A Century of Industrial Poison Baked Into the Ground

The Smeltertown Site sits on approximately 70 acres just northwest of Salida, Colorado, bordered on the south and west by the Arkansas River. For more than a century, it hosted some of the dirtiest industrial operations imaginable: lead-zinc smelting and creosote wood-treating facilities that dumped molten slag along the riverbank and let toxic wood-treating chemicals drip freely into the soil.

The particular area at the center of this story, called Operable Unit 2 (OU2), covers about 60 acres and holds the legacy of a creosote wood-treating plant that operated from 1926 to 1953. That plant ran a pressure treating retort, drip racks, storage tanks, a pole plant, and lagoons. When it closed, the land was left soaked with hazardous chemicals.

By 1965, Butala Construction Co. had purchased the property and redeveloped OU2 as a sand and gravel mine. The mining operation has remained active ever since. Butala was not some innocent bystander who stumbled onto a contaminated site; the company bought, operated, and profited from the same land it later helped further contaminate through illegal excavation.

The 1995 Wake-Up Call Nobody Acted On Fast Enough

In 1995, a Baseline Risk Assessment delivered a blunt verdict: the site posed unacceptable risks to future residents from ingesting surface soil, inhaling it, making skin contact with it, and drinking the groundwater. The primary human health threats were arsenic and lead. The assessment also flagged a specific risk of elevated blood lead levels in children.

The ecological damage extended further still. The assessment found risk to aquatic organisms from zinc in surface water, and documented that arsenic, lead, zinc, manganese, copper, and iron in soils posed threats to plants, invertebrates, birds, and mammals. The Arkansas River, running right along the southern and western boundaries of this site, sits downstream of all of this.

In 1998, the EPA selected a remedy that included institutional controls (legal deed restrictions prohibiting residential use and restricting mining), engineering controls to keep contamination contained, and groundwater monitoring. In February 2000, a federal court entered a consent decree binding Butala to those institutional controls. On June 29, 2000, Butala recorded a Declaration of Restrictive Covenants against the property, a legally binding document prohibiting residential development and restricting where mining could occur.

Butala signed that declaration. Butala recorded it with the county. Then Butala proceeded to violate it for the better part of a decade.

The Paper Trail: A Timeline of Violations

How They Broke Every Rule They Agreed To Follow

Starting in 2012, Butala quietly subdivided 18 acres on the western edge of the Smeltertown Site into 5 residential parcels, calling the development the Vista Del Rio Subdivision. This was land Butala itself had encumbered with a legally recorded deed restriction in 2000 explicitly prohibiting residential development. The agencies were told nothing. From 2012 to 2016, Butala sold 4 of the 5 parcels for residential development. By 2017, single-family homes had been built on all five lots.

The EPA and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment did not learn about the Vista Del Rio Subdivision until April 2020. That’s eight years after the subdivision was created, three to seven years after the homes were built, and decades after everyone involved knew the ground was contaminated with arsenic and lead. The agencies sent a Notice of Violation on September 21, 2020.

Meanwhile, the illegal mining had already been underway for years. From approximately 2018 through 2021, Butala mined and excavated approximately 84,600 cubic yards of material out of the Buffer Area, a protected zone where excavation required express written agency approval that was never sought. Then, in 2021, Butala or its agents went further: they entered the Mining Restricted Area, which carried an absolute prohibition, and excavated approximately 25,000 cubic yards of material, digging roughly 15 feet below the previous surface.

That “black material” was almost certainly creosote-contaminated soil. The company saw it, stopped the day’s work, and did not report it to regulators. Of the 25,000 cubic yards excavated from the forbidden zone, approximately 22,600 cubic yards were crushed for use in asphalt production and removed from the Butala property by a subcontractor. That material went somewhere. It was turned into asphalt. People may have driven on it, built roads with it, or paved their driveways with it.

They Saw the Contamination and Kept Quiet

The EPA’s own document records that Butala personnel “observed a black material” during the illegal excavation of the Mining Restricted Area. That black material was the physical evidence of the very contamination those restrictions existed to protect. The only action Butala took was to stop digging that day. It did not call the EPA. It did not report the discovery. The excavation of the contaminated area was already largely complete, and the material had already been crushed and shipped.

