Rocky Flats a step closer to status as wildlife site
Associated Press
Thursday, June 14, 2007
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The Environmental Protection Agency has certified the cleanup of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, another step toward the planned conversion of the site to a wildlife refuge.
EPA spokesman Terry Andersen said Wednesday the site northwest of Denver will be turned over to the Interior Department, possibly within weeks, for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to manage, but it would be some time before any of it is open to the public.
Areas with the worst radioactive contamination will remain off-limits.
Rocky Flats closed in 1991 after a history that included several fires. The FBI raided it in 1989, investigating claims that its operator had knowingly discharged chemicals into creeks that flowed into municipal water supplies, burned toxic waste and failed to adequately monitor groundwater.
The company, Rockwell International, was fined $18.5 million. A $7 billion cleanup of 6,200 acres was completed in 2005. The site remains under monitoring and observation.
On Tuesday, a federal panel voted to recommend medical compensation for about 4,000 former workers at the plant.
The decision still leaves about 15,000 former workers - some of them with life-threatening diseases they blame on conditions at the plant - ineligible to receive automatic compensation, said Jennifer Thompson, a former Rocky Flats worker who petitioned for the special status for the workers.
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