CAÑON CITY — The first round of free water testing for area residents brought reassurance for most people living near a contaminated Superfund site but left unanswered questions about more than a dozen samples that were deemed unsafe to drink.
In testing for uranium, 14 of the 249 samples exceeded the 30 micrograms per liter that is the maximum contaminant level for drinking water, with one of them testing at 117 MCL. Thirteen samples were high for molybdenum, nine were high for lead and nine were high for arsenic. The samples also were tested for cadmium, antimony and thallium, but none exceeded safe levels.
Residents whose samples tested high for contamination have been notified.
“Overall, the community results are pretty good,” said Michael Ketterer, a chemist and professor emeritus of Northern Arizona University who runs the Arthur S. Ratcliffe Mobile Community Laboratory in conjunction with Veterans for Peace. The lab, established in 2025, offers free water testing to communities with Cold War-related environmental contamination.
The testing was coordinated by Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste, or CCAT, a Cañon City-based nonprofit that for years has pushed for water and soil testing near the Lincoln Park Superfund site, also known as Cotter, south of the city where more than 5 million tons of radioactive waste is buried.
The initial water test results were announced June 6 at an open house for the lab and CCAT, but a detailed analysis, including correlating samples that tested high for more than one element, is not yet available.
“I do expect some of the high U (uranium) samples are Cotter-influenced, and that it will be possible to prove that using well-known methods of aqueous geochemistry,” he said in an emailed response to questions.
The sample with the highest level of uranium, however, was not in what the Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment have identified as the potential toxic plume from the Superfund site.
It came from a 300-foot-deep well on land owned by Bobbi Couch, who said she lives off-grid near Parkdale, on the other side of the Royal Gorge and upstream from the Superfund site.
“It’s not from Cotter, I’m sure of that,” Couch said at the open house. “But where is it from? From the aquifer? From the well?”
Couch said she’d had previous tests and knew the water was tainted, but appreciated the free testing because she trusted CCAT and the mobile lab.
“We haul water,” she said. “We never drank that well water, and I don’t wash clothes in it.
“It’s called an agriculture well, but it killed our plants and we don’t use it for animals.”
While she said she wouldn’t trade her remote, peaceful property — regardless of the well issues — she said she’d like to know where the uranium contamination is coming from and who else might be affected.
Awaiting answers
CDPHE has long tested private wells in the Superfund plume. At least four, including one in the middle of the Lincoln Park neighborhood and two on a former golf course that was adjacent to the Cotter Uranium Mill, continue to test high for uranium — but well below the level of Couch’s well.
When asked about the new testing results, the CDPHE said in an email: “We received a summary of findings, but have not gotten the sampling data or the sampling locations, so we have been unable to assess it.”
The agency did not address a question about whether it was concerned about the initial findings, but said property owners worried about their results could contact the Lincoln Park Superfund site team or the CDPHE Toxicology and Risk Assessment Program.
CCAT isn’t expecting officials to jump in with solutions because they’ve been waiting 42 years for the EPA and CDPHE to come up with a plan to clean up the Superfund site.
Continued testing
Jeri Fry, a CCAT co-founder who was active with the Superfund’s Citizens Advisory Group for years, said the group will continue to offer the free water testing and urged more community members to participate.
“The more who participate in this process, the more accurate it’s going to be,” she said. “I hope that the initial results will bring more people to have their water tested. Information is empowering.”
CCAT has partnered with the Fremont Conservation District, the Royal Gorge Association of Realtors, and the Royal Gorge Chamber Alliance, who have empty test tubes for residents who want to have their water tested. Once filled, the samples can be returned to the Conservation District and will be sent to the Ratcliffe lab for testing.
The lab is headed to New Mexico this month to conduct testing near the Picuris Pueblo and the community of Picuris, south of Taos, but it will continue to run water samples collected in Fremont County. CCAT volunteers expect to travel to New Mexico to help with the testing there and will deliver samples as they are returned.
CCAT, the lab and Veterans for Peace already are talking about the possibility of a permanent testing lab in Fremont County.
“This contamination that we’re living with is what the world has done to ourselves,” Fry said. “We need to test yearly.”
The Ratcliffe lab was built on a shoestring budget that included the donation of the trailer and some of the equipment. Ketterer has found and fixed other equipment with the assistance of Veterans for Peace members.
Ketterer expects to start fundraising to keep the lab going, but said he doesn’t want to give the impression that people will have to pay to get their water tested.
“We do not want to give communities the message that they need to fundraise for us to help them,” he said in an email.
The biggest obstacle for the lab, he said, is the “overwhelming logistics of the constant pieces in motion.” Volunteers to help drive the mobile lab between communities and others to help with logistics at testing sites would help tremendously, he said.
Brian Wilcox, a Veterans for Peace member from Plano, Texas, who helped put the mobile lab together, said it would be ideal if Cañon City had a permanent lab. A 200-square-foot to 300-square-foot building with a bathroom, such as a refurbished garage, would provide a better environment than a travel trailer that subjects the equipment to vibration and dust, he said.
“We need a place to put this,” he said.
Veterans for Peace stands ready to help CCAT with such an endeavor, but it “needs to be perpetual,” Ketterer said.
“I advocate expansive, extensive, limitless to the extent possible, and perpetual chemical analysis as oversight of all contaminated environments,” he said in an email. “Even if your 200 neighbors had mostly good results, the next person whose water was not sampled, has no knowledge of their situation.”