The EPA did not learn about the Mining Restricted Area excavation until after it issued a formal information request letter in January 2022, more than a year after the illegal activity took place. Butala submitted its initial response in February 2022 and then filed amendments in May and June of that year, suggesting that the full picture of what happened required multiple rounds of disclosure to piece together.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Can’t Measure

Think about what it means to buy a house. For most people, it is the single largest financial commitment of their lives, a decision made on the assumption that the ground beneath the foundation is not poisoned. The families who purchased parcels in the Vista Del Rio Subdivision between 2012 and 2016 made that assumption. They had no reason to question it. The seller knew the land carried legally recorded environmental restrictions. The seller did not mention them. Deeds were signed. Mortgages were taken out. Homes were built. Families moved in.

By the time the EPA sent a Notice of Violation to Butala in September 2020, children had been living on or near contaminated ground for at least three years, and possibly longer depending on when families moved in after construction. The 1995 Baseline Risk Assessment had already established, with scientific certainty, that this land posed a risk of elevated blood lead levels in children. Lead damage to a developing brain is permanent. There is no antidote. There is no undo button. Whatever neurological harm occurred in those years between occupancy and remediation cannot be returned to those children by any settlement payment.

The document records that regulators required Butala to prepare soil and groundwater sampling plans for the Vista Del Rio Subdivision in 2022. Groundwater sampling results were provided in December 2022. Soil sampling was completed in May 2023. As of the filing of this settlement in July 2024, the EPA had not yet completed its own risk assessment report for the subdivision. There is no final determination in this document on whether the residential land is safe. The families living there are still waiting for that answer.

There is also the matter of asphalt. Approximately 22,600 cubic yards of material excavated from a federally prohibited contaminated zone was crushed and removed from the Butala property by a subcontractor for use in asphalt production. The settlement document does not name the subcontractor. It does not name the roads, parking lots, or other surfaces where that asphalt was laid. The material came from soil contaminated with creosote and associated wood-treating chemicals. It was turned into a product that workers paved with, that vehicles drive over, that rain water washes off into drainage systems. Nobody in this settlement has been required to account for where that asphalt went.

There is also the question of the Arkansas River. The Smeltertown Site is bordered on the south and west by the river. The settlement records that site activities historically included “dumping of molten slag along the Arkansas River.” Creosote and other chemicals dripped into soil that sits above the groundwater table feeding the river corridor. The 1995 Risk Assessment found risk to aquatic organisms from zinc in surface water. Butala then illegally excavated and disturbed more of that contaminated ground, including stockpiling “several large boulders on the property between the Buffer Area and the Arkansas River.” The relationship between those stockpiled materials and the river is now one more thing the remedial investigation addendum must assess. In the meantime, the river continues to flow.

Legal Receipts: Their Own Words

Every quote below comes directly from the EPA’s Administrative Settlement Agreement and Order on Consent. These are facts the agency recorded in an official federal document.

“In 2012, unknown to the Agencies, Respondent subdivided the 18-acres along the western edge of the Site into 5 parcels, called the Vista Del Rio Subdivision. From 2012 to 2016, Respondent sold 4 parcels for residential property development and kept one parcel. Single family residences were built on all five parcels between 2013 and 2017.” — Findings of Fact, Paragraph 18. Butala secretly created and sold a residential subdivision on land it had legally declared off-limits for residential use, then said nothing about it to regulators for eight years.

“From approximately 2018 through 2021, unknown to the Agencies, Respondent mined and excavated approximately 84,600 cubic yards (yd³) of material out of the Buffer Area, an area defined in the Declaration.” — Findings of Fact, Paragraph 21. The Buffer Area was protected by the same legally recorded Declaration that Butala itself signed and filed with Chaffee County in 2000.

“In 2021, Respondent asserts that, for approximately two months, Respondent or its agents mined or excavated in, or allowed mining or excavation within the Mining Restricted Area, as defined in the Declaration… The remaining 22,600 yd³ of material was crushed for use in asphalt production and removed from the Butala property by a subcontractor. During operations, Respondent observed a black material, at which time it stopped excavation work.” — Findings of Fact, Paragraph 22. Butala saw evidence of contamination mid-operation and stopped digging. It did not report the discovery to the EPA or CDPHE.

“In 1995, a Baseline Risk Assessment performed for OU2 found unacceptable risks to future residents from ingestion and inhalation of surface soil, dermal contact with surface soil, and ingestion of groundwater. The Baseline Risk Assessment also identified a risk of elevated blood lead levels in children.” — Findings of Fact, Paragraph 12. This assessment existed and was on the public record when Butala was subdividing and selling the residential parcels between 2012 and 2016.

