They only discovered the toxic minerals in their drinking water after Cotter was purchased in 2000 by General Atomics – makers of Predator drones and a major player in the nation’s nuclear industry – and promptly announced plans to begin storing radioactive waste from an EPA Superfund site in New Jersey.

Cunningham says she and her family suffered various illnesses resulting from the contamination of their well but decided not to sue, even as other area residents fought Cotter in a pair of class-action lawsuits. She refuses to discuss her health problems because she wants to focus on legislatively changing Cotter’s corporate culture.

Because Cunningham said the real estate agent and seller of her property did not reveal the well’s contamination – and because health officials and Cotter were not compelled to notify them – she is now putting her considerable energy into a bill currently working its way through the state House.

Choosing a new law over a big settlement

HB 1348 (pdf), scheduled for a second reading in the House today, would require Cotter and other operators of uranium processing facilities to send an annual letter notifying residents with water wells near groundwater contamination.

Spending more than a decade in court for an undisclosed settlement would pale in comparison to lawmakers requiring that letter, Cunningham insists, again declining to address her own health concerns.

“I really don’t want to go into all of that because mainly we want this letter. We do not want people exposed to something without their knowledge,” Cunningham said in a recent phone interview.

Juries found for the plaintiffs in two separate class-action lawsuits dating back to the 1990s, but the awards were kept confidential as part of the settlements.

“People may have been compensated – we don’t’ know to what degree because all of that was sealed – but it didn’t change Cotter’s corporate behavior and it didn’t cause them to use expensive new technology to clean it up quickly, and that is why we focused on the cleanup part of the bill,” Cunningham said.

The bipartisan bill, sponsored in the House by Rep. Buffie McFadyen (D-Pueblo West) and in the Senate by Sen. Ken Kester (R-Las Animas), would also require uranium mill operators to clean up existing problems before applying for expansion permits; allow more public input during the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s annual cleanup reviews and require state licensing when companies accept “alternate feed,” or toxic waste from outside industrial or medical sources.

Cotter has revealed plans to refurbish the Cotter Mill, located about a mile from Lincoln Park, where approximately 6,000 people live between Cañon City and the Arkansas River in unincorporated Fremont County. The company hopes to resume full operations in 2014, processing uranium ore from mines in New Mexico.

Amory Quinn of General Atomics’ Uranium Resources Group did not return a phone call requesting comment for this story.

Cotter has a long legacy of contamination violations in the area, dating back to the state’s first big uranium boom in the 1950s during the height of the Cold War and dawn of the atomic age.

The new nuclear age

Federal lawmakers, including Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, have introduced legislation to spark a nuclear renaissance as part of a comprehensive energy strategy to reduce dependence on foreign fuel and scale back greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal and natural gas. Uranium mining claims and milling and processing proposals in Colorado are on the rise as a result.

At a Montrose County hearing last summer on a proposed mill near the Utah border, a Cotter official said technology has improved so much that it’s apples to oranges to compare the toxic legacy of the past to industry practices today.

“They may be asking for the sins of the fathers to be forgiven, but that doesn’t mean that problems at the [Cañon City] facility don’t persist,” Environment Colorado’s Matthew Garrington said.

Cunningham says impoundment ponds for storing toxic waste that were unlined in the 50s are now lined, but that the only real change in recent years is the EPA now prohibits the ponds from being more than 40 acres compared to the 150-acre pond Cotter built in 1979 and now leaks.

In 2002, Cunningham helped form Coloradans Citizen Against ToxicWaste, a nonprofit advocacy group that successfully got the state to reject Cotter’s bid to store the radioactive waste from New Jersey at the Cañon City mill.

“If you look at the amount of money that our government subsidizes this [nuclear] industry and the amount of money that’s been spent cleaning up these sites … and if you look at the costs versus the benefit – and nobody’s doing that in an honest way – the nuclear renaissance is going to be very questionable as to how beneficial it will be,” Cunningham said.

