Rocky Flats is the site of the former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Facility, where plutonium smelting took place for 40+ years to manufacture and maintain America’s nuclear arsenal.
In 1989, the nuclear weapons plant was raided by the FBI and EPA and shut down for egregious environmental infractions which included illegal dumping, spraying and burning of nuclear waste on the site.
The superfund cleanup included burying most of the industrial plutonium processing buildings in place, and NO REMEDIATION of any of the soil in the surrounding buffer zone, now the “wildlife refuge.”
Since the floods of 2013, which breached the containment cap on the superfund site, there has been no new soil testing on the Wildlife Refuge lands to see what may have transferred from the radioactive superfund site to the surrounding refuge.
The superfund site is still leaking and continues to have above the “allowable limit” exceedances of plutonium (Pu), americium, VOC’s, etc., which pass onto the refuge site in the surface water.
Both government and independent tests confirm elevated levels and “hotspots” of Pu (half-life 24,000 years) on the refuge grounds, and there’s no such thing as a “safe dose” of plutonium, so it doesn’t really matter when CDPHE and the EPA say the contamination is “low” and meets “conservative cleanup standards,” because no amount of exposure should be allowed.
PLANNED OPENING: FALL 2018
US Fish and Wildlife plans to open Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge soon and have already started putting up trailhead signage.
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO PREVENT THAT?
New regulation needs to be drafted and passed that re-designates the wildlife refuge as a sacrifice zone or animal sanctuary, not open to humans.
GET INVOLVED WITH ONE OF THE MANY GROUPS WORKING TO KEEP IT CLOSED!
- Follow Candelas Glows on Facebook.
- Attend a Rocky Flats Right to Know meeting in Arvada. www.rockyflatsrighttoknow.org
- Join Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center’s Letter Campaign to write our State Representatives on keeping it closed. https://actionnetwork.org/letters/no-public-recreation-at-rocky-flats
Questions? Need more information? Want to do more to help?
Email: Alesya@RockyFlatsGlows.com
Candelas Glows 