Experts: Lead, arsenic at elevated levels but pose limited risk

Ouray County officials have decided against testing soils in the Panoramic Heights neighborhood for possible arsenic and lead exposure, following federal recommendations after subcontractors likely unearthed contaminated subsoil in July.

Soil samples collected by the Plaindealer found slightly elevated levels of arsenic and lead at several locations throughout the neighborhood. However, public health experts say they aren’t overly concerned after reviewing those test results, citing a limited exposure time frame.

The situation became public after a neighborhood resident on July 12 told county commissioners subcontractors unearthed contaminated subsoil in the neighborhood two miles north of Ouray as part of a state contract to provide high-speed internet.

Test results

From 1926 until 1955, Panoramic Heights sat below the Bachelor Syracuse Mine and nearby mine milling and ore purifi cation site. As a result, mine tailings — the mud-like waste byproducts from extracting pure metals from ore — littered the site for decades, contaminating the soil with arsenic and lead.

In the fall of 2007, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the EPA’s Site Assessment Program collected soil samples throughout the neighborhood.

According to the resulting June 2009 report, 16 of the neighborhood’s 24 lots exceeded the recommended maximum lead concentration of 750 milligrams per kilogram of soil. Lots located directly west of Sunshine Lane also exceeded the recommended maximum arsenic concentration of 130 milligrams per kilogram of soil.

Once residents made their concerns public in July, County Planning Director Mark Castrodale contacted EPA on-scene coordinator Paul Peronard about the situation to determine what the county should do next.

Peronard didn’t recommend or require oversight, onsite inspection or testing since Earthworx didn’t dig in the repository — where the majority of contaminated dirt is located — on the neighborhood’s northern slope.

Due to that recommendation, Ouray County never collected any samples and has no official data from the work site area as a result. However, lab reports from surface-level soil samples the Plaindealer collected in July found elevated levels of arsenic and lead at several locations.

The Plaindealer collected soil samples from three locations in or near Panoramic Heights and sent them to Green Analytical Laboratories in Durango, an environmental testing laboratory that serves Colorado, New Mexico and West Texas. Tests performed by Green Analytical show dirt from the middle of the hill on Sunshine Lane contained 1,170 milligrams of lead per kilogram of dirt and 70 milligrams of arsenic per kilogram of dirt.

That lead concentration exceeds the EPA’s recommended maximum concentration by 56%, while that arsenic concentration doesn’t exceed the EPA’s recommended maximum arsenic concentration.

Samples taken at the northern end of Sunshine Lane yielded 622 milligrams of lead and 49 milligrams of arsenic, and samples taken near the intersection of Sunshine Lane and Mountain View Drive yielded 218 milligrams of lead and 44 milligrams of arsenic.

When asked to clarify the findings, a Green Analytical employee who didn’t want to be identified said the company rarely sees arsenic concentrations that high except for samples taken from mine cleanup sites. That assessment is unsurprising given the neighborhood’s history of being below the mine milling and ore purification site.

Despite those results, Mike Van Dyke, interim chair of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, said he wasn’t too concerned after reviewing the laboratory report.

He said the risk of experiencing adverse health outcomes is based on the concentration and length of time people are exposed to toxic materials. People subjected to high concentrations over a short time or small concentrations over a long time are most likely to develop arsenic or lead poisoning.

Side effects of mild heavy metals exposure include abdominal pain, chills or a low body temperature, a scratchy throat and numbness or a prickly sensation in hands and feet.

Since contractors dug in the neighborhood for a short time, Van Dyke said he believed the risk to residents was minimal.

“If you were living next to somebody (excavating) and they were doing it every day for a year, I’d be a lot more concerned than if it was three days total,” he said.

Project permitting process

Emails obtained by the Plaindealer through a Colorado Open Records Act request revealed a decentralized permitting process heavily reliant on institutional knowledge, which contributed to the lack of communication between county departments that handle work permits for the neighborhood.

A Panoramic Heights resident on April 7, 2022, informed County Road and Bridge Superintendent Ty Barger snow plowing had exposed mine tailings in four areas on Sunshine Lane. Images included in that email show exposed contaminated dirt near areas where the county authorized Deeply Digital to dig and where the Plaindealer collected soil samples.

Two months later, Barger reached out to Commissioner Lynn Padgett for insight into Panoramic Heights’ history. Within a week, Padgett informed Barger about a special Ouray County Land Use Department grading permit for Panoramic Heights and documents concerning Panoramic Heights.

Attached in that email was a zip file that included a copy of the ordinance governing work in the neighborhood, which detailed the process to obtain the Land Use Department’s special excavation permit for the neighborhood.