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Union Carbide's toxic Uravan mill

Ahead of a House Transportation and Energy Committee hearing, various politicians, business owners and agricultural representatives advocated for House Bill 1348 (pdf), the so-called “Uranium Processing Accountability Act.”

The Western Mining Action Project and Energy Minerals Law Center, two groups active in watchdogging uranium mining claims and mill proposals in Southwest Colorado, helped spearhead the legislation, which would put stiff new state regulations in place governing uranium mine and mill cleanup, expansion and out-of-state processing.

Environment Colorado and Cañon City’s Colorado Citizens Against ToxicWaste (CCAT), which formed in 2002 to prevent Cotter Corporation from storing radioactive waste from New Jersey, approached Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, about the bill in response to Cotter announcing expansion plans last year.

Cotter has a long and messy history of uranium mining and milling pollution in the Cañon City area dating to the 1950s. The company also owns several mining claims in Montrose County and supports plans by the Canadian company Energy Fuels to open a new mill in the west end of that county.

Residents there and in nearby San Miguel County are worried a new uranium mining boom could lead to more highly toxic EPA Superfund Cleanup sites like the ones that have already cost taxpayers nearly a billion dollars for operations in Colorado alone. Transporting yellowcake uranium and milling materials like acid and other chemicals is another concern.

Proponents of the comparatively carbon-free nuclear power industry, including Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, maintain the state’s toxic past was born of ignorance about the dangers and new technology makes mining and processing much safer. State lawmakers clearly want more concrete assurances.

“Our number one goal as a legislature should be public safety,” Rep. McFadyen said in a release. “This no nonsense legislation ensures toxic waste cleanup and the health of our citizens.”

HB 1348 would require uranium operators to clean up existing problems before applying for expansion permits; allow local governments, the public and other stakeholders to provide input during the Colorado Department of Putlic Health and Environment’s annual reviews of cleanup financing; require uranium companies to notify residents with water wells near groundwater contamination; and require state licensing when companies accept “alternate feed,” or toxic waste from industrial or medical operations.

“Actions have consequences, and uranium companies need to clean up their mess,” said Sen. Ken Kester, R-Las Animas, another sponsor of the bill.

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(Photo/roadsidepictures, Flickr)

Backers of the legislation — H.B. 1192 — sponsored by Sen. Jennifer Veiga, D-Denver, and Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo, argue it’s time to roll back the Prohibition-era holdover mandating that only weaker, 3.2-percent-alcohol beer be sold in such stores.

But Mullen, who owns and operates West Vail Liquor Mart, argues the 1,650 independent liquor retailers in Colorado will be devastated by out-of-state corporations controlling the market.

“Creating a business environment that further reduces our choices to cookie-cutter type models is not in the collective interest of our community,” said Mullen, who points out that his company contributes to local nonprofits, provides housing for its employees and spends money locally.

“The money I make and the money I spend stays in our valley and in Colorado,” he said. “It will be better for this community, in this recessionary climate, if the law does not change, because large corporate expenditures and profits leave the community and Colorado.”

Mullen and other independent retailers and microbrewers have the backing of the Colorado Licensed Beverage Association and the Colorado Coalition of Liquor Store Associations, which conducted an economic study indicating that 40 percent of independent liquor stores would be forced to close within three years after losing 70 percent of their beer sales to chain stores.

But supporters of the legislation, including 7-Eleven, Safeway and other major convenience and grocery store chains, say they are losing money because of last year’s law allowing Sunday full-strength beer sales and that the independent retailers now have an unfair monopoly.

“Our beer sales have dropped like a rock in a very tough economy,” said Sandip Mali, a 7-Eleven franchise owner in Denver and Northglenn.

“We’re small businesspeople, just like many liquor store owners, who have invested our life savings in our stores, and all we want to do is compete and serve our customers. It’s not so much to ask.”

