CAÑON CITY – Residents living near the toxic plume of a Superfund site are finally getting the water testing they’ve been seeking for years.
But it’s not state health officials or the Environmental Protection Agency, responsible for the cleanup of the Lincoln Park Superfund site where more than 5 million tons of radioactive waste is buried, doing the testing.
Colorado health officials have since 2004 tested 32 wells on private property in what is suspected to be a toxic groundwater plume near the site south of town that was home to the Cotter Uranium Mill.
Area citizens have asked for expanded water and soil testing to ensure that toxins have not leaked into nearby drainages and waterways, or wells that are used to water crops and livestock. The answer from the state and the federal EPA has always been no — not until there’s a testing plan in place.
But in late April, dozens of Fremont County residents dropped off more than 220 test tubes of water drawn from their taps, wells, springs, ponds and irrigation ditches to have it tested for heavy metals and radioactive elements. For free.
Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste (CCAT), a Cañon City-based nonprofit, teamed with the Veterans for Peace and the Arthur S. Ratcliffe Mobile Community Lab to offer the testing to any Fremont County resident. Residents just had to pick up a test tube, fill it and return it labeled with a sample number.
Within weeks, they should know if their water is safe.
“I just want to find out,” said Elizabeth Miller, who brought a sample of her tap water and another from a spring that flows through her basement and drains into nearby Sell’s Lake.
She lives at the bottom of what’s known to long-time residents as Pump Hill, where a pump house once provided water to those who came to fetch it. The pump house is long gone, but spring water still flows through the property and requires the Millers to keep a sump pump in the basement.
Water samples submitted by residents of Cañon City await testing at the Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste mobile lab site April 25, 2026. The Colorado Citizens group will submit the samples to a lab and hopes to have results back my mid-May. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)It is the presence of such springs and unknown groundwater pathways near the former uranium mill site and along the Arkansas River that has worried environmental activists since the Superfund site was declared in 1984. They have sought expanded testing or grants to do the testing themselves, to no avail.
Then suddenly, just a few months ago, the Ratcliffe mobile lab got involved.
“Now we can make something happen that the regulators haven’t been able to make happen,” said Jeri Fry, a co-founder of CCAT and who was active for years with the Citizens Advisory Group that meets with Superfund regulators. “This is almost unbelievable. It’s so nice for the community to have answers.”
And it was clear from the steady stream of residents who dropped off their filled test tubes at an April 25 collection that people were seeking answers. Many grabbed extra test tubes to take to family members and friends so they could return water samples later in the day.
John Shumaker, who lives north of Cañon City took advantage of the free testing even though he doesn’t live in the suspected toxic plume. He’d paid $250 for a state water test before its testing facilities were shut down in late 2024 because of faulty testing so he suspects the results were not reliable. The state has suspended water testing.
“I heard about this from a neighbor and decided to take advantage of the testing,” he said. “We’ll see what they come up with.”
Fry was ecstatic about the turnout, which exceeded her expectations. She immediately began to plan for continued water testing and future soil testing.
“This tells me that people are desperate for information,” she said. “This kind of testing would cost hundreds of thousands (of dollars) if done privately. It is totally out of reach for people to do this on their own.”
Uranium mill waste
The Cotter Corporation milled uranium at the 2,600-acre site 2 miles south of Cañon City and adjacent to the Fremont County community of Lincoln Park from 1958 to 2011. It produced yellowcake for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and for many of those years discharged radionuclides and heavy metals into unlined ponds on the property.
The EPA added the mill site and surrounding properties to the Superfund cleanup list in 1984. A 1988 settlement between Cotter and Colorado led to some early cleanup actions, including connecting Lincoln Park residents to Cañon City’s water, tailings and soil cleanup at various sites and construction of a groundwater barrier at the north end of the mill property.
In 2002, the EPA declared that soil remediation in Lincoln Park was complete.
The mill continued operations until 2006 and shut down completely in 2011. In 2014, Cotter was ordered to conduct a remedial investigation and cleanup plan for the mill site under Superfund laws. Work toward that plan has inched forward since that time and involved Cotter, Colorado Legacy Land and then Cotter again.
