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| 1. What and
where is the Lowry Landfill? From 1965-1980, the Lowry Landfill accepted municipal and liquid industrial waste from businesses and residences in the Denver metro area. The 508-acre site is located near the intersection of Quincy Avenue and Gun Club Road in Arapahoe County, 15 miles southeast of downtown Denver. The landfill was declared a Superfund site in 1984 and listed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Priorities List. |
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| 2. Is this the same location
where my garbage is disposed of today? No. The Lowry Landfill generally stopped receiving municipal solid waste in 1990. The only exceptions today are asbestos, which is still disposed of at the site, and inert building materials, which have been authorized for disposal specifically to improve the slope of the current landfill cover. If you live in the Denver metro area, it is very likely that your household waste ends up at the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site (DADS), a state-of-the-art municipal solid waste facility located adjacent to the Lowry Landfill. DADS fully complies with all local, state and national environmental regulations. |
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| 3. Why was the Lowry Landfill
declared a Superfund site? In 1984, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) placed the landfill on its National Priorities List (NPL) of sites to be addressed under the federal remediation program known as Superfund. The listing was due to groundwater contamination that resulted from the legal disposal at the site of municipal waste and an estimated 138 million gallons of liquid waste, and to the potential for that contamination to migrate off the site. Though the disposal methods complied with the environmental regulations in effect at the time, EPA determined that some of the liquid waste seeped into the ground, contaminating the soil and groundwater under the site. The site has undergone an extensive containment remedy and monitoring program since its listing on the NPL. |
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| 4. What is the nature of
the site remedy? The Lowry Landfill remedy is designed to protect the surrounding environment and human health by preventing contaminants from moving off the site and by preventing human exposure to landfill gas, waste-pit liquids or contaminated groundwater. This “containment” approach is commonly used at contaminated municipal landfills because the risks involved in removing and transferring the large volumes of materials elsewhere are greater than the risks of managing the wastes onsite. The containment remedy at Lowry Landfill consists of multiple components, including a clay cap on top of the landfill mass; underground barrier walls designed to prevent groundwater from flowing on and off the site; and a state-of-the-art onsite water treatment plant and landfill gas collection and treatment system. There is also a groundwater monitoring system at the site to track the movement of contaminated groundwater. (Groundwater is water that flows underground, as distinguished from surface water that flows above ground.) |
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| 5. How is contaminated groundwater being
treated? The primary focus of the remedy at the Lowry Landfill has been to safely contain, collect and treat groundwater at the site. Water pumped from the ground at the site is treated in the onsite water treatment plant. The treated water then is pumped to the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District and Aurora’s wastewater treatment facilities for further treatment before being discharged. Both onsite treated water and discharge from the Metro and Aurora facilities must meet strict discharge standards and are routinely tested to assure continued compliance. |
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| 6. How are Denver and Waste
Management involved at the Lowry Landfill? The federal government deeded the site to the City and County of Denver in 1964 for use as a landfill. Denver operated the Lowry Landfill on the site from 1965 to1980. Waste Management took over operations of the Lowry Landfill in 1980 under contract to Denver. Under a settlement among the hundreds of entities that at one time used Lowry Landfill as an industrial disposal site, Denver and Waste Management together agreed to manage implementation of the selected remedy. |
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| 7. When will the remedy
be complete? Denver and Waste Management spent more than two decades investigating the site; researching remediation options; and designing, implementing and fine-tuning the chosen remedy using the latest and most effective environmental technologies available. Today, the many components that comprise the remedy at the Lowry Landfill site are in place and certified complete by the appropriate regulatory agencies. Most of the site is now in “operation and maintenance” mode, meaning the monitoring and treatment of groundwater and landfill gas will continue until the groundwater is returned to drinking water, background or ambient standards and until landfill gas is no longer generated at quantities that need to be controlled. Adjustments to remedy components will be made as necessary and as new and better technologies become available. The 1,4-dioxane investigation described in the “North End Monitoring and Response Action” section of this website is considered part of the overall remedy and will also continue until the same drinking water, background or ambient standards are achieved. |