Before the new law allowing liquor stores to be open on Sundays, supermarkets and convenience stores were the only outlets for beer on game day during the National Football League season. Now those stores say their sales have plummeted by two-thirds with liquor stores able to sell full-strength beer on Sundays.

Proponents of the full-strength beer bill have started a Web site called www.getrealbeer.com, and they presented nearly 60,000 signatures of customers demanding the change during a meeting at the state Capitol earlier this week.

But liquor store operators contend the state’s economy will suffer through lost jobs, shuttered stores and a decrease in revenues for locally owned businesses.

“The continuing rise in unemployment in Colorado and across the country, and the economic straits with which we are faced, argue in favor of continued support for local jobs and family-owned business,” Jeanne M. McEvoy, executive director of the Colorado Licensed Beverage Association, wrote in a letter to lawmakers.

A U.S. Army soldier stands guard as a detainee spends time in the exercise yard outside Camp Five at the Joint Task Force Guantánamo detention center on Naval Base Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. (Staff Sgt. Jon Soucy, Defenselink.mil)

But Gov. Bill Ritter — unlike governors in other states that could house terrorism suspects moved from Gitmo — said through a spokesman he wouldn’t oppose moving terror suspects to Supermax because those are the kinds of prisoners the facility was built to handle, the Associated Press reports. “If Supermax is chosen, there’s no reason to take a ‘not in my backyard’ approach,” Ritter spokseman Evan Dreyer told the AP. Still, Ritter believes it’s more likely Gitmo detainees will be dispersed to military prisons in other states, and the Obama administration hasn’t contacted the governor about possible transfers.

Rep. Doug Lamborn, the Colorado Springs Republican whose district includes Supermax, thinks it’s a terrible idea to bring any of the Gitmo detainees to Colorado, 9News reports.

“That’s the last thing we should do,” said Lamborn. “I don’t want them in Colorado, there at Supermax, or actually anyplace on American soil.”

Lamborn said he was concerned about terrorists “spreading their perverted way of thinking” to American prisoners. He also said he worried “liberal judges” would free terror detainees after bringing them to Colorado, based on “technicalities” of their battlefield captures.

Newly elected Rep. Mike Coffman agrees, blasting Ritter in a statement issued Friday. A release from Coffman’s congressional office prefaces his remarks with military bona fides, noting the Aurora Republican “is a combat veteran with a combined 21 years of military experience and has served in Iraq twice. He is a member of the House Armed Services Committee.”

“The Governor is wrong to encourage the President to go forward with his campaign promise to close the Guantánamo facility by welcoming the detainees to be incarcerated in Colorado. Guantánamo needs to stay open, not only to protect Americans here at home but to protect our Soldiers and Marines serving in harm’s way. There is no doubt the President has the right to review all of the practices used at Guantánamo to determine which ones are acceptable and which ones are not, but he should not close the facility.”

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, the Democrat who replaced Ken Salazar on Thursday, said in a statement he agrees with Obama’s executive orders but thinks it “premature” to speculate where the Gitmo detainees mind end up:

“I agree with President Obama’s decision to move forward with the closure of the Guantánamo Bay facility. It has tarnished our nation’s reputation abroad and should be permanently closed. We need strong action to combat terrorism and protect the American people, but I know we can accomplish that goal without sacrificing our basic Constitutional principles.”

On prisoner relocation, “The President has called for a review to examine options for the relocation of prisoners at the facility. Considering this review has yet to even begin, speculation on where prisoners will be relocated or what effect their relocation may have on local communities would be premature.”

At the Capitol, Republican state Rep. Cory Gardner and other Republicans are circulating a petition opposing any transfer of Gitmo detainees to Colorado, the Rocky Mountain News legislative blog reported Friday morning. Detainees “pose a serious threat to our national security, as well as the safety and security of the communities in which they will ultimately be housed,” according to the petition, Lynn Bartels reports.

