Denver’s fire training facility at 5440 Roslyn St. has been dumping dangerous “forever chemicals” into the soil, surface water and groundwater, contaminating the South Adams County Water and Sanitation District’s water supply, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court on Tuesday.
The pollution — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS — comes from foam products that firefighters and trainees use to put out fires at the training facility.
The Commerce City-based water district first discovered the chemicals in 2018, and the district has spent “tens of millions” to treat and import water, and to start construction on a new, $80 million water treatment plant. The water is safe for domestic use, according to the complaint — but at a high cost the district wants Denver to help pay.
The district delivers more than 3 billion gallons to 75,000 people over 28 square miles in Adams County each year. The water comes from the alluvial aquifer tributary to the South Platte River and stems from 11 water supply wells and some other sources.
The fire training facility is roughly a mile from one of those wells and dates back to at least 1991. Part of the facility is a burn house that the city lights on fire and then extinguishes with a foam that includes PFAS, the lawsuit states.
The complaint alleges the department has failed to control the release of the foam and polluted the water. Denver itself has found PFAS contamination at the site as recently as 2024.
The contamination has forced the South Adams County district to buy more water from Denver Water to dilute the forever chemical contamination. It also has used granular activated carbon to treat water at the existing plant, raising costs.
Meanwhile, the district is building a new water treatment facility to treat PFAS. While the project will get state and federal funding, the district needs more money to complete it. The lawsuit seeks to force Denver to pay for the district’s past and future costs to respond to the contamination.
The district’s planned new treatment facility, the Klein Enhancement Project, will use ion exchange technology to treat the water. Building and operating that will be costly, with the district estimating the construction cost at $80 million. It received $61 million in federal grants and will sit just west of the Klein Water Treatment Facility at 7400 Quebec St. in Commerce City. Completion is expected to continue until late this year.
Denver’s City Attorney Office declined to comment on this story. Neither the Denver’s City Attorney’s Office nor the South Adams County Water and Sanitation District immediately responded to requests for comment.
