Could fracking in Aurora release toxic chemicals from nearby Superfund site?

AURORA, Colo. — An oil and gas company plans to frack near a Superfund site east of Aurora, raising concerns among residents, environmental agencies and lawmakers that drilling could release hazardous chemicals.

Civitas, one of Colorado’s biggest oil and gas operators, is seeking state approval to drill more than 160 wells east of the Lowry Landfill Superfund site. The plan is known as the Lowry Ranch Comprehensive Area Plan.

Colorado’s Energy and Carbon Management Commission, which oversees oil and gas permits, is currently accepting comments from the public about the proposal. Some residents are writing in with concerns about how close the fracking would be to the toxic landfill.

Bonnie Rader, who lives near the Lowry Landfill Superfund site, has spent four decades fighting to ensure the toxic chemicals won’t get out and make people sick. She’s part of a citizens advisory group working with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“There’s 138 million gallons of toxic waste in the site in open pits,” Rader said. That includes more than 100 different chemicals dumped into the ground between the 1960s and the 1980s by companies like Coors, Conoco and Hewlett-Packard.

“We were having nosebleeds. We were having constant headaches. And at times, they would dump cyanide in the middle of the night, and we’d roll out of bed trying to get our breath,” Rader said. “My youngest son would go into bronchial pneumonia with no fever. His little lips would turn blue, he couldn’t breathe.”

By 1984, the EPA figured out that the chemicals dumped at the landfill also contaminated the soil and groundwater. The agency designated the area as a Superfund site.

But instead of removing the toxic chemicals, Rader said the EPA invested millions of dollars into containing the hazardous materials underground. The pits are unlined, meaning there is no barrier to stop the chemicals from sinking deeper into the ground and potentially making their way into aquifers.

Rader said if oil and gas operations breach those pits, the chemicals “can ruin the water all the way from Pueblo to Wyoming.”

The EPA shares Rader’s worries.

“The EPA is concerned that hydraulic fracturing surrounding and underneath the Site could lead to a significant unintended release of hazardous substances from the Site,” the EPA’s Linda Kiefer wrote in a letter to Civitas late last year. “The EPA is concerned that the bedrock layer confining the bottom of the landfill could be subject to microfractures that could lead to a catastrophic release of hazardous substances into the nearby groundwater.”

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