, according to a city spokesperson.

To see a pdf of the application, click here (pdf):

Perlmutter spokesperson Leslie Oliver said there are two issues here, the first being Frazier accepting stimulus money, both for the school he co-founded and for the City of Aurora.

The second issue, she says, is that Frazier can’t keep track of a 10-page school budget, where is vice president of the board, but he wants to be elected to congress.

When the issue of High Point Academy accepting stimulus money first came up during a candidates’ debate, Frazier said that was the first he had heard of it, even though he seconded the motion to approve the school budget.

“He is not even doing the job he already has, serving on this school board. He didn’t even know stimulus money was in the school budget, yet he seconded the motion to approve that budget,” says Oliver.

“If he can’t do the relatively simple job he already has, how can he do the job of a congressman?” she asks.

“He has a pattern of not showing up to the board meetings of his own charter school, and not actually doing the work required to be a responsible board member,” she said. “If he’s this sloppy and unengaged in these jobs, why would he be any different in congress?”

Frazier also misses more Aurora City Council meetings than anyone else on the council. Frazier did not quickly return a call seeking comment.

Ryan Frazier

All told the 7th CD has been the beneficiary of more than $750 million in direct stimulus spending (not counting tax breaks, unemployment benefits and food stamps), which, according to the federal government, has been responsible for saving or creating thousands of jobs in the district.

Regarding High Point Academy charter school, Frazier told the Denver Post: “It (stimulus spending) didn’t stand out because of all the numbers we were looking at.” The school receives about $50,000 a year in stimulus spending.

“If he thinks the High Point budget has too many numbers to keep track of, I wish him good luck with the federal budget,” said Leslie Oliver, communications director for Perlmutter’s campaign. “As a board member, he has a fiduciary responsibility to understand the school budget,” she added.

Since becoming one of the founders of High Point Academy, a charter school in Aurora, Frazier has missed nearly half the meetings of the school’s advisory board. Of 35 meetings, Frazier has attended 18, been on the phone for six, and been totally absent for 11.

As on the Aurora City Council, where he has also missed roughly half the meetings since he was elected, his record was defended — this time by the school principal.

“It’s not a problem,” said the school’s executive director and principal, Terry Croy Lewis. “If there was a problem, the board president would address it with him,” she said. “He has been a very good board member.”

The board president did not return calls and emails for this story.

Lewis, who describes herself as a “tried and true Democrat,” said she does not live in the 7th CD. If she did, she says she would vote for Frazier. “The thing about Ryan is he’s a moderate,” she said.

Leslie Oliver, the Perlmutter campaign’s communications director, says Frazier’s comments on the stimulus bill and on High Point’s budget are irresponsible.

The issue of stimulus spending and High Point Academy came up during a debate on Saturday when Frazier said the stimulus bill was a failure and Perlmutter then pointed out that High Point Academy accepts the benefits of the stimulus bill.

“He shouldn’t talk about things he doesn’t know about,” said Oliver. “It is the height of hypocrisy for him to call the stimulus a failure when he, his kids, the school he started and the city where he is a city councilman all benefit. It is very hypocritical for him to say those things when his school and his city accept that money.”

Any way you slice it — whether you view it as a success or a failure — The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the 7th Congressional District in the last two years.

A few examples:

o About $10 million to increase food stamp benefits by 13 percent.
o $133,000 for capital improvements to the Fairmount Fire Protection District.
o A $49,000 grant to the Colorado District Attorneys Council to train criminal justice professionals about violence against women.
o Millions for new traffic signals.
o Tens of millions for highway and bridge repairs and improvements.
o $40 million for light rail.
o More than $300 million in additional unemployment benefits.
o Tens of millions to make public buildings throughout the district more energy efficient.
o About $10 million in grants to low income families to improve the energy efficiency of homes.
o Tens of millions of dollars to schools, especially for services to low-income students and students with disabilities.
o $50 million to the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
o More than $60 million to the Small Business Administration for loans to businesses in the district.
o $11 million for improvements to the I-225/Colfax interchange.
o $22 million in grants to two Commerce City companies to build a facility to convert biowaste into jet fuel.
o $110 million to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory for construction projects.
o $25.5 million to NREL in research grants.
o 6,200 families in the district received first-time home-buyer tax credits of up to $8,000 each.
o 258,000 families in the district benefited from a tax cut funded by the stimulus bill.
o More than 90,000 CD 7 seniors received an additional $250 in Social Security benefits.
o Colorado School of Mines received $18 million in research grants and in funds designed to sustain jobs.

