Colorado environmental regulators could eliminate rules that prevent some of the contaminated groundwater from being dumped into the state’s rivers and streams. This has alarmed environmentalists, who fear the change could further harm already polluted urban waterways.
The Water Quality Control Division of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has proposed abolishing the permit system that regulates how owners of underground structures deal with contaminated groundwater. The change would allow building owners to send groundwater contaminated with PFAS chemicals, arsenic and other contaminants directly to stormwater systems without treatment.
Environmental advocates and former Water Quality Control Department Staff fear the change could harm the water quality of the South Platte River and its tributary Cherry Creek as they flow through Denver, along with other Front Range waterways.
“We’re talking about some really nasty toxins,” says Josh Kuhn, the senior water campaign manager of Preserve Colorado.
The permits in question regulating underground drainage: the process of removing groundwater that seeps into underground structures such as parking garages and basements. CDPHE oversees 113 long-term dewatering permits, which require building owners to measure how much water they discharge, test the water for contaminants and treat the water if contaminant levels exceed contaminant limits.
If approved, the policy changes would eliminate all permitting, reporting and treatment requirements for dewatering systems. State water quality officials said the permitting system was burdensome on building owners and that undoing the regulations would not have a major impact on water health. The water quality department is accepting public comment on the proposed change through Saturday.
Most of the 113 permitted buildings are concentrated in downtown Denver, although some are in Boulder and other Front Range communities. The Colorado Convention Center, the nearby Hyatt Regency Denver hotel and many other large downtown buildings have permits for their dewatering systems.
The systems remove groundwater and send it to rainwater systems. In Denver, all rainwater flows into the South Platte, which communities downstream use for drinking water. The river has suffered from poor water quality for decades.
Groundwater in urban areas is often contaminated by the chemicals used in modern life – such as fertilizers, toxic PFAS known as ‘forever chemicals’, firefighting foam and gasoline – and by naturally occurring metals, such as arsenic and selenium.
Many of the facilities with dewatering systems treat water that far exceeds water quality standards, according to CDPHE data collected by Parish Mega lawyer the Environmental Integrity Project who previously worked for the Colorado Water Quality Division and administered permits. Without the permitting system, facilities would not be required to treat the water and could instead send the contaminated water to the stormwater system and ultimately to the river.
For example, under current permit holders, an apartment complex in Highland discharges water to the stormwater system at 202 micrograms of arsenic per liter – more than 10,000 times the water quality standard of 0.02 micrograms per liter for aquatic and human life. A retirement home for priests in southeast Denver is treating water with nearly four times as much uranium as the water quality standard allows.
And a parking garage on Wewatta Street next to Cherry Creek treats water with about 15 times the concentration of PFAS listed in state guidelines, which are more lax than recently announced federal drinking water standards.
CDPHE official: “Very low risk” of change
Department of Water Quality Director Nicole Rowan said revoking the permits would have a negligible impact on the South Platte’s water quality because the number of permitted buildings was low and they were not releasing as much water.
“We believe this proposed policy change on dewatering permits poses a very low risk to overall water policy,” Rowan said.
The change would only affect a small number of the thousands of water quality permits the division oversees, Rowan said. She also said groundwater will eventually find its way into the river with or without the permits.
In Denver, buildings typically discharge about 5 gallons per minute, Rowan said. That’s about 8 acre-feet per year per building entering the South Platte, which contains about 342,000 acre-feet of water. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover an acre – about the size of a football field – with one foot of water.
The Department of Water Quality has heard concerns over the past year about the affordability of meeting permit requirements, especially when it comes to affordable housing projects, Rowan said.
But affordability concerns shouldn’t lead to the entire permitting process being canceled, Parish said. The current system allows developers and building owners to request exceptions to requirements, such as when the required treatment is exorbitantly expensive or technically impossible, she said.
“I think this is something developers should spend their money on,” Parish said. “But if the argument is that this treatment is too expensive and they can’t afford it, then there are legal ways to address that.”
“It prioritizes short-term convenience”
Advocates of Conservation Colorado are particularly concerned about the planned extensive redevelopments of Elitch Gardens Theme and Water Park and around Ball Arena – two major sites located at the core of the confluence of the South Platte and Cherry Creek.
If the permit system is abolished, some of the progress made by state lawmakers and federal regulators to limit the spread of PFAS will be reversed, Kuhn said.
“It prioritizes short-term convenience and cost savings over long-term health and environmental protection,” he said.
The change would also violate state and federal clean water laws, Kuhn and Parish said. It could expose the division to lawsuits and create legal uncertainty in the regulatory process, Kuhn said.
The Water Quality Control Division’s own policy states that the Colorado Water Quality Control Act requires all discharges of pollutants from point sources into state waters – such as from dewatering systems – to be subject to discharge permit requirements. The department then indicates that it will not use permits to regulate drainage discharges.
Rowan said the division is using its enforcement authority to stop implementing dewatering regulations. The division manages thousands of permits and must assess which sources of pollutants they are using resources on, she said.
“I think our decision here was to propose exercising enforcement discretion based on weighing the high costs of treatment and resources with what we believe are the relatively low environmental benefits of the permits,” Roman said.
The Department of Water Quality does not have an implementation date for the proposed policy change, if implemented. Public comment can be sent to Rowan via email at nicole.rowan@state.co.us.
“I think we will use the feedback as a basis for the next steps in this policy,” Rowan said.
Get more Colorado news by signing up for our Mile High Roundup email newsletter.