[CPEO-MEF] REUSE, RADIATION: "Rocky Flats [CO]: A Wildlife Refuge Confronts Its Radioactive Past"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Rocky Flats: A Wildlife Refuge Confronts Its Radioactive Past

The Rocky Flats Plant outside Denver was a key U.S. nuclear facility during the Cold War. Now, following a $7 billion cleanup, the government is preparing to open a wildlife refuge on the site to the public, amid warnings from some scientists that residual  plutonium may still pose serious health risks.

by Fred Pearce
Yale Environment 360
August 16, 2016

A barn owl bursts from the tall prairie grasses. Elk skitter among cottonwood trees near an old stagecoach halt. A shrew crosses a track and hurtles into milkweed, where monarch butterflies feed. Somewhere amid the rare xeric grasses are coyotes, moose, mule deer, a handful of endangered Preble’s meadow jumping mice, and more than 600 plant species. 

"Welcome," says David Lucas of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "to Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge." 

The place is undeniably beautiful, one of the best exurban wildlife reserves in the United States, an oasis of prairie biodiversity on the outskirts of Denver. And the federal government is preparing to open it up to the public as early as December 2017, once the visitors’ center is built and the planned nearly 20 miles of biking and hiking trails are complete. 

But I had a question. Was it safe to allow the public in? What about the plutonium in the soil, and the prairie dogs, rabbits, and earthworms that will assuredly bring more of it to the surface before long? 


...

For the entire article, see
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/rocky_flats_wildlife_refuge_confronts_radioactive_past/3025/

--

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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