During the switching of responsible parties, the EPA split off a portion of the study to launch a Human Risk Assessment. That early testing is expected to begin this year.
In addition to the 32 private wells, CDPHE has conducted some air, soil and water testing over the years, including at a couple of locations on the Arkansas River and other groundwater and surface water locations in and around the Superfund site, the state agency said in an emailed response to questions.
When asked what the testing has accomplished, CDPHE directed those seeking results to pages 41-47 in the 2024 annual report, where results for individual testing sites are included. There is no overall summary of the ongoing water testing program, although CDPHE says the data “informs our decision-making process as we work to address contamination through the Superfund process.”
It appears that over time, there has been little change in the test results, but there are at least four wells in the Lincoln Park area that continue to exceed safe levels for uranium, according to the most recent quarterly test report.
Two test sites on the Arkansas River, at the First Street Bridge and the MacKenzie Avenue bridge, test below CDPHE standards for uranium, molybdenum, thorium 230 and radium 226.
A CDPHE fact sheet that contains public health information says the EPA and health department concluded in 2002 that “the soil and sediment cleanup in Operable Unit 2 (Lincoln Park area) was complete, although groundwater contamination is still present. Most well owners in Lincoln Park have been connected to the Cañon City water system, which greatly reduces potential contact with contaminated groundwater.”
The fact sheet advises that the remedial investigation, which has not begun some 24 years after those conclusions, will “analyze other potential contaminants and transport pathways.”
Activists step in
The public water testing launched by CCAT came about in a serendipitous manner — a new CCAT board member was evicted from her rental when she pursued information about water testing in the town of Brookside, a few miles east of the Superfund site, Fry said.
Although the board member moved back to Louisiana, her research into radioactive pollution led her to Michael Ketterer, a chemist and professor emeritus of Northern Arizona University who runs the Ratcliffe mobile laboratory to help communities learn what’s in their water.
The board member connected Fry to Ketterer, and Fry traveled to Bernalillo, New Mexico, to see the lab in action.
“We got some speed training on how to prep samples,” Fry said.
Michael Ketterer manages the mobile lab that will do the testing of water samples submitted by residents April 25, 2026 in Cañon City. (Mike Sweeney, Special to The Colorado Sun)Meanwhile, Ketterer joined CCAT’s board and scheduled a visit to Cañon City to collect and test water samples.
The outspoken retired professor says he can do the work “as a hobby,” but it’s clear that he’s passionate about lending his expertise to help citizens, whether they’re Downwinders in New Mexico, who were victims of atomic testing, or Lincoln Park residents worried about the quality of their water.
“I have the ultimate form of academic freedom,” he said of his retiree status. “I can speak the truth. I feel like it’s an obligation.”
He’s been criticized in some quarters, including by regulators around the country and in connection with land uses at Rocky Flats. But he says he bases his work on what his instruments tell him and produces fact-based data.
The mobile lab idea came together in the Uranium Weapons Working Group of Veterans for Peace about a year ago. That’s when the late Art Ratcliffe donated a 17-foot camper to house equipment, including an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer, that Ketterer uses to test for radionuclides and heavy metals in water.
The nonprofit Veterans for Peace is a St. Louis-based international organization with a mission to “educate the public and decision-makers on the true and total costs of armed conflicts. These include but are not limited to not only KIA and MIA but environmental destruction, suicides, homelessness, VA medical expenses and compensation, cultural upheaval, etc.,” John Wilks, president of the Albuquerque chapter, said in an email.
Regional volunteers stepped in to get the lab running, first in New Mexico and now in Cañon City for several weeks.
People can donate to the work through Veteran for Peace, but Ketterer said he wants to find a major sponsor to ensure testing work continues because the dangerous toxins will be there forever in human terms.
“I’m going to be dead and these contaminants are still going to be there,” he said. “I want to tell the truth about that. We’ve got to continue testing all the time until the end of time.”
Hence then, the article about who s testing the tap water in canon city not the agencies responsible for cleaning up the toxic plume from the cotter uranium mill was published today ( ) and is available on Colorado Sun ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Who’s testing the tap water in Cañon City? Not the agencies responsible for cleaning up the toxic plume from the Cotter Uranium Mill. )
Also on site :