Neighbors weigh in on verdict in Rocky Flats suit

Whether they benefit or not, they're glad truth is coming out

John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 16, 2006 at midnight

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JEFFERSON COUNTY - Jack and Joan Walker's house sits atop a blustery ridgeline. The landscape is dotted with a few spruce and aspen trees, most of which they planted. When a storm blows in like it did Wednesday, it can be a cold and windy place.

For 16 years, this parcel of land has been home for Jack Walker, a self-described "old farm boy," and his wife. They wouldn't trade it for anything, even if it does sit just south of where the Rocky Flats nuclear power plant once stood.

But when they read about the $352 million class-action federal lawsuit verdict against the former operators of Rocky Flats, the Walkers studied the map that showed the area the plaintiffs contend was contaminated by the plant.

As best they can tell, they live just outside the fringe of that area. But like a lot of homeowners in the neighborhood, they wondered if the verdict - which held that Rocky Flats depressed the property values of surrounding homes - applied to them.

To visitors, they joke about not drinking the water if it glows. But then Jack Walker turns serious.

"In the back of your mind, you always have some concerns about contamination," Jack Walker said. When he bought the property, it had been on the market for 18 months. He wondered if Rocky Flats had anything to do with that.

Joan Walker is happy that the plant is no longer there and that nature is reclaiming the land.

"I would just as soon see the deer and the coyotes coming through," she said.

A bit further north of the Walkers' property, Sean Theorine pitched some hay to his cattle before a storm rolled in Wednesday.

Theorine and his family live in a Hacienda-style house that his grandfather James Ralph Coleman built in the 1960s.

Coleman passed away last week at the age of 92. He and his late wife Alice Mae were active in the citizen committees that dealt with Rocky Flats.

But Theorine said his grandfather probably never would have joined the class-action suit filed by his neighbors in 1990.

"He didn't believe in suing people," Theorine said.

His grandmother, a retired nurse, didn't want to sue either, but wanted to see Flats officials held accountable. "She just wanted the truth to come out," Theorine said.

The jurys' verdict was based on the plant's economic impact on its neighbors, but critics of the plant's operation saw some vindication in the outcome, too.

"It's about time, isn't it? It just proves everything that we said," said Wes McKinley, a Colorado lawmaker who served as foreman of a federal grand jury that investigated the plant and wrote a highly critical report about it. "How many times do you have to tell it before people start believing it?"

He still thinks Rocky Flats should be paved and fenced and nobody ever allowed to go there.

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