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| 8. The remedy activities
sound expensive – are my tax dollars paying for it? The entities that owned, operated and/or transported wastes to the Lowry Landfill included not only private businesses, but also municipalities and state and federal agencies. Under the settlement mentioned in question #6 above, those entities either paid into a trust fund that is now being used to fund the work at Lowry Landfill or paid the EPA to reimburse it for its work at the site. The settlement payments from the municipalities and state and federal agencies came from taxpayer dollars, while payments from the private businesses did not. |
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| 9. Are there any radioactive
materials in the Lowry Landfill? As in most landfills, there are medical wastes, smoke detectors and other items in the Lowry Landfill that contain small amounts of radioactive material. After years of investigations and analyses of thousands of groundwater samples, however, there is no evidence that man-made radioactive materials such as plutonium were ever disposed of at Lowry Landfill. Furthermore, studies show that radioactive material at Lowry Landfill is present at background levels that are consistent with naturally occurring and man-made radiation found throughout the western United States. |
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| 10. Is there any dangerous
military waste in Lowry Landfill? The site never accepted any unexploded ordnance from the Former Lowry Bombing and Gunnery Range, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal or any other military facilities. The only wastes accepted from the former nuclear weapons facility at Rocky Flats were non-radioactive solvents and construction debris. |
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| 11.What are the risks to
human health at the site? There is no current human health risk at the Lowry Landfill since nobody is being exposed to site-related contamination. Because wastes will remain on the Lowry Landfill site, the EPA by law conducts mandatory Five-Year Reviews to ensure all containment activities are working as designed. The latest Five-Year Review, completed in February 2007, confirmed that the remedy “is functioning as intended” and “is protective of human health and the environment.” The EPA has also declared that the 1,4-dioxane detected north of the Lowry site boundary does not present a threat to people living in the vicinity. (See the “North End Monitoring and Response Action” section of this website for more information.) |
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| 12. Has any contaminated
groundwater left the site? During the 20+ years that the site has been investigated and the remedy has been implemented, groundwater with contamination in exceedence of state standards has been detected by the monitoring system outside the site’s point of compliance to the east and west. While it is unclear whether this contamination “left the site” or was already outside the point of compliance when the remedy was constructed, measures have been taken to contain this contamination and keep it under constant monitoring. More recently, contaminated groundwater was found outside the site boundary to the north. An investigation was conducted to determine the origin of this contamination and its extent. This investigation concluded that only shallow groundwater (less than 50 feet deep) is impacted and that its lateral extent is limited to a narrow band beneath the old Murphy Creek drainage for approximately 2-4 miles north of the site boundary. Efforts are also underway to minimize contaminant migration northward by extracting contaminated groundwater from wells in Section 31 and treating that water in the onsite water treatment plant. Please see the “North End Monitoring and Response Action” section of this website for more information. |
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| 13. What will happen at
the Lowry Landfill site once the remedy is complete? Because wastes will remain on the Lowry Landfill site, EPA will conduct mandatory Five-Year Reviews to ensure all containment activities are working as designed. Despite finding that most of the remedy components were protective and effective, an overall protectiveness determination for the containment remedy could not be made during the September 2001 First Five-Year Review because the remedy was incomplete at that time. In addition, groundwater at the site will continue to be monitored. Any future use of the site will have to be compatible with the remedy, comply with certain restrictive covenants, and comply with all regulations to ensure the use is safe. |
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| 14. Is funding available
to help citizens better understand the technical aspects of the
Lowry Landfill site remedy? Yes. The EPA awards Technical Assistance Grants (TAGs) to citizen groups affected by Superfund sites to help them understand and be involved with site-related decisions. Such a TAG was awarded to an organization called Citizens for Lowry Landfill Environmental Action Now (CLLEAN). Those wishing to learn more about the TAG may contact John Dalton, EPA Community Involvement Coordinator, at (303) 312-6633 or dalton.john@epa.gov. Those wishing to learn more about CLLEAN may contact the organization’s director, Bonnie Rader, at 71 Algonquian Street, Aurora, CO 80018, (303) 364-2905, Bonnie_Rader@es.conmed.com. |