Gardner called the possibility “really dangerous” and said he plans to hold hearings, writes Ed Sealover, the Rocky’s other statehouse reporter. Democrat Buffie McFadyen, whose state house district includes Florence, told Sealover she was concerned about staffing at Supermax and thinks it’s a better idea to send Gitmo detainees to military prisons, including Camp Pendleton in California or Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. “Florence should be an option evaluated after we exhaust military options,” McFadyen told Sealover.

Obama first raised the prospect of sending Gitmo detainees to Supermax in June. Roughly 245 detainees remain at Guantánamo Bay, and some could be sent to other countries, according to executive orders Obama signed Thursday. One of Obama’s orders creates a cabinet-level panel to decide where to send Gitmo detainees and determine “lawful options for the disposition of individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations” in the future, Sepncer Ackerman writes at our sister site, The Washington Independent.

Supermax, opened in 1994 to handle the “worst of the worst” federal prisoners, is one of three federal prisons in the Florence Federal Correctional Complex. Most Supermax prisoners are kept in solitary confinement at least 23 hours a day in 7-by-12-foot cells designed to make it impossible for prisoners to contact or even see each other.

The prison already incarcerates convicted terrorists, including Omar “Blind Sheik” Abdel-Rahman, Ramzi Yousef and Mahmud Abouhalima, convicted for their roles in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Zacarias Moussaoui, convicted for a part in the Sept. 11 attacks; Jose Padilla, convicted of aiding terrorists; Wadih el-Hage, convicted in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings; Terry Nichols, convicted in the Oklahoma City bombing; Eric Robert Rudolph, convicted in the 1996 Olympic Park bombing; and Theodore “Unabomber” Kaczynski.

For more on Supermax, including background on staffing concerns and last year’s prison yard riot that left two inmates dead and dozens injured, read Erin Rosa’s award-winning Colorado Independent series Inside Supermax.

(Photo/bitzcelt, Flickr)

Colorado State Penitentiary II (CSP II) is set to be completed by 2010 to assist in detaining what both law enforcement members and civil liberties advocates agree is a swelling inmate population.

But staffing the new prison could prove problematic during hard financial times when the state is trying to save money.

In September, following the national banking crisis, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter ordered the state to halt new construction projects and the hiring of new employees.

So far the hiring freeze only applies only to the 2008-09 financial year, and even if it was extended, there are provisions making budgetary exceptions for public safety projects such as the prison, which will be located in Cañon City.

“Still, it’s going to be a very daunting task in the state’s budget to staff all of CSP II, certainly,” said Rep. Buffie McFadyen, a Democrat from Fremont County where the prison will be located. “Especially since I’m not sure if we’ve completed staffing back before the last recession in 2001-02.”

Colorado experienced a 400 percent increase in the state’s prison population from 1985 to 2005, and since the beginning of the decade the population increased by nearly 7 percent from approximately 16,000 inmates in 2000 to 23,000 in 2008 (PDF), according to state reports.

The state’s corrections budget also increased from $57 million in 1985 to $533 million in 2005, and the inmate population is projected to increase by 25 percent in the next five years.

“CSP II is necessary to meet prison population demand,” said Evan Dreyer, spokesman for the governor’s office. “But the bigger-picture, longer view is that the governor’s anti-recidivism package will hopefully reduce demand as we move forward.”

Ritter’s office has proposed increasing funding educational programs and substance abuse treatment to battle Colorado’s enormous recidivism rate, which is defined by how many state inmates are returned to jail after committing another crime or violating parole.

In 2007, the state’s recidivism rate was reported by corrections officials to be approximately 52 percent.

It is currently unknown how many full-time employees will be designated to work the new prison.

(Photo/bitzcelt, Flickr)

The federal government needs to be more transparent in providing local communities with information about the violent incidents that occur in Colorado prisons. That’s the message from public officials reacting to recent news that a prison in the state has been on lockdown status since August, just months after a violent yard riot in April left two inmates dead.