Barger, who became the county’s road and bridge superintendent in April 2021, said he didn’t learn about that permit until July 12. Yet he offered no excuses even though Panoramic Heights is the only location in Ouray County that requires such a permit.

“I believe that it’s reasonable to expect that I, in my position, should’ve known about this requirement and I regret that I didn’t,” Barger said.

Padgett’s site visit confirmed orange fencing was exposed, and an X-ray diffractometer she borrowed measured elevated levels of arsenic and lead. A diffractometer is a tool that analyzes a material’s structure using either X-rays or neutrons. While the process isn’t as precise as formal laboratory testing, it can still accurately capture which elements are present.

Ten months after Padgett found elevated arsenic and lead levels, Deeply Digital submitted a right-of-way application for its “Idlewild Grant Project.” Proposed digging to install fiber optic internet cables spanned three separate work areas, from just south of Ridgway to Ouray.

While that application included maps of all three work areas and 16 individual work sites, it only specifically mentioned County Road 17 and County Road 23 as construction locations. Those roads are not located near Panoramic Heights.

Barger said it isn’t unusual for applications to consolidate multiple work areas into a single right-of-way permit application, and the Road and Bridge Department’s fee structure incentivizes this strategy as it simplifi es the administrative process. He added his department wasn’t concerned about the inclusion of work outside the Idlewild neighborhood since the county knew exactly what Clearnetworx was applying for.

A July 14 interview with Earthworx owner Mike Lachner revealed the project had a 30-inch target bury depth. Lachner said contractors initially dug down to 24 inches and encountered orange fencing at 18 inches. Barger confirmed the Idlewild permit application’s approved target depth outside of the neighborhood was 30 inches, and said several factors, such as bedrock, other utilities and the neighborhood’s orange construction fencing, could impact that number.

The orange construction fencing was the maximum allowed depth for digging in Panoramic Heights. However, years of road wear and road work have impacted the depth of the orange construction fencing, leading to uncertainty for both county officials and subcontractors.

EPA documents released by Ouray County officials show the agency removed between 12 and 18 inches of contaminated topsoil from the neighborhood in 2009, with the Road and Bridge Department adding an unknown amount of gravel since then.

Lachner said work continued, albeit at a shallower depth, after consulting with Barger once contractors realized they disturbed the orange fencing.

Emails obtained through the Plaindealer’s CORA request show County Manager Connie Hunt informed Barger on July 12 residents had complained about exposed yellow dirt at the work site. She added future work in Panoramic Heights would require a Land Use Department excavation permit.

Barger replied that he didn’t see any disturbed yellow tailings at any point when he observed contractors’ work. Barger said he spoke multiple times about the tailings and orange fencing with Lachner and Clearnetworx construction manager John Cahill.

He also acknowledged Earthworx exposed and touched the orange fencing multiple times, and said contractors didn’t dig any further, immediately covered those spots and continued working at a shallower depth.

Barger said he personally confirmed Cahill and Earthworx knew about the mine tailings and the requirement to remain above the orange construction fencing. Earthworx acknowledged they were previously aware of this requirement.

Aftermath

Since residents first made their concerns public in July, there have been few, if any, updates regarding the situation in Panoramic Heights.

Neighborhood residents Becky Suppeland and Jim Benny said county officials and company representatives haven’t communicated with residents about the situation or what they could expect moving forward.

“We’d (Suppeland and her husband, Brady) get home and see a pile of dirt had been moved around, but that was it,” Suppeland said.

Hunt said she couldn’t confirm whether any county departments had or hadn’t communicated with neighborhood residents without looking into it.

According to Barger’s Sept. 12 update, Clearnetworx and its contractors have not performed additional work in Panoramic Heights since the county issued a verbal stop-work order on July 13.

The Ouray County Land Use Department issued Clearnetworx and its sister company, Deeply Digital, an excavation permit on Aug. 10. Upon receiving that permit, Clearnetworx agreed to comply with the county ordinance governing excavation and road grading in the neighborhood.

Clearnetworx intends to resume work in Panoramic Heights once they have enough workers to do so. The Road and Bridge Department will close out Clearnetworx’ right of way and excavation permits once the internet company completes its work, and install new road base on the neighborhood’s road surfaces to increase the buffer between the surface and contaminated dirt.

Ouray County plans to move forward with an online, cloud-based permitting system that would limit the likelihood of such mishaps moving forward.

Any future discovery of contaminated soil or orange fencing will require permit holders to separate and remove contaminated soil or return it to its original spot, covering it with fresh soil.

Daniel Schmidt is a journalist with Report for America, a national service program which helps boost reporting resources in underserved areas. To make a tax-deductible donation to fund his work, contact erin@ouraynews. com.