Cotter Corp.'s uranium mill near Cañon City has the state's backing to permanently dispose of radioactive waste in its tailings ponds, despite state and independent reports over a 30-year period showing the ponds' liners leak.

A 2004 internal state health department memo went so far as to describe the site as "unusable" for hazardous- waste disposal under state regulations.

Allowing the radioactive waste to remain on site is just the latest chapter in a 50-year saga during which regulators for the state, which owned the land during 20 years that Cotter polluted it, ignored warnings from the Environmental Protection Agency, independent firms and their own engineers.