Radioactive contamination from the Rocky Flats Plant
The Rocky Flats Plant, a former United States nuclear weapons production facility located about 15 miles (24 km) northwest of Denver, caused radioactive (primarily plutonium, americium, and uranium) contamination within and outside its boundaries.
"[2] As noted by Carl Johnson in Ambio, "Exposures of a large population in the Denver area to plutonium and other radionuclides in the exhaust plumes from the plant date back to 1953.
[5] The Department of Energy continues to fund monitoring of the site, but private groups and researchers remain concerned about the extent and long-term public health consequences of the contamination.
It rapidly spread through the interconnected glove boxes and ignited a large bank of high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters in a plenum downstream.
[29] Portions of this waste, mixed with dust that composed Pad 903, became airborne in the heavy winds of the Front Range and contaminated offsite areas to the south and east.
But the 1969 fire led local health officials to perform independent tests of the area surrounding Rocky Flats to determine the extent of the contamination.
A large portion of the plutonium released into the creeks sank to the bottom and is now found in the streambeds of Walnut and Woman Creeks and on the bottom of local public reservoirs just outside Rocky Flats: Great Western Reservoir (no longer used for city of Broomfield drinking water consumption as of 1997 but still used for irrigation)[38] and Standley Lake, a drinking water supply for the cities of Westminster, Thornton, Northglenn and some residents of Federal Heights.
[47] In August 2019, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment observed mixed results during testing of the Rocky Flats area for soil contamination.
The testing, completed by the Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority in preparation for road construction, observed one soil sample with a plutonium level of 264 picocuries per gram.
[49] In February 2020, the parkway construction project was shut down and local civic authorities withdrew their support when plutonium samples with concentrations five times higher than the remediation standard were found.
[55] A 1981 study by Dr. Carl Johnson, health director for Jefferson County, showed a 45% increase in congenital birth defects in Denver suburbs downwind of Rocky Flats compared to the rest of Colorado.
[57] In a 1992 survey of radiation risk analysis, the authors concluded, "Johnson failed to describe an effective and complete model for the cause of the cancers and its relationship to other knowledge as Crump et al. have done.
The ratio of Pu-240 to Pu-239 was "minutely lower" for persons who lived within 50 km of Rocky Flats, but was more strongly correlated to age, gender, and smoking habits than proximity to the plant.
[61] During the early 1990s, an independent Health Advisory Panel – appointed by then-Governor Roy Romer – oversaw a series of reports, called the Historical Public Exposure Studies.
Subsequent to reports of environmental crimes being committed at Rocky Flats, the United States Department of Justice sponsored an FBI raid dubbed "Operation Desert Glow", which began at 9 a.m. on June 6, 1989.
[29] The FBI entered the premises under the ruse of providing a terrorist threat briefing, and served its search warrant to Dominick Sanchini, Rockwell International's manager of Rocky Flats.
[72] Due to DOE indemnification of its contractors, without some form of settlement being arrived at between the U.S. Justice Department and Rockwell the cost of paying any civil penalties would ultimately have been borne by U.S. taxpayers.
The hearings, whose findings include that the Justice Department had "bargained away the truth",[77]: 98 ultimately still did not fully reveal the special grand jury's report to the public, which remains sealed by the court.
[78] According to its subsequent publications, the Rocky Flats special grand jury had compiled indictments charging three DOE officials and five Rockwell employees with environmental crimes.
[79] The DOE itself, in a study released in December of the year prior to the FBI raid, called Rocky Flats' ground water the single greatest environmental hazard at any of its nuclear facilities.
[72] From the grand jury's report: "The DOE reached this conclusion because the groundwater contamination was so extensive, toxic, and migrating toward the drinking water supplies for the Cities of Broomfield and Westminster, Colorado.
[92] In contrast, the DOE-retained "Central Operable Unit" of Rocky Flats remains under DOE control, and is subject to ongoing monitoring and sampling and groundwater treatment.
In 2015, there was a "soft opening" of the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge where small groups of people could reserve space on a three-mile guided nature walk.
As of 2019, Candelas, a large housing development in West Arvada on the south side of Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge is being built and rented out.
The Department of Energy responded by saying that studies show more risk from naturally occurring radioactive elements than from very small amounts of plutonium remaining around the former plant.
[119] Candelas Glows argued that a July 2015 radiation report from the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council shows plutonium levels at 1.02 pCi/L, compared to the regulatory standard of 0.15 pCi/L.
[120] While anti-Refuge activists have received the bulk of media attention,[citation needed] other community members support the Refuge opening and have found the remediation records to be scientific.
[50] Regarding a professional health assessment of the Rocky Flats Plant's ongoing impact on the local and surrounding area, and the Refuge specifically, Dr. Mark Johnson—no relation to Dr. Carl Johnson, but subsequently also Jefferson County's executive health director—states in the September 2020 book Doom With a View: Historical and Cultural Contexts of the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant (quotes from a related Westword article): The more time I spent conversing with politicians and contract managers from Rocky Flats, and the more I learned about the nuclear and hazardous waste pollution occurring around the plant, the more I came to question the underlying narrative that this was fundamentally a patriotic enterprise protecting America from its enemies.
Because of this screen of secrecy and an ultimate lack of accountability, it appeared to me that the Rocky Flats contractors had contaminated Jefferson County and its residents indiscriminately with no fear of consequences.
... Two of the men who have seen the most evidence concerning the level of contamination at Rocky Flats, the lead agent for the FBI raid and the foreman of the grand jury, continue to advocate for the prohibition of public access to the site.
