[CPEO-MEF] RADIATION, REUSE: "Rocky Flats refuge [CO] opens its gates, but will people come?"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

NUCLEAR WASTE: Rocky Flats refuge opens its gates, but will people come? 

by Phil Taylor
Greenwire
August 8, 2016

ROCKY FLATS NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Colo. - On a sunny morning in June, Dave Lucas sauntered among knee-high grasses with a machete in hand whacking down invasive musk thistles.

The manager of this 5,000-acre wildlife refuge is waging a two-front battle as he prepares to open these lands to the public.

The first is against the thistles, knapweed, toadflax, cheatgrass and goatgrass that have invaded this scenic expanse of rolling tallgrass prairie, shrub lands and wetlands about 16 miles northwest of Denver.

He plans to beat those back using prescribed fires, herbicides and grazing - plus a heavy dose of his machete.

His second fight is against public fear that his refuge is unsafe.

At the center of this refuge is the site of the former Rocky Flats weapons plant, where the United States government spent decades manufacturing plutonium detonators for nuclear bombs. The plant, which operated from 1952 to the early 1990s, leaked plutonium, uranium, volatile organic compounds and nitrate into the water and soil, earning it a spot on U.S. EPA's Superfund list.

…

For the entire article, see
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060041317

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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