“The conditions described in Section IV (Findings of Fact) constitute an actual and/or threatened ‘release’ of a hazardous substance from the facility as defined by section 101(22) of CERCLA.” — Conclusions of Law, Paragraph 25(e). The EPA has formally concluded, on the record, that Butala’s activities constituted an actual or threatened release of hazardous substances under federal law.

Societal Impact: Who Pays When Corporations Cut Corners

Environmental Degradation

The Smeltertown Site represents over a century of compounded industrial destruction. Lead-zinc smelting contaminated the land and the Arkansas River corridor with heavy metals. Wood-treating operations soaked approximately 60 acres with creosote and associated chemicals, leaving a legacy of arsenic, lead, zinc, manganese, copper, and iron in soil layers at varying depths. The 1995 ecological risk assessment documented risks to aquatic organisms, plants, invertebrates, birds, and mammals across multiple soil zones.

When Butala illegally excavated the Mining Restricted Area to a depth of approximately 15 feet below the previous surface, it physically disturbed the most contaminated layers of soil that the 1998 remedy had been specifically designed to leave undisturbed and capped. The excavation exposed buried contamination to air, equipment, worker contact, and transport. The stockpiling of large boulders between the Buffer Area and the Arkansas River created a direct physical pathway between disturbed contaminated material and a living waterway.

The 22,600 cubic yards of crushed asphalt material represents a genuinely unknown secondary contamination pathway. Creosote is a complex mixture of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), many of which are classified as probable human carcinogens. When incorporated into asphalt and laid as road surface, these compounds can leach into stormwater runoff, enter drainage systems, and travel to waterways. The settlement identifies no plan to track or remediate that asphalt once it left the Butala property.

Public Health

The public health stakes of this case are anchored in a single, devastating fact: a 1995 federal risk assessment explicitly identified the risk of elevated blood lead levels in children at this site, and families with children were still allowed to build and occupy homes on the contaminated land seventeen to twenty-two years later. Lead poisoning in children causes permanent cognitive impairment, reduced IQ, behavioral disorders, and developmental delays. There is no safe level of lead exposure for children. There is no medical treatment that reverses the damage once it occurs.

The primary human health contaminants of concern identified in the 1995 assessment were arsenic and lead. Arsenic is a Group 1 human carcinogen, meaning there is sufficient evidence of its ability to cause cancer in humans. Exposure pathways identified in that same assessment included ingestion of surface soil, inhalation of surface soil, dermal contact with surface soil, and ingestion of groundwater. Children in the Vista Del Rio Subdivision played on this ground, breathed this air, and may have drunk from wells drawing on this groundwater. The soil and groundwater sampling programs mandated by this settlement were not completed until 2022 and 2023, years after families were already living there.

The settlement also notes that the required sampling and analysis plans were designed to be “broader than OU2 contaminants of concern” and include “general industrial contaminants.” This broader scope exists precisely because the full range of what Butala’s excavations may have disturbed and spread is not yet fully known. Families in the Vista Del Rio Subdivision are living inside an ongoing investigation.

Economic Inequality

Butala Construction Co. operated a sand and gravel mine on this property for decades and sought permission in 2018 to expand mining into the restricted zone. When that permission was delayed, the company appears to have proceeded anyway, treating the legal restrictions as bureaucratic obstacles rather than binding public health protections. The economic logic is transparent: mining the restricted material and crushing it into asphalt for sale generated revenue. Complying with federal environmental law would have cost time and money.

The families who bought residential parcels in the Vista Del Rio Subdivision paid market prices for homes on land they had no reason to know was environmentally restricted. They assumed the risk of something a corporation had knowingly concealed. When the contamination story eventually unravels, it is never the executives who lose their health, their home values, or their children’s cognitive development. It is always the people who trusted the transaction.

The $46,750 (roughly the cost of a used pickup truck) that Butala agreed to pay in past EPA response costs covers taxpayer money already spent investigating and overseeing a mess that Butala created through years of deliberate concealment. Future response costs remain unbilled and open-ended. The cost to the families living in the Vista Del Rio Subdivision, in medical screenings, potential remediation, property value uncertainty, and psychological stress, appears nowhere in this settlement’s financial calculations.

The Cost of a Life: Running the Numbers

More information on this site can be found by visiting the EPA’s link on this superfund site: https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0801085

You can also see the above PDF about this story by visiting this link also from the EPA’s website: https://yosemite.epa.gov/oa/rhc/epaadmin.nsf/Filings/BE49452AFBE83E7A85258AD8003C7EE3/$File/CERCLA-08-2024-0002%20Smeltertown%20Butala%20RIAFFS%20ASAOC.pdf

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