Old West echoes in battle between Fountain Creek ranchers, mining firm

There’s a stretch of land along Fountain Creek where the Old West lives on. Cattle move across the brown hills and the cottonwood trees are black against the sky. To motorists speeding on Interstate 25 between Colorado Springs and Pueblo, the land seems peaceful.

In actuality, it’s a battleground.

For six decades, the Frosts and Hannas, two of the ranching families who own land next to Fountain Creek, have been fending off efforts by people who want what’s above, below, or runs through their property.

They’ve fought land speculators, developers, oil companies, utilities and toll-road firms. In the process, they’ve lost some ground to the guys in tassel loafers who wheel documents into court in luggage carriers. They’ve also lost ground to the flash floods that have periodically rampaged down Fountain Creek.

Now they’re battling Lafarge, a multinational company headquartered in Paris that wants to erect a 745-acre operation adjacent to their ranchlands that will include an asphalt plant,  a concrete plant and the  extraction of 30 million tons of sand and gravel  over 15 years.

Even Parisians who have only watched Westerns and television reruns would recognize this stretch of Fountain Creek: deer and antelope roam across the endangered grasslands; bald eagles, blue herons, wild turkey and hawks live among the wetlands.

If Lafarge and Sundance Investments, the property owner, are successful, it will be decades before the land is restored to its former condition and the wildlife return, warns rancher Ferris Frost. “Once you’ve lost it, you can’t bring it back.”

Ken Salazar, former U.S. senator and now Interior secretary, said a couple of years ago the Fountain Creek area could become the region’s “crown jewel” if the water were cleaned up, the flooding controlled, and the agriculture sustained and the sweeping views maintained.

Salazar’s still supportive of turning the Fountain Creek area into an amenity, a spokesman said this week, but the Interior Department is not taking a position on Lafarge’s proposal. “It’s a local land-use decision,” said Matt Lee-Ashley. “We’re not involved in that.”

Richard Skorman, a former city councilman who helped craft a document guiding the restoration and preservation of Fountain Creek, said, “There’s a bigger purpose to all this than one company’s property rights or access to cheap gravel for construction purposes.”

Lafarge, which is leasing the land,  is having a tough time getting approval for its proposed operation, which would be located on the east side of Interstate 25 across from the Pike’s Peak International Raceway. In September, the Fountain Creek Watershed Flood Control and Greenway District, an entity recently established  by the state Legislature, rejected the plan.

“To take one of the most stable and beautiful parts of the creek and run a gravel operation through it is not consistent with our plans for the creek,” said Jeff Chostner, a Pueblo County commissioner and vice chair of the district.

On Oct. 22, the El Paso County Planning Commission also voted to deny Lafarge the variance and special use permit needed to begin operations. The El Paso County Board of Commissioners was set to hear the issue on Nov. 12, but the company unexpectedly asked to be taken off the agenda.

Lafarge spokesman, Joëlle Lipski-Rockwood, said that doesn’t mean Lafarge is withdrawing its request. “At our last meeting, some new issues were brought up by some citizens. We want to ensure that we take the time to properly research the responses to those questions and address them completely,” she added in an e-mail. 

Lafarge, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of cement, asphalt, concrete and other building materials, is no stranger to controversy. According to its 2009 corporate financial statement, it was fined about 250 million euros, or $370 million, by the European Commission for price-fixing on drywall. In Germany, alone, it paid out 16 million euros, or about $24 million, for anti-competitive practices.

Maryland’s attorney general last May filed a lawsuit against a Lafarge concrete production facility and quarry, alleging 413 violations of water pollution laws. In New York and Michigan, it’s accused of spewing high levels of mercury into the air. And here in Colorado, two asphalt trucks working for Lafarge accidentally dumped 10,000 gallons of asphalt into the Cache la Poudre River near Fort Collins in two unrelated incidents, according to news reports.

Still, the company has also received some awards for its environmental efforts and says it intends to comply with all state and federal regulations governing air and water pollution. “Lafarge,” said  Lipski-Rockwood, “will install best management practices on the site to eliminate chemical releases to water and to minimize discharges to the air.”

The actual mining will occur in stages on a 514-acre parcel next to the creek.. To camouflage its operations and retain some of the area’s pastoral flavor, the company’s planning on leaving an existing hay shed in place, plant some trees and erect earthen berms. The site, the company says in documents filed with the El Paso County Planning Department,  “will only be seen for a couple of seconds by traffic on I-25 traveling at the posted speed limit.”

Behind the berm, though, the site will be crawling with bulldozers, excavators, scrapers, mixer trucks, as well as machinery that will be washing, crushing and conveying gravel from place to place.  The noise levels, they maintain, will hardly be greater than the hum of traffic on nearby Interstate 25.

When everything is up and running, as many as 400 trucks a day could be rumbling up and down the highway. The company’s agreed to widen the on and off ramps leading to the interstate,  as well as enlarge an overpass leading toward the property.

Since the water table is high, the mining company plans to build slurry walls, pump out the excess water and divert it into holding ponds. The water will then gradually be released back into Fountain Creek.

Opponents worry that the mining operations could  free up selenium in the creek. Selenium, which is already present in relatively high concentrations in the creek, can damage internal organs and is fatal in high enough doses. The  asphalt and concrete plants will be using dozens of chemicals and heavy metals that could inadvertently escape into the air and water.

When all the sand and gravel’s mined out, the company has promised to reseed the land with native vegetation and fill the gaping pits with water. It’s passed out glossy photos of blue lakes and water skiers skimming along the surface.

It’s an image of Eden, but it’s unrealistic to think Lafarge can deliver on the promise, cautions Jay Winner,  director of the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District.

Creating lakes will take water rights, expensive water rights that could cost as much as $50 million. “It never happens. It’s too expensive,” he said.

Lafarge insists it can be done.

That’s not enough for the ranchers who have to live with what’s left behind when Lafarge has taken its 30 million tons of gravel from the earth.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Ferris Frost. “There are no guarantees.”

Call the reporter at 476-4825