Superfund Site Profile
Pueblo was once home to five ore smelters and one steel mill. The Colorado Smelting Company smelter (also known as Colorado Smelter, Boston Smelter, Boston & Colorado Smelter, and Eilers Smelter) began operating in 1883. It was constructed on a mesa and waste slag was deposited in a ravine between Santa Fe Avenue and the Denver & Rio Grande railroad tracks. The owners of the Madonna Mine, located in Monarch, built the Colorado Smelter in order to smelt their extracted silver-lead ore in a cost effective manner. The Colorado Smelter operated eight blast furnaces, two calcining furnaces, one fusing furnace and twenty kilns.
The Colorado Smelting Company merged into the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) in 1899. The Colorado Smelter closed in 1908. Some of the slag was used as track ballast for the D&RG track constructed between Florence and Ca�on City. In 1923, bricks from the blast furnace smoke stack were used to construct St. Mary School.
The Colorado Smelter historical footprint is bound by Santa Fe Avenue to the east, Mesa Avenue to the south, Interstate 25 to the west, and the Arkansas River to the north. The Bessemer and Eilers neighborhoods are adjacent to the former Colorado Smelter site, which now consists of building remains and an approximately 700,000-square-foot slag pile where access is not completely restricted.
The potential for contamination at the Colorado Smelter site was discovered during an earlier inspection of the Santa Fe Bridge Culvert site, which began a series of investigations in the early 1990s and continues today. In 2010, CDPHE conducted a focused site inspection of properties surrounding the Colorado Smelter; this study determined that areas of elevated lead and arsenic exist, which pose a threat to current and future residents. Additional sampling will help determine the type and scope of cleanup activities.
TOPICS IN FOCUS
On September 9, 2014 the Colorado Smelter Community Advisory Group was officially formed. This group is an independent, non-partisan group consisting of a balance of diverse interests affected by and concerned about the site and the cleanup process. The overarching goal of the group is to have an effective cleanup completed by 2019.
Currently, community advisory group meetings are typically held on the second Tuesday of each month from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Steelworks Museum, 215 Canal St., Pueblo, Colo. These meetings are open to the public and are typically advertised in the Pueblo Chieftain the Friday before each meeting.
The group defines an effective cleanup as:
- Not causing unacceptable health risk to residents or animals, regardless of their age or desire to play in the parks, garden in their yards, or dig for pirate treasure in the neighborhood;
- Restoring the habitat and preventing future ecological risk;
- Promoting the economic vitality of the neighborhood;
- Preserving the historical structures and integrity of the neighborhood; and
- Limiting personal liability related to the smelter remediation.
The community advisory group intends to assist in achieving this goal of an effective cleanup by 2019 by:
- Providing input to EPA and other government entities that play a role in the cleanup to improve decision making for all;
- Sharing information, ideas, and concerns; and
- Serving as a conduit to the larger community.