Fremont County Air Concerns

Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action gave a presentation in Cañon City, Colorado last night to the Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste. Cañon City is in Fremont County, home to the Holcim cement plant. It's the county's largest air polluter, releasing 31 pounds of mercury, 11 pounds of lead, and 0.17 grams of dioxins a year. The dioxin emissions may seem small, but the EPA has determined that exposure to just 0.000001 grams over 70 years is "safe" for people. The amount of dioxins released by Holcim in a year is enough to poison all the people of Fremont County four-fold.

Not only that, but Holcim is the state of Colorado's largest "upset" polluter. What does that mean? It means that Holcim has used the "upset conditions" loophole in Colorado's law to violate air pollution limits that are set to protect human health. Since 1999, Holcim has claimed over 380 upsets.


Holcim has also had many upsets that have lasted for days. In 2004, Holcim claimed an "upset" where for 6 days and 21 hours, the company violated its sulfur dioxide pollution limits. Read our previous post for more on the loophole and what we're doing about it. On another note, when we drove by the Holcim plant, there was a lot of cement dust blowing around, a sure sign that they're violating their air permit.

Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste and Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action are also looking into air quality violations at the Cotter Uranium mill in Cañon City. The mill is a notorious polluter and last May, the state issued Cotter a notice of violation for violating limits on volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions. While Cotter is limited to 85 tons/year of VOC emissions, from January to August of 2005, Cotter released 350.8 tons of VOCs.

The state may be pushing to revoke Cotter's entire air permit as a result. However, citizen pressure will be needed to make sure our clean air is not jeopardized in the future.