The Colorado Independent left voice mails for Frazier at his home and at his campaign office. The calls were not returned. Numbers above came from federal and state websites.

Without those extraordinary measures, they say, the United States’ GDP would be 6.5 percent lower, the unemployment rate would be 3 percentage points higher, there would be 8.5 million fewer jobs and the economy would be experiencing deflation. Blinder is a professor at Princeton and a former Fed official. Zandi is the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and a former adviser to U.S. Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign.

The economists also note that the stimulus — the $787 billion American Reinvestment and Recovery Act — had less impact and proved less important than the government’s monetary policy and financial-market stabilization measures, like the Fed buy-up of mortgage-backed securities.

Zandi and Blinder write:

It is understandable that the still-fragile economy and the massive budget deficits have fueled criticism of the government’s response. No one can know for sure what the world would look like today if policymakers had not acted as they did — our estimates are just that, estimates. It is also not difficult to find fault with isolated aspects of the policy response. [...]

While all of these questions deserve careful consideration, it is clear that laissez faire was not an option; policymakers had to act. Not responding would have left both the economy and the government’s fiscal situation in far graver condition. We conclude that [Federal Reserve Chairman] Ben Bernanke was probably right when he said that “We came very close in October [2008] to Depression 2.0.”

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According to the consumer watchdog group, roughly 221,000 Coloradans are unemployed and seeking work and depending on COBRA health care coverage. Census figures put the number of dependents at roughly half a million. Average monthly unemployment benefits are $1503 and, without COBRA coverage, health insurance would jump to $1076 per month, an unsustainable 74 percent of income that would leave about $400 for the average 2.5 member family to spend on everything else, including on food and housing.

Republicans have mocked the stimulus and questioned where the money has gone. GOP candidates for governor, including Dan Maes, have said they would reject all federal money and the stimulus plan in particular. The kind of eye-popping figures released by the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative today suggest the stimulus has worked mostly by preventing the personal and public financial catastrophes that would mount in its absence.

CCHI has issued a report on the consequences of the stimulus vote this week, available as a pdf here.

From the organization’s release Monday:

DENVER – The family health care of 220,700 out-of-work, Colorado job-seekers is at risk if Congress does not extend COBRA coverage as part of the stimulus plan (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA) spending they will take up this coming week in Washington, DC. Assuming the U.S. Census average for Colorado families of 2.54, this would mean that 560,578 Coloradans might not have health care if the extension is not passed.

[...]

Right now, the average monthly unemployment benefit is $1,503 and with the $699 average family COBRA health care subsidy, job-seekers are responsible for $376 of the premium. Without that help, premiums will escalate to $1,076, a whopping 74% of income, leaving only $427 to cover rent, food, medicine and other essentials.

“Colorado job-seekers simply can’t afford health care when it eats up 74% of their monthly budget,” said Dede de Percin, Colorado Consumer Health Initiative executive director. “When you do the math, it’s clear that it’s an impossible situation for Colorado families.”

[...]

Also at issue in the ARRA vote this week is the state fiscal relief provided by the increased percentage for Medicaid Federal Medical Assistance Program (FMAP). Expected to be extended through June 2011, FMAP was stripped from the House version of the HR 4213, the “tax extender” bill. All states are still reeling from the recession revenue hits–especially Colorado, which is also struggling with constitutional fiscal limits–and all have already counted on the FMAP dollars as they put together 2011 budgets. Colorado is depending on approximately $2.25 million balance the 2010-2011 budget, and will have to make cuts to the budget starting July 1, 2010 if the FMAP “bump” is not restored by the Senate and passed by the House.

–
* NOTE: CCHI originally reported that a half million Coloradans could lose coverage this week. CCHI updates its release to say those Coloradans would lose their coverage over the course of the next year.

