Boulder attorney Randall M. Weiner has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado on behalf of his clients, Walter Myers and Katherine Myers, both of Cañon City, and Amanda Weakland and Patrick Weakland, both of Windsor.

The suit claims the Bureau of Land Management had violated the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, known better as the Clean Water Act. According to the suit, the Park Center Well, which reportedly discharged several times, caused pollutants from the well to flow into Four Mile Creek without a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit.

“The old well and the new well are 100 feet apart so they hit the same aquifer,” Myers said. “The well (on my property) is the well they ruined. I took a sample of the water to Hazen (Research Inc.) in Golden. (The pollutants) are well above EPA standards. I was willing to deal with them initially until I found out there was radiation involved, then I backed away. They wouldn’t do it anyway. I asked for $15,000 to do some work on my well and installation for our solar electricity in order to clean up my well, so I needed more panels.”

Myers said the problem began when Hydro Rocky Mountain Inc., began drilling the Park Center Well north and adjacent to his property boundary in July 2010. At that point, the water blew up the derik.

“They tried to fix it, and all of sudden, it spewed out,” he said. “They said it was freezing, but it wasn’t.”

When he tried to contact the BLM, Myers claims they did not acknowledge the problem so he wrote to the EPA.

“On encountering the artesian system, uncontrolled flow of hot water issues from the well casing and flowing into the existing stream, which traverses my property in a north-south direction, and ultimately flows into the Arkansas River,” he said in the letter.

The elevated warmth of the water impacted the environment, the eco-system, the existing vegetation and fish habitat of the stream, Myers continued in his letter.

Myers said although he repeatedly requested BLM to investigate the situation, “BLM has failed to acknowledge the situation, perform sampling and/or initiate discussions regarding the restoration of the property to the pre-existing condition.”

“BLM had drilled a couple wells at the Park Center site and failed to report a blowout that occurred at the new well. It’s actually not their first blow out, but over a decade or so, it’s blown out at least two times. In the meantime, there’s an old well that the district uses to provide drinking water to a number of residents in Cañon City. That well water is partially used to quench the thirst of Cañon City residents and it goes through a purification process,” Weiner said in documents filed in the lawsuit.

“The water that has been captured goes into Four Mile Creek. Whenever there is a discharge into a waterway, then the entity in charge must get a Clean Water Act permit. When they don’t have that permit, they’re subject to significant penalties of about $27,000 per day per violation. The reason is Colorado require a permit as a way to ratchet down the amount of pollution that goes into the water in the United States. The Clean Water Act enacted in 1980 for the purpose of making all our water drinkable, swimable and fishable. In this case, we are concerned that the water was tested and the unfiltered water is extremely high in (radiation).”

BLM public relations officer Denise Adamic said the work on the well is a continuation of the maintenance of the well that was built the first time.

“We’re responding to their lawsuit in the court process right now,” she said. “As far as the lawsuit goes, there’s nothing that we can talk about it.”