"This whole place is supposed to be covered up, but shit just blows off," he says. "You can see it for miles. It looks like the hills are on fire, but it's actually the [methane] gas coming out."
He shifts the Ford into gear, looks to his left, looks to his right, then hits the accelerator. A moment later, he's on the roadside again.
"See that shit here?" he asks, gesturing toward a hunk of trash poking through the dirt. "This whole hill is full of crap. The weight of the stuff on top is pushing trash out the sides. Sometimes you can just see shit sticking out of it. And the smell. Aw, the smell. Rotten eggs."
He checks traffic, punches the accelerator and continues the tour. A Beach Boys CD bounces beside him on a seat cluttered with news clippings, legal documents, loose papers and a videocamera. "This might make you sick," he says, heading toward a nearby marsh. "This is the grossest shit you've ever seen."
Over the past three years, Fox has come to know practically every plume of coal ash, every washed-out ravine and every animal hole dug into the side of the old Browning-Ferris Industries landfill at 6100 North Pecos Street. He has patrolled the perimeter of the 60-acre site time and again, snapping photos, shooting videotape and scribbling notes on alleged violations of state and federal environmental law. "See that?" he asks, looking up at a streak of gray dust spilling along a ridge. "That's coal ash from the power plant. It's supposed to be covered up, but when it rains, it washes right down. And Clear Creek is only a hundred feet away."
Fox is not an attorney, not a health official, not an environmentalist. Far from it, in fact. He's an entrepreneur who dreams of opening a topless club directly beside the old dump. But the man who owns the landfill, Phil Spano, stands in his way.
Late last year, Fox blew the whistle on what turned out to be illegal dumping on Spano's land. In December, the state shut Spano down. As a result, Fox found himself squaring off against one of Adams County's most powerful figures, a 73-year-old businessman known for his political contacts and campaign contributions. In March, Spano hit Fox with a lawsuit -- a slap suit -- charging him with trespassing, slander and lost business. Now it's Fox who stands to lose everything.
"He can take my house. He can take my vehicle. He can take every penny I have for the rest of my life," Fox says of his nemesis. "He can break me."
Fox wheels his faded pickup into the weedy lot where he wanted to build his strip club and opens a storage garage that houses a half-dozen cars, musty carpet rolls and assorted restaurant equipment. He wipes off two chairs, drags them near the door and sits back in the afternoon light.
He is 44 years old, single, with no kids. His hair is short, brown and bristly, his mustache is short, brown and bristly, and his eyes, also brown, are ringed with deep crow's feet. On this day he wears a yellow polo shirt, faded blue jeans and old running shoes. He speaks slowly and deliberately, with the agitated tone of someone who has waited a long time to say what he has to say. And he has a lot to say, digressing frequently into alleged instances of favoritism and coverups in Adams County.
Fox has been everything from a construction supervisor to a strip-bar manager. In 1997, after working a few construction jobs and running a few topless dance clubs throughout Adams County and Boulder, he decided to open his own adult-entertainment emporium, called 9 1/2 Weeks. If he could get a liquor license, it would be a topless bar; if he couldn't, it would be an all-nude dance club serving juice, coffee and soft drinks. He had it all planned, even drove every mile of industrial Adams County looking for the ideal location. When a two-acre truckyard on Pecos hit the market, he made his move. The place seemed perfect: close to I-76, set back a mile from neighborhoods, surrounded by railroad tracks, lumber yards, storage lots and the old landfill.
But after Fox filed his application, county officials balked. A self-storage lot across the street had moved a trailer onto its lot for an on-site caretaker. Since county law prohibits exotic dance clubs from operating within 1,500 feet of a dwelling, officials refused Fox's application, arguing that his proposed club would be detrimental to the area.
Fox couldn't believe it: The trailer hadn't appeared until after he had filed. So he sued. While his case worked through the federal court system, Fox tried to open a bikini go-go dancer bar a few miles away. But again, he was challenged.
It was then that Fox took a hard look at Spano's property. The land had once been a gravel mine and was turned into a dump in the '70s. From 1980 to 1984, the landfill was operated by BFI, which leased the land from Spano. After BFI pulled out, Spano agreed to close the dump for good, in accordance with state health department regulations. In 1995, Spano received permission from Adams County to fill the pit and level the land so he could build a warehouse park on top of the dump. As part of that process, Spano was allowed to truck in brick, concrete, asphalt and ash from coal-burning power plants. He could not, however, accept such things as household garbage and yard trash; the facility was not to be used as a "regular landfill."
But whenever Fox tried to work on his club -- after he sued, the county eventually agreed to let him proceed -- he was overwhelmed by the stench wafting from Spano's land. Some days, Fox says, he would sit back in the storage garage and watch people haul car batteries, tires, appliances and garbage bags to the pit. One weekend, he'd had enough -- so he took a camera to the dump and photographed piles of rotting debris and garbage. After that, Fox attended public hearings, phoned environmental officials and presented his snapshots to county and state agencies, but he got no response. So he shot a video and gave it to BFI, which later sued Spano for his handling of its old landfill. And last fall, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment finally launched an inquiry.
What Colorado officials found was this: Spano had improperly allowed people to dump tree trunks, pallets, roofing trash, couches, drywall, cardboard, sheet rock, plastic, aluminum siding and old tires. And in December, they ordered Spano to stop.
In March, Spano slapped Fox with a lawsuit. Fox had trespassed on his land at various times in November and December, Spano charged; he also claimed that Fox had slandered him by making a false claim that he had harrassed Fox.
In January, Fox had filed a complaint with the Adams County sheriff, claiming that he was harassed by Spano when he went to film the dump site (at the urging of a Channel 4 reporter). This slap suit, Fox contends, is an attempt at intimidation.
"He wants to shut me up," Fox says. "He wants to stop me from telling people what he's doing. I'm just trying to do business without having a stink and a dump that shouldn't be next to me in the first place. I didn't do anything wrong."
Joan Seeman, who heads the local chapter of the Sierra Club's hazardous-waste committee, agrees that Fox was simply trying to get county and state officials to do their jobs. "There has absolutely been a problem with permitting in that area," she says. "And we still don't have a clear understanding of what's going on. Citizens have every right to ask questions. Which is exactly what he did. But industry just wants to close its doors and not allow public participation. Basically, this seems to be a debate between county and state agencies as to what should and should not be done with that property. It looks like Paul Fox got caught in the middle."
Although Spano is out of town, his attorney, James Peters, flatly disputes that characterization.
"It is not accurate to say this is little guy versus big guy," Peters says. "Mr. Fox has trespassed upon Mr. Spano's property. He has taken videotape and delivered it to Mr. Spano's chief competitor (BFI). He was going around saying negative things about Mr. Spano that were not true. He has made allegations not only against Mr. Spano but others in the county as well. And there will probably be more once we depose him."
At the moment, Spano is complying with their orders, state officials say, using the land as a waste transfer station where debris is dumped temporarily rather than as a regular landfill. Spano also has been allowed to dump dirt, concrete and coal ash to prepare the old landfill for permanent closure.
"As far as I know, everything checks out," says Howard Roitman, director of the state's hazardous-materials and waste-management divisions. "But if we get a complaint, we'll check it out."
Fox isn't holding his breath. Earlier this month he sold a friend the property beside the old landfill to finance his legal battle with Spano -- and that put all plans for an exotic dance club on hold. Until Spano's lawsuit against him goes to trial next year, there's not much Fox can do but sort through his photos and his videos and watch the trucks rumble by.
"Hey, I'll fight back," Fox says. "I'll fight back like you wouldn't believe. Either you defend yourself or you're buried."