The CEA estimates the number of jobs saved through a GDP model, but the report also provides direct statistics on how the Recovery Act helped families and workers. The report notes that 22 million people, 14 percent of the labor force, have directly benefited from unemployment benefits provided in the Recovery Act, for instance; 50 million retirees and others received $250 one-off assistance payments; and millions more benefited from a temporary boost to the earned income tax credit.

Holding the size of the labor force steady, without those 2.2. million jobs, the current unemployment rate would stand at 11.8 percent. Of course, higher unemployment would discourage workers from looking for jobs, etc., and it is impossible to project what the unemployment rate would have been if the government had not passed the Recovery Act. Regardless, the size of its benefit remains considerable.

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Dr. Fisher's Office (Flickr; Bluegrass Annie)

The Colorado Rural Health Center (CRHC), the Colorado Community Health Network (CCHN) and the Governor’s office are jointly proposing the bill, according to Terri Hurst, policy analyst at CRHC. She expected it to be sponsored by Representative Sara Gagliardi, D-Arvada, and Senator John Morse D-Colorado Springs.

According to CRHC and CCHN, Colorado has a significant shortage of health care outside its metro regions. Fifty-seven of sixty-four Colorado counties are currently designated as primary-care shortage areas by the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

To meet its needs, the state would have to add at least 182 primary care physicians, 71 dentists, and 54 licensed mental health professionals, according to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.

Of Colorado’s counties, said Clint Cresawn, program director for Colorado STRIDES (Sustainable Towns: Rural Innovation, Development, Expansion, and Success) eight have only one full-time primary-care physician, and four of those are not accepting new Medicaid patients.

Six additional counties lack even one full-time rural-care doctor, he said. One has none at all—Crowley County, on the eastern plains. Cresawn added that 14 rural counties have no dentist accepting Medicaid, and seven have no dentist at all.

“If you thought about a land mass as large as Rhode Island without one physician, that wouldn’t stand,” said Cresawn. “But we have counties bigger than that which are struggling to find a provider.”

Cresawn noted that a number of factors contribute to providers’ unwillingness to practice in rural areas. Among them, he counts professional and social isolation and the scary possibility that a provider may have to handle emergencies outside his or her specialty area. CCHN and CRHC add distance to major cities and low reimbursement rates as reasons that health professionals shy away from rural practice.

But Cresawn, CCHN and CRHC also argue that doctors choosing an area of practice are strongly influenced by a need to repay loans. According to the groups, graduating physicians in 2008 reported an average debt load of $142,000.

“High loan debt strongly influences health care professionals to opt out of primary care in favor of higher-paying sub-specialties that typically do not serve the uninsured and underinsured,” argues CCHN/CRHC. “Loan forgiveness significantly incentivizes primary care service in rural and medically underserved areas, increasing access to primary care for medically underserved populations.”

The new bill, said the CRHC’s Hurst, would raise or eliminate the annual repayment cap—currently set at $35,000. It would also include dentists and dental hygienists among those eligible for loan repayment. And among other administrative changes, it would rename the program as the Colorado Health Services Corps—to align its branding more closely with the federal loan repayment program, known as the National Health Services Corps.

Hurst said the bill is not expected to cost the state any more. She explained that the Primary Care Office at the Colorado Office of Health and the Environment, which administers the loan repayment program, received several grants this year to help fund the loan repayments, including American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funds.

“So they have a bigger pot of money than they usually do,” she said.

She also did not expect the bill to have any major opponents: “I’m not sure who would oppose it or why they would,” she said. “Then again, as soon as you say that, someone will come out of the woodwork.”

She did expect that providers not eligible for loan repayment might ask to be included in the loan repayment program. Currently the program covers doctors of allopathic and osteopathic medicine, primary care-certified nurse practitioners, certified nurse-midwives, primary care physician assistants, clinical or counseling psychologists, licensed clinical social workers, psychiatric nurse specialists, licensed professional counselors and marriage and family therapists, according to the website.

The loan repayment program began in the fall of 2007, a product of SB07-232 legislation, said Hurst. Last session, House Bill 09-1111 transferred administration of the loan repayment program to the Primary Care Office at the Colorado Office of Health and the Environment. It also adjusted the program requirements to attract private gifts, grants and donations.