In a series of articles published last week, The Colorado Independent reported that the high-security United States Penitentiary in the southern city of Florence — operated by the federal Bureau of Prisons — had been in lockdown status since early August following a violent inmate-on-inmate assault.

Lockdown status means that inmates are generally confined to their housing units or cells.

The incident comes just months after a deadly yard riot in April that ended with two inmates being killed by guard gunfire, and on top of that, the prison’s warden Sara Revell was just given the annual Excellence in Prison Management award from the bureau for overall management of staff and inmates.

During the riot, guards used a heavy arsenal of weaponry, including more than 200 M-16 rifle rounds, more than 300 pepper balls and nearly 12 long-range CS gas canisters, according to documentation obtained from sources inside the prison.

Rep. Buffie McFadyen, a Pueblo Democrat whose district includes the penitentiary, said the news showed how necessary it was for the bureau to release key details about the riot to the public.

“There’s a problem with the secrecy the bureau functions in to begin with overall. They’re not a very transparent organization,” McFadyen said, noting that shes talks regularly with prison workers and officials with the correctional officers union. “I have to cultivate people to talk to. I don’t get answers back from the bureau.”

U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, a Colorado Democrat, penned a letter to bureau director Harley Lappin last week demanding that officials publicly release findings of an investigation into the riot, before it was reported that the prison had been put in lockdown mode again.

“The bottom line is the bureau needs to provide an answer on what exactly happened back in April,” said Salazar spokesperson Michael Amodeo about the most recent violence at the prison. “Five months after the fact, surrounding communities and, to a larger extent, the American public don’t have the answers they deserve. The bureau needs to share this information with the public and show that they are taking the steps necessary to improve security at the facility and prevent terrible incidents like these from happening again in the future.”

Bureau officials have not yet returned requests for comment seeking a response to the transparency criticisms and inquiring why warden Revell was given an excellence award following the violent yard melee.

The bureau has claimed that an internal investigation of the riot has not yet been completed and that official findings will be released only through a formal written request, a process that can take months or longer.

During December of last year, before Christmas, the DOC started to transfer inmates to the out-of-state prison, after the department announced that local prisons were filled to capacity. Now, approximately 480 state inmates are at the Oklahoma facility, segregated from the local prisoners to avoid conflict.

McFadyen, who returned to Colorado on Tuesday, represents Fremont County, the site of 13 different prisons. The lawmaker says she was shown the four “pods” where the inmates are incarcerated, and that the prevailing desire among the prisoners was to return to Colorado.

“It’s a big hardship on the families to get over to Oklahoma to visit their loved ones,” McFadyen says. “I would say the general population probably doesn’t have much empathy for such a situation simply because the idea of ‘they committed a crime they got to do their time.’”

But McFadyen believes that being close to home is an important detail in trying to make sure released inmates don’t come back to the corrections system. She also noted that Colorado prisons offer recreational and rehabilitation programs that are lacking in Oklahoma.

While visiting, McFadyen raised concerns over allegations of slow mail, shoddy phone service and problems with visiting family members. The lawmaker says that Zavaras will have the department’s private-prison monitoring unit look into the claims.

“The DOC was receptive to hearing what we were hearing,” says McFadyen.

The meeting was prompted by a news story that appeared on the CBS television program 60 Minutes on Sunday, Oct. 14, covering the prison’s notorious inmates and briefly reporting on staffing concerns.

“If the federal government isn’t taking this seriously then we have a problem,” said McFadyen. “We’re hoping that Congress will help lift this veil of secrecy behind the walls of not only this institution, but the [Bureau of Prisons] in general.”

In September, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) conducted a first-time media tour of the Supermax, letting only a handful of reporters enter the institution. Correctional workers have alleged that such tours are merely a ruse used by the BOP to foster a false sense of security, and at the meeting union officials with the AFGE local 1302, which represents the prison’s correctional officers, claimed that workers were also pulled from their posts once the tour was over, leaving units understaffed.

