When a remodel turns into a $60,000 lesson: One builder’s run-in with Colorado’s regulatory system

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice

When Rob Treta started expanding a small home for his girlfriend in Arvada, he thought he was dealing with a familiar problem—delays.

“I submitted the plans and I said, ‘Hey, tell me what I need to do,’” Treta said. “They told me three to four weeks. It took 22 weeks. Nobody ever mentioned asbestos.”

Treta has been building in Colorado for 30 years. He has worked across multiple counties, pulled permits, remodeled homes and built from the ground up.

What changed isn’t entirely clear—but Treta said what he ran into felt unlike anything he had seen in decades of building.

“I’ve probably built 60, 70 projects in my 30 years,” he said. “And I’ve never run into this before. Never.”

This wasn’t how his projects usually went.

It started with a small house and a plan to build onto it. Then things began stacking up. A stop work order. Calls from the state. New requirements he said he hadn’t run into before.

The original home. Treta said the project started as a small expansion to an existing structure. (Photos provided by Rob Treta.)

By the end of it, he said the cost was past $60,000.

At one point, Treta said he was told he could not even step onto the property.

“If I step foot on the property, I’ll go to jail for a year,” he said.

The situation began, he said, with a neighbor complaint.

“That’s what started the whole thing—the neighbor. He called and complained that I was demoing and didn’t have an asbestos test.”

Treta began working while a final permitting issue was being addressed by the City. He said the delay came down to how to fire-protect the ceiling of the attached unit. What was supposed to take a few weeks stretched into months. “It was the first one like this in Arvada,” Treta said. “They didn’t really know how to review it.”

Even so, he said the work he had done was not unsupervised.

“I knew my zoning was good, and I had a structural engineer signing off on everything,” he said. “Everything was approved except one detail. I couldn’t wait 22 weeks.”

City officials took issue with the project moving forward before the building permit was issued. Treta does not dispute that part. That decision is where things started to unravel.

What followed turned on something most people wouldn’t think twice about during a remodel.

Once more than 32 square feet of material is involved—even something as common as drywall or roofing—a typical remodel can trigger asbestos testing requirements without the homeowner realizing it.

Treta believed the issue came from drywall tape.

“The tape joints on the drywall contained 1.5% asbestos,” he said. “The threshold is only 1%.”

The testing itself adds another layer of complexity. Inspection reports identified asbestos in material disturbed during demolition at levels just above the state’s regulatory threshold, set at 1 percent—even when the difference is measured in fractions of a percent, something that may not be obvious during the course of a typical renovation.

To Treta, and likely to most homeowners, that distinction is not obvious.

“I thought because the house was so small, it would be under the threshold,” he said.

It was not.

Once that material is disturbed, the situation changes. It’s not just what was in the house anymore. It’s where it went.

Treta said the process quickly escalated.

“If you remove drywall and throw it in a dumpster without testing, they’ll declare your whole property a spill,” he said. “They’ll dig up your yard, remove two inches of dirt and you’re paying for it.”

A containment setup and environmental crew on site during cleanup. Once the project was classified as a potential asbestos spill, remediation work followed.

A spill delineation report later documented debris around the site and recommended professional cleanup. Photos show fragments of material mixed into the soil near the structure—something most homeowners would likely see as typical construction debris.

For Treta, that translated into removing soil across the property and hiring a licensed abatement crew.

“They made me take two inches of dirt off the entire lot,” he said.

Excavation around the home during cleanup.

For most homeowners, it’s not the rule itself that creates the problem—it’s how easily a routine project can cross a line they didn’t know existed.

The cleanup itself was about $33,000. And it didn’t stop there.

Treta said he paid thousands for testing, inspections and reports, along with more than $15,000 in legal fees. The city installed a fence around the property and billed him more than $6,000.

“All in, it’s probably around $60,000,” he said. “And that’s not counting three months of lost work.”

The project stalled as the process unfolded.

“You’re looking at four or five months just for asbestos, then a year for permitting,” he said. “You haven’t even put a shovel in the ground.”

The City of Arvada filed multiple charges, including construction without a permit, failure to comply with stop work orders and storm drainage violations.

“They hit me with like eight additional charges,” Treta said. “They really wanted to ruin my life.”

The charges against Treta were dismissed on March 11. Treta said he left court that day without anything hanging over him. A few days later, the case was sealed. 

The case was over. The impact wasn’t.

Treta says the biggest problem is how little people understand about the rules until they are already caught in them.

“Nobody knows this,” he said. “This could happen to a homeowner remodeling their kitchen.”

He believes the way the rules are communicated is part of the issue. Because he filed his permit in person instead of online, he said he never saw the asbestos warnings that now appear in digital applications.

“They told me it’s not their responsibility—it’s mine to know the laws,” he said.

Even after decades in construction, he said he had no idea how strict the enforcement had become.

The implications go beyond one project.

“This is just another layer of cost being added to housing,” he said. “And it gets passed on to the buyer.”

He said those added costs come from multiple directions—testing, mitigation requirements, engineering standards and compliance measures that did not exist when he started.

“All these things add up,” he said. “And they’re driving small builders out.”

Large developers can absorb those costs. Independent builders often cannot.

“The small guy can’t lay out that kind of money and wait a year to get a permit,” he said. “It just doesn’t work.”

Treta is now working with lawmakers to change the rules, with a goal of aligning Colorado with federal standards that exempt single-family homes.

“If Colorado hadn’t changed the rules in 2001, this would all be exempt,” he said.

He sees his case as a warning.

“This could happen to anybody.”

Treta said he has been working with Rep. Ken DeGraaf on legislation aimed at scaling back the state’s asbestos requirements for residential projects.

DeGraaf said the proposal is pending approval to be introduced as a late bill this session.

Treta’s story shows what can happen when Colorado’s rules meet a real-world project—and how difficult it can be for the people affected to navigate them.

The rules are technical. The thresholds are low. The consequences can be significant.

Colorado’s asbestos requirements for residential demolition have been in place for years. What’s less clear is whether enforcement has shifted, whether those rules are clearly communicated in practice, and whether homeowners and builders are expected to fully understand them before a project even begins—or how consistently those rules are applied.

“It’s a huge bureaucratic process,” Treta said. “And nobody knows about it until they’re in it.”