The loan repayment program bill is the only rural health care bill that Hurst was aware of for Colorado’s next legislative session. However, U.S. Senator Mark Udall recently successfully introduced two rural health care amendments into the Senate health care bill passed on December 24.

Udall’s Rural Physicians Pipeline Amendment would establish a grant program to help expand rural training programs at medical schools.

Another Udall amendment would ensure that the Community Transformation Grants already in the Senate bill would be equally distributed between both rural and urban areas. The grants are designed to help prevent and reduce chronic disease in communities across the country by funding programs that combat obesity, tobacco use, diabetes and other health conditions or unhealthy lifestyle choices.

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Today, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that Peetz, Colo. will receive $1.5 million in funding for a broadband infrastructure project.

The project will make broadband and wireless service available to as many as 590 locations in a 552-square miles service area that covers northern Colorado and southwestern Nebraska.

(Flickr, cc; dalbera)The Peetz Cooperative Telephone Co. plans to upgrade its current carrier system to allow the company to deliver high-speed DSL Internet to 96 percent of homes in its area. Wireless equipment will be installed to cover the 4 percent of homes unreachable by DSL.

It’s one of the first of $2.5 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grants that are designed to help bring broadband services to rural un-served and underserved communities.

Broadband is expected to help rural residents overcome the distance and technology barriers they face. The hope is that high-speed Internet will expand connectivity between  rural educational institutions, businesses, and health care facilities and their counterparts in other communities.

Colorado Senator Michael Bennet on the grant:

“Expanding access to broadband will connect small businesses with new markets, workers with new skills, and students with new opportunities to learn. In the 21^st century, when broadband has almost become a prerequisite for economic growth, we need to make sure our recovery doesn’t leave anyone behind.”

Rep. Betsy Markey, Colorado’s Fourth District Democrat, on the grant:

“This is great news for Northern and Eastern Colorado. While many rural communities enjoy state-of-the-art telecommunications, studies show that in general, rural areas tend to lag behind bigger cities in broadband deployment. This grant funding will help close that digital divide, and will give a big boost to economic development efforts in Colorado’s rural communities.”

Colorado could see even more broadband funding coming its way. In September, a consortium composed of Colorado school districts, libraries, educational cooperatives and other organizations submitted a much larger grant proposal for $178.5 million in broadband funding.

Such funding would allow rural schools to obtain broadband at a much lower cost. Better broadband service would allow rural high school students some of the benefits accorded to urban high school students, like the ability to simultaneously earn an associate degree by taking community college classes—online.

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Abandoned mine works above Gamble Gulch (Video still: Kimo; YouTube)

A design for a proposed cleanup project has been completed, but the state won’t bid it out because officials worry that if it does, it open itself up, in perpetuity, to a lawsuit under the Clean Water Act.

Poisoned Gamble Gulch — and likewise toxic waterways around the state and country — are at the center of a legislative tug of war.

So-called Good Samaritan laws seek to lift liability so clean-up work can begin. Those laws, however, are opposed by environmentalists who argue they might erode the strong federal Clean Water Act. The better approach, they say, is to make mining companies pay to properly clean up the messes they have made and are making by revamping the nation’s 1872 Mining Law, which has let the extraction industry off the hook for more than a century.

Two bills presently before Congress suggest the best option might be an all-of-the-above approach. Colorado U.S. Sen. Mark Udall has placed himself at the heart of the battle by introducing new Good Samaritan legislation that he hopes will win over traditional opponents.

It’s not about Boy Scouts; it’s about money

The fear of being sued is not the main reason rivers and streams are not being cleaned, D.C.-based Clean Water Network’s Natalie Roy told The Colorado Independent in October. Roy said that concern is mostly a distraction.

“Good Samaritans — whether the state, a mining company or the Boy Scouts — being fearful they cannot clean a site up to the levels required in the Clean Water Act is disingenuous,” Roy said. “Getting sued isn’t the issue, money is the issue. The government is not allocating the funds necessary to clean up the sites and is hoping to have other people — new mining companies interested in re-mining or other organizations — pay for the cleanup, [meaning] cleanup not up to CWA standards.”

