Future of Rocky Flats remains complicated
At the same time government officials will be trying to show that Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge is clean and safe for visitors, a judge will be hearing testimony about why the former nuclear weapons manufacturing site should forever remain closed to the public.
That juxtaposition over the future of the 6,200-acre property 16 miles northwest of Denver, which comes to a head this week, aptly illustrates the complicated legacy of what was one of the nation’s most contaminated Cold War sites that is currently trying to reinvent itself as a rare urban oasis for those wanting to experience the prairie’s unique ecology and wildlife.
On Tuesday, a federal judge will hear evidence from a lawsuit filed by Rocky Flats opponents, who are asking him to block construction of trails and a visitor center at the refuge. On the same day, the public can attend an open house in Westminster that lays out the details of a round of soil testing to be conducted at the refuge that carries the goal of reassuring visitors that no dangerous level of contaminants remain on site.
Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is scheduled to open to the public officially in September.
“We are proceeding as if the refuge is opening this year,” said Andrew Valdez, open-space planner for Jefferson County.
The county is among half a dozen municipalities surrounding Rocky Flats that are helping cover the costs of soil sampling at two locations on the periphery of the refuge to see if there are dangerous levels of cancer-causing plutonium, uranium and americium in the ground. The sites — a proposed underpass on Colorado 128 and a bridge on Indiana Street — would be access points into the refuge for hikers and cyclists.
Boulder, Westminster, Arvada and Broomfield — along with Jefferson and Boulder counties — asked that the testing be done to reassure those intending to use it for recreation that the noxious history of Rocky Flats is truly a thing of the past. The facility, which for 40 years produced triggers for nuclear weapons, became known for toxic fires and leaking barrels of waste as the country raced to build up its nuclear arsenal at the height of the Cold War.
The plant was closed in the early 1990s, and an extensive, $7 billion disassembly and cleanup of the sprawling site followed, ending in 2005.
While numerous soil samples have been taken throughout the refuge since its closure, which government officials say have not revealed unhealthy levels of contamination, Rocky Flats has had a tough time shaking its ugly past.
A 1,300-acre section in the middle of refuge, where the actual weapons manufacturing occurred, will remain closed indefinitely because of the intense indus-
trial activity that occurred there. Earlier this year, several large metro-area school districts passed resolutions to stop students from going to Rocky Flats for field trips, fearing for their safety. And just last week, Superior filed its own lawsuit in federal court asking that a judge stop the opening of Rocky Flats to the public.
Attorney Randall Weiner, who represents the group of Rocky Flats detractors who are trying to halt the opening of the refuge, said proposed soil testing at the two crossings — which encompass less than 4 acres of land — is woefully insufficient to declare the place safe.
“This is out of 6,200 acres of refuge,” he said. “It would be preposterous to extrapolate from the results of these small parcels at the outer periphery of the refuge, to the entire refuge. The refuge is vast in size and heterogeneous in terms of the distribution of the contaminants.”
But Dave Abelson, who heads the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council, said testing history at Rocky Flats has shown that levels of contaminants are at background levels that pose no harm to human health. He said the council keeps a close eye on Rocky Flats and has some concerns about an old landfill and water contamination in the closed-off central area of the facility, although even those readings are within limits that don’t pose a health hazard, he said.
“Nothing that I’ve seen through data, nothing that I’ve seen in the court cases has shown that there has been any fundamental change in the resident contaminant levels at Rocky Flats,” Abelson said. “What has changed, if anything, since closure?”
Weiner on Friday said the bigger issue is that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service didn’t conduct “even the minimal environmental assessment of its plans to open the refuge this summer.”
“Our case is not about testing and sampling,” he said. “It is about the agency taking a hard look at the environmental consequences and alternatives to placing public trails on the refuge, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act.”
A call to the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, which has long opposed establishment of the refuge at Rocky Flats, went unanswered Friday.
The testing, expected to be done in September, will consist of around 25 “soil grabs” up to 2 inches deep at both crossings.
The firm doing the testing, Fort Collins-based Engineering Analytics, was chosen from five competing bids. Valdez said the federal government was not involved in choosing Engineering Analytics or funding the sampling effort.
“This is methodology based on best practices,” he said. “This is how the science is done.”
Public comment on the testing protocol will be accepted through Aug. 24. A second open house will be held in Boulder on July 24. A final report with findings from the soil analysis is expected to be published in October.
The testing at the Colorado 128 and Indiana Street crossings, which will cost $3 million to build, will be supplemented with further soil sampling by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service inside the refuge to ensure the connecting trail between both access points is safe for use.
But Dave Lucas, manager of the refuge with Fish and Wildlife, isn’t convinced that even if the results show the refuge to be safe that opponents of Rocky Flats will stop insisting it isn’t.
“We are not doing this for them. We are doing this for the general public,” he said. “This is not about a couple of people who will complain about everything.”