Both union representatives and McFadyen want a Congressional field hearing to review the actual staffing rosters.

“Congress needs to take some time and look and see what’s happening,” said Mike Schnobrich, a legislative liaison for the union.  “Please Senator Salazar, please Senator Allard, please Congressman Lamborn and Congressman Salazar, we need to have these hearings, we need to know what’s going on in a systematic way without the shell games.”

In a statement responding to the allegations, the BOP said it “does not vacate essential posts” and that the correctional facility in Florence, including the Supermax and two other prisons, is “funded and staffed as one facility and not as three individual institutions,” meaning that there is a total 88 percent staffing level for all buildings.

Union officials have shown staffing rosters for the Supermax facility where entire inmate units have been vacated for 24 hour periods, and claim that the agency isn’t being upfront about the numbers. The BOP responded by saying that the Supermax is “staffed at a level that ensures the safe and orderly operation of the facility.”

This isn’t the first time Congress has been asked to investigate Supermax, but workers and officials continue to say that the situation is getting worse, and both union representatives and McFadyen voiced hope that the exposure on 60 Minutes would get the congressional wheels turning.

Also see:

Colorado Confidential’s Inside Florence Supermax series.

A House resolution set to distribute funds for 2008 would bar privatization of work performed by Bureau of Prisons (BOP) employees, meaning that existing correctional officer positions could not be replaced by employees with a private company. Congress is also looking at plans regarding safety and staffing levels in federal correctional facilities.HR 3093, the appropriation bill, would not only offer federal correction officers protection against privatization, but it would also allow employees to appeal any work lost to contractors in public-private job competitions, giving workers the same appeals rights as contractors.

The resolution would also mandate that the BOP report to the House Appropriations Committee on staffing levels in federal facilities, and which positions have not been filled.

Last week, members of the American Federation of Government Employees joined state Rep. Buffie McFadyen (D-Pueblo West) in front of the capitol building to assail staffing levels at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado — where it was alleged that staffing levels had dropped to such a low point that tensions were growing between correction officers and the inmate population, along with entire units being left unsupervised for up to 24 hour periods.

The House has also allotted 10 million to residential substance abuse treatment for state prisoners throughout the nation, along with 5 million set aside to improve state and local law enforcement intelligence capabilities with anti-terrorism and civil rights training.

The appropriations bill is currently awaiting action in the Senate.

Either way, Rep. Buffie McFadyen isn’t amused

At a press conference yesterday, the Pueblo Democrat called on the Department of Corrections (DOC) to rescind a state contract obtained through less than scrupulous methods.It goes like this: in November a state audit found that Nolin Renfrow, a former head of prisons, had helped a private company called the Geo Group win a multi-million dollar bid for the construction of a new prison in Ault, Colorado. All this was before he had officially retired from his government position.

Now the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is examining Renfrow, but the contract remains intact. This fact prompted McFadyen to send a letter to Ari Zavaras, the new executive director for the DOC, discussing the Ault agreement.

“I’m sure he will take the letter that I wrote very seriously,” says McFadyen. “I can’t speak for him as to what he would do, but I’m sure that we’ll have to have legal discussions with the Governor’s office as well.”

Joining the lawmaker at a press conference was the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, an organization which has mounted an impressive legislative strategy against the perils of the private prison industry, in favor of programs that offer treatment and incarceration alternatives.

Meanwhile, the Corrections Corporation of America, which proudly boasts of being the “nation’s largest provider of jail, detention and corrections services to governmental agencies,” gave a presentation before the House Judiciary Committee today. 

“I don’t think it’s unusual to have the Judiciary Committee, which has oversight of the prisons, to call in and have questions about the private prison system,” McFadyen explains. “To my knowledge, those who oppose private prisons will also be given time to speak as well.”

Although Corrections Corporation isn’t involved in the latest contractual controversy, they might not be finding business any easier under a more attentive government monocle, brought on by the recent state audit.