Proponents of Udall’s Good Samaritan legislation, however, argue that the legislation is not meant to substitute for the new 1872 Mining Law reform bill introduced in the U.S. Senate by fellow Democrat Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, a bill that would at last set up severance taxes to pay for cleanups. Good Sam legislation, they argue, is a necessary corollary to Bingaman’s legislation.

“You need all the pieces,” said Peter Butler of the Animas River Stakeholders Group. “Even if you did set up a fund with severance taxes, you’ve got to have someone who is going to use that money, and they’re not willing to use it if they’re going to be liable.”

Udall’s bill, which he introduced in October, is the most recent version of Good Samaritan legislation. Indeed, it is the 11th piece of Good Samaritan legislation to be introduced in the last 15 years. Despite the support of many of those living near the mines, cleanup groups, and the Western Governor’s Association, all previous similar bills have been defeated.

Ironicaly, opposition has come from both major environmental groups, which worry mostly that extraction companies could abuse the law, as well as from the mining industry, which has lobbied for larger loopholes.

Gambling on the state’s Gamble Gulches

Meantime, versions of the story of Gamble Gulch are playing out across Colorado, according to the DRMS, which in June produced a list of 10 high-priority sites ready to be remediated if Good Samaritan legislation were passed. The DRMS works with local watersheds to remediate mines in Colorado, providing technical assistance and funding.

DRMS Abandoned Mine Program Manager Loretta Pineda said fear of legal liability is real and a major stopping point in clean up projects. Pineda said the state is stymied by fear of incurring the Clean Water Act financial burdens that currently faces any third party that would take it upon itself to drain an abandoned mine.

“There are several projects we’d like to work on, but we’re unable to do so because of liability,” said Pineda flatly.

In the Animas River Watershed, the Animas River Stakeholders Group has determined that of the 1,500 historic mine sites contributing cadmium, copper, aluminum, manganese, zinc, lead and iron to the watershed, about 34 waste sites contribute roughly 90 percent of the waste-site pollution, and about 33 draining mines contribute 90 percent of the draining-mine pollution.

Bill Simon, a member of the group, explained that the group can address the waste sites without incurring liability, because no water is involved. But work on most of the 33 draining mines  — apart from 5 addressed by a mining company and several that are on federal land — await some kind of liability waiver, said Simon. Even if the group had funding, neither the Animas River Stakeholders Group nor any other agency is willing to risk being sued for a problem not of their making, according to Simon.

“No one is willing to take the liability on,” he said.

Moreover, Simon actually argued that if the group had liability relief to allow a project to go forward, it might have a better chance of tapping into funding sources.

“If we had the liability relief, then we could generate the money,” said Simon. “Not enough, I don’t mean that. But we could start addressing some of the projects.”

Steering away from the most critical projects

According to Butler, some Good Samaritan groups have been willing to remediate mines when and where they’ve been able to get any environmental groups likely to sue on board with the project.

But he worries that such a strategy is a risky proposition.

“The problem is,” said Butler, “you don’t know where those lawsuits might come from.”

And Butler says such suits do happen — pointing to two such cases this year. In January, environmental organizations initiated two citizen suits under the Clean Water Act in West Virginia, alleging that the agency was violating the Clean Water Act by not obtaining a discharge permit (which would require it to treat the water to the standards of the Clean Water Act) for its clean-up of an abandoned mine. The state lost the case.

Meanwhile, in Oregon, an environmental group sued the U.S. Forest Service for not obtaining a discharge permit for remediation work it was doing on its land. The environmental group lost, explained Butler, but largely because it sued while the work was in progress, and CERCLA law has very narrow rules under which a lawsuit can be filed while such work is in progress.

Currently, say proponents, the available reclamation money available isn’t always going to the most critical projects — because even the federal government is often reluctant to clean up the worst draining mines in a watershed, if it doesn’t already have liability for those mines.

“We’ve tried to push [the federal government] a little bit to try to spend money on sites that are affecting Forest Service and BLM land but are on private land, and they’re not that interested — because they feel they’re taking on more liability,” Butler said.

For example, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the federal government pledged nearly $100 million to clean up abandoned mines, including 14 in Colorado, according to Cathy Carlson, policy advisor for Earthworks.

But all of that money went to mines on public lands, where the federal government already has liability, regardless of whether or not the publicly-owned mines were the worst-polluting mines in a watershed.

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