Clapper, Patti, Schweizer and Mason

Pueblo Cold Storage was a property located at Elizabeth and Sixth Streets in Pueblo County, Colorado until it burned down on August 26, 2007.    Since that time, the county government has been trying to clean up the site, which is known to be contaminated with asbestos containing materials.

 

Asbestos is a highly toxic mineral fiber that can cause serious diseases, such as mesothelioma, asbestosis and lung cancer. It is common to find asbestos in damaged buildings that were built before the 1980’s. Thousands of construction products contained asbestos before the substance became highly regulated by federal and state government agencies due to its potential hazard to human and environmental health.

 

Efforts to complete the final clean up continue even though Pueblo County has struggled with budgeting problems due to the high costs of asbestos removal and trying to get funds from the previous owner and environmental contractor who worked on the site.

 

The plan for cleaning the property is to excavate debris from the burned building, fill in a deep hole with contaminated dirt, and then cap it with 3 feet of clean fill and a 2 inch layer of asphalt. This measure, referred to as “capping,” is intended to encapsulate toxic asbestos so there is no chance of it ever becoming airborne.  The final phase of clean up has an estimated cost of $550,000.