Radium co12/5/2023 ![]() ![]() “The process with the state is very cumbersome,” LaBarre said. ![]() ![]() The cost, he said, will be absorbed into lot rental rates and should add a small amount of money for each resident. After their plans were approved, LaBarre said they had to purchase the equipment and schedule the installation, which requires additional oversight, and all of which was all delayed because of the global COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.Īll told, LaBarre estimated the system cost around $100,000. The engineer oversaw more testing, then drafted plans for a radium extraction system, which required state review and approval. “It was a long, long drawn out process,” he said, that began with finding a licensed engineer to work with. LaBarre described a challenging process to get the issue fully documented, have a remediation plan developed and approved and, finally, purchasing and installing the required equipment. Pete LaBarre, the owner, said he found out about the high radium levels close to four years ago when he also learned they were required to test their well water for contaminants. Route 24 in Woodland Park, registered more than twice the legal limit of radium for years as the owners struggled to get the problem fixed. ![]() The new data shows one in every six Otero County residents has tap water above the federal limit.Īfter years of testing, studies and planning, the solution that‘s emerged is one proposed 60 years ago: The Arkansas Valley Conduit, the massive clean water delivery system proposal that stalled for decades over the project’s equally massive price tag.Įlsewhere in the state, the Peak View Park mobile home park, situated on a wooded hillside along U.S. Most are clustered around the small rural towns of Rocky Ford, Swink and La Junta, about one hour’s drive east from Pueblo. “And that’s assuming that you drink two liters a day, a fair amount, every day, for 70 years.”Īccording to the Environmental Working Group’s new drinking water contamination data compilation, the worst radium content in the nation is found in Rocky Ford, where there was an average of 23 picocuries of radium per liter of water.Įighteen other water systems in Colorado contain more than the legal limit. “So if you have double the MCL (maximum contaminant limit), then it’s two per 10,000,” Falco said. Federal law allows up to 5 picocuries of radium-226 or radium-228, the most common versions of the element, per liter of water.īut Ron Falco, safe drinking water program manager for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said it’s well established that there will be about one excess cancer death per 10,000, at the maximum federal limit, and that the risks go up with concentration and accumulate over time. Radium poses a unique risk to children because it is treated by the human body like calcium and deposited into developing bones, where it remains radioactive and can kill and mutate cells.Īlthough southeast Colorado’s groundwater was known to have contaminants, high radium levels in Colorado’s groundwater became a regulatory problem around 20 years ago when the Environmental Protection Agency promulgated new radionuclide standards. Until then, faucets in the area will still provide water with as much as four times the legal radium limit.Įxposure to radium, a naturally-occurring radioactive element that exists in the Earth’s crust as a byproduct of the radioactive decay of naturally occurring uranium and thorium, can cause cancer, kidney damage and birth defects. Its completion, however, is years away, and the bulk of its funding hasn’t materialized yet.įor now, most are hopeful that the conduit will be fully funded and fully built. A massive infrastructure project that promises to largely resolve the problem, the Arkansas Valley Conduit, broke ground this year. ![]()
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