Wildlife roam where U.S. once forged deadly weapons

DENVER — From a tiny Pacific island to a leafy Indiana forest, a handful of sites where the United States manufactured and tested some of the most lethal weapons known to humankind are now peaceful havens for wildlife.

An astonishing array of animals and habitats flourished at six former weapons complexes — mostly for nuclear and chemical arms — because the public and other intrusions were banned for decades.

When they became obsolete, the government converted them into refuges under U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service management, but the cost is staggering. The military, the U.S. Department of Energy and private companies have spent more than $57 billion to clean up the heavily polluted sites.

And the biggest bills have yet to be paid. The Energy Department estimates it will cost between $323 billion and $677 billion more to finish the costliest cleanup, at the Hanford Site in Washington state where the government produced plutonium for bombs and missiles.

Despite the complicated and expensive cleanups, significant contamination has been left behind, some experts say. This legacy, they say, requires restrictions on where visitors can go and obligates the government to monitor the sites for perhaps centuries.

Researchers have not examined the health risks to wildlife at the cleaned-up refuges as extensively as the potential danger to humans, but few problems have been reported.

Most skeptics agree the refuges are worthwhile but warn that the natural beauty might obscure environmental damage.

Critics say Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado illustrates the shortcomings of a cleanup designed to be good enough for a refuge but not for human habitation.

Roughly 10 miles from downtown Denver, the arsenal was once an environmental nightmare where chemical weapons and commercial pesticides were made. After a $2.1 billion cleanup, it was reborn as Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, with 24 square miles (61 square kilometers) of idyllic prairie.

But parts of the refuge remain off-limits, including specially designed landfills where the Army disposed of contaminated soil. Eating fish and game from the refuge is forbidden. Treatment plants remove contaminants from groundwater to keep them out of domestic wells.

“So there’s a huge downside to converting it into a wildlife refuge, because it allows residual contamination to remain in place,” said Jeff Edson, a former Colorado state health official who worked on the cleanup.

The Army is still struggling with cleaning up Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana, part of which became Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge .

Soldiers test-fired millions of artillery rounds there, some made of armor-piercing depleted uranium. Its dust is a serious health risk if inhaled or swallowed, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says.

Depleted uranium fragments are scattered on the firing range among 1.5 million rounds of unexploded shells, which makes cleanup dangerous and expensive.

The Army told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission it could cost $3.2 billion to clean the area for unrestricted use.