Keep Rocky Flats Closed to Public

January 17, 2009

Boulder Camera - By LeRoy Moore
Change is in the air. One needed change is reversal of plans to open the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge for hiking, biking and picnicking. Why? Because radioactive plutonium left in the environment at the site endangers anyone who visits there.

After completion of the "cleanup" at the defunct Rocky Flats nuclear bomb plant in 2005, the Department of Energy, which ran the facility, transferred almost 4,000 acres of the site to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to run as a wildlife refuge. DOE retained about 1,300 more-contaminated acres at the center of the future refuge.

Tiny plutonium particles left in the soil are concentrated in certain areas but otherwise scattered over the whole site. Inhaling, ingesting or taking particles into the body through an open wound could result in cancer or genetic harm. Because plutonium remains radioactive for a quarter-million years the danger is permanent.

Rocky Flats was cleaned in conformity with government standards for permissible exposure. But such standards provide only limited protection. They typically are calculated to protect "reference man" -- a 154-pound white male age 20. They do not protect the more vulnerable members of the population -- children, infants, a developing fetus, the elderly, those with health problems.

Those responsible for the Rocky Flats cleanup left in the site's top 3 feet of soil a quantity of plutonium up to 1,250 times local deposits from global fallout. At a depth of 3 to 6 feet they allowed plutonium 25,000 to 175,000 times the fallout level. Below 6 feet they set no limit on what could remain. They relied on scientists who studied plutonium migration at Rocky Flats and concluded that plutonium left in soil at the site would remain "relatively immobile." But their conclusion, which counters recent reports of substantial plutonium migration elsewhere, was based on computer modeling rather than direct observation of the physical environment.

By contrast, just before these scientists were hired, M. I. Litaor, an environmental engineer who'd worked at Rocky Flats for several years, with instruments set up in soil at the site, detected significant plutonium migration during the unusually wet spring of 1995. His finding, he said, called into question the cleanup being planned. He was soon dismissed and denied access to site data he required to complete a full report of his findings.

Those overseeing the Rocky Flats cleanup ignored not only Litaor but also the work of ecologist Shawn Smallwood. In an unprecedented 1996 study he revealed that ants, gophers, and other burrowing animals constantly redistribute plutonium left in the soil at Rocky Flats. They take surface material down and from a depth of 15 or 16 feet bring material up, disturbing in the process 11 to 12 percent of the site's surface soil every year. Minuscule plutonium particles brought to the surface in the more contaminated DOE-retained land at the center of the wildlife refuge can be widely redistributed by wind within the refuge and beyond. This poses a present and future danger to anyone who unwittingly inhales or ingests particles or takes them in through a scraped knee or elbow.

In addition, those who designed the cleanup never saw possible evidence of site pollution contained in documents seized by the FBI in 1989 because these documents remain sealed by court order.

What should concerned parents, teachers, others do? They certainly should not accept FWS plans as a done deal. Back in 2004, 81 percent of those commenting on FWS' proposal to open the future refuge for public recreation rejected the idea. Now we need newly elected Rep. Jared Polis and Sen. Mark Udall to work with us toward the goal of having the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge managed as open space that is closed to the public. The author, a concerned grandparent, invites interested parties to contact him [email protected].

LeRoy Moore a consultant with the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, is the author of "Citizen's Guide to Rocky Flats."