An Adams County water district filed a lawsuit against Denver on Tuesday, alleging that foam from the city’s fire training facility has contaminated its water for decades.
The South Adams County Water and Sanitation District says the city’s Roslyn Fire Training Facility, near the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, has used firefighting foam containing a group of chemicals known as PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” since at least 1991.
PFAS is short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, and they have been linked to “serious health effects,” according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“Denver has failed to eliminate or control releases of (the chemicals) at and from the fire training facility and those releases have contaminated and continue to contaminate the District’s drinking water supplies,” the lawsuit alleges.
The district serves about 75,000 residents in Commerce City and unincorporated Adams County. It first discovered the contamination in 2018.
Since then, the district has spent tens of millions of dollars to mitigate the issue, according to the lawsuit. Officials there built another water treatment facility specifically to treat PFAS, and it purchased water from Denver Water to dilute the contaminated water.
Even with state and federal funding, the lawsuit says, “there remains a huge deficit” from the costs associated with the firefighting foam.
The district asks a U.S. District Court judge to rule that Denver is liable for the response costs and for the ongoing costs the district will incur. It notes that water district officials notified Denver city officials of this claim back in 2019.
The amount that the city of Denver would have to pay, if found liable, would be determined in a trial.
A spokesperson for the Denver City Attorney’s Office said Tuesday that the city had not yet been served with the lawsuit and that the office had no comment.
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