There was a recent article in the Denver Post announcing the opening of a new visitor center at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I have mixed feelings about that announcement. I’m pleased that the Arsenal was able to open that facility, but I would be more pleased if I would hear there is staff and money to develop a similar facility at the Rocky Flats site. There is some irony that the Rocky Mountain Arsenal refuge has opened, because Rocky Flats workers often had to listen to stories about the Arsenal when they told someone they worked at Rocky Flats. I recently told a man I had retired from Rocky Flats, and he told me about armed guards showing up when he was a child playing in a field near the Arsenal. For those who are confused, Rocky Flats was west of Denver and made components for nuclear weapons for the Department of Energy and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal was 10 miles east of downtown Denver and was a chemical weapons plant managed by U.S. Army.

There undoubtedly will be similarities between the Rocky Mountain Arsenal refuge and what hopefully becomes available at the Rocky Flats site. I don’t know whether the Aresenal was pressured to put up signs warning that the area had been used for manufacture and storage of various chemical warfare agents, but there was and is controversy about the planned refuge for Rocky Flats. The first link on a July 2007 press release from the Fish and Wildlife Service is “Rocky Flats Signage,” which explains in detail that public use was a controversial issue in preparation of plans for the refuge. The document explains, “…due to the site’s former use as a nuclear weapons production facility and the contamination that resulted from that use, many members of the public expressed concern regarding the cleanup of the site and the safety of future visitors. Based on the best currently available scientific data and unequivocal determinations by the EPA and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), that the extensive cleanup program resulted in a landscape that is safe for refuge workers and visitors, (the plan) provides for future public use of the site…”

The health risk of “low levels” of plutonium is what creates the controversy. The term “low levels” is in quotes because I’ve been taken to task for using the term with the admonition that all levels create health risks. As I explain in Chapter 25 of my book, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats, Urban Myths Debunked,” (available free on this site and at Amazon as a paperback or as a Kindle version)  the entire earth is contaminated with plutonium and every person has many billions to trillions of plutonium atoms in their bodies resulting from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. There are posts in the archives of this site dated January 18 and 25 that discuss the controversy. People worked in the industrial area of Rocky Flats for years, decades in many cases, and generally their health is as good as people who never worked there. (Some would argue with me about that statement, but I’m going to let them make their own arguments.) My belief is that a visit to areas outside the closed former industrial area won’t create a health risk to my family if I’m ever able to invite them to go there with me. I hope to recreate there early and often. Those who disagree can elect to not visit.