Uranium Mill Tailings, Grand Junction Foundations, and the Permit Trigger

There is a piece of Grand Junction history that sits directly under some of its houses, and it becomes relevant the moment a homeowner applies for a building permit. If your property predates 1966, this is worth reading before you plan foundation work.

What happened

The Climax Uranium Company mill operated in Grand Junction from 1950 to 1970 and produced about 2.2 million tons of tailings. Between 1950 and 1966 those tailings were given away free to the public, and they were widely used as fill and as aggregate in concrete and mortar. More than 4,000 private and commercial properties in the Grand Junction area received them.

In 1966 the Colorado Department of Health found elevated radon-222 in structures where tailings had been used, and Climax stopped releasing material. By that point roughly 300,000 tons had already left the site. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment describes the material as having been used in foundations, mortar, driveways, soil and other locations on a property.

Nobody was acting improperly by the standards of the time. The material was sand-like, free, and locally abundant in a valley that was building fast during a uranium boom that made Grand Junction the Atomic Energy Commission’s uranium procurement headquarters.

What was done about it

Congress passed Public Law 92-314 on 16 June 1972, creating a remedial action programme specifically for Grand Junction, funded at $22.7 million over fifteen years. The broader Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act, Public Law 95-604, followed on 8 November 1978, and Grand Junction is managed under its Title I.

The tailings went to what was called the Cheney disposal cell, now the Grand Junction Disposal Site, about eighteen miles south-east of the city. Around 4.4 million cubic yards had been moved by the end of 1994, and the vicinity-property cleanup was completed in 1998. The former mill site was quitclaimed to the City in March 1997 and is now Las Colonias Park.

Why this is not closed history

Here is the part that matters practically. The Department of Energy states that the disposal cell will remain open until it is filled to capacity or until 2031, whichever comes first, to receive additional low-level radioactive material expected from sources such as unremediated tailings buried under roads and along utility lines. Up to 219,000 cubic yards of capacity remain, and the site is managed indefinitely by the DOE Office of Legacy Management.

CDPHE, for its part, still runs an active programme and states that uranium mill tailings can still be found at numerous locations throughout the county.

The permit trigger

The rule a homeowner needs to know is this. If you are not applying for a building permit, no action is required. If you do apply for a building permit, removal is triggered.

Removal is at the property owner’s cost. Disposal in Grand Junction is free of charge.

That is an important interaction for anyone planning foundation work on an older property, because foundation repair is permitted work. A piering job on a pre-1966 property involves excavating at the footing line, which is precisely where fill material would sit, and the permit application is the event that brings the requirement into play.

What this means in practice

Scope it correctly. This concerns properties that existed during the give-away period, broadly 1950s and 1960s construction. Around 18 percent of Grand Junction housing was built in 1959 or earlier, and the median year built across the city is 1992, so the great majority of local housing is well outside the window. Newer construction is not affected.

Detection is by gamma survey. Gamma radiation measurement is the method used to identify tailings on a property. CDPHE has historically made gamma meters available on free loan to homeowners who want to check.

Ask about it early rather than late. If your house is from the right era and you are planning permitted excavation work, raising the question at the quote stage is much less disruptive than discovering it once a crew is on site. A contractor who works on older Grand Junction housing regularly will have encountered it.

It is not a reason to avoid permitting work. Unpermitted structural work creates a different and worse problem at resale, and the disposal itself is free.

A condition particular to this valley

Foundation work in most parts of the country never runs into anything like this. In Grand Junction it is a documented, still-active federal programme with a specific interaction with the permit process, and it applies to a defined slice of the housing stock.

If you own a house here from the uranium era, the historical connection is not abstract. The same boom that built a lot of this housing also distributed the material some of it was built with.

For the wider local rules picture, see the licensing and permits note, and for the ground itself, the Mancos Shale guide.