Nearest city Arvada, Colorado NRHP Reference # 97000377 Area 71 ha Added to NRHP 19 May 1997 | Built 1952 Address Louisville, CO 80027, USA Opened 1952 | |
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Location Jefferson County, Colorado Built by Austin Construction Co. Similar Rocky Flats National Wildlife R, Pantex Plant, Rocky Mountain Arsenal N, Los Alamos National, Rocky Flats Cold War Museum | ||
The Rocky Flats Plant was a former nuclear weapons production facility in the western United States, near Denver, Colorado. Operated from 1952 to 1992, it was under the control of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), succeeded by the Department of Energy (DOE) in 1977.
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Weapons production was temporarily halted in 1989 after EPA and FBI agents raided the facility. Operators of the plant later pleaded guilty to criminal violations of environmental law. At the time, the fine was one of the largest penalties ever in an environmental law case.
Cleanup began in the early 1990s, and the site achieved regulatory closure in 2006. The cleanup effort decommissioned and demolished over 800 structures; removed over 21 tons of weapons-grade material; removed over 1.3 million cubic meters of waste; and, treated more than 16 million gallons of water. Four groundwater treatment systems were also constructed. Today, the Rocky Flats Plant is gone. The site of the former facility consists of two distinct areas: (1) the "Central Operable Unit" (including the former industrial area), which remains off-limits to the public as a CERCLA "Superfund" site, owned and managed by the U.S. Department of Energy, and (2) the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, owned and managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Refuge (also known as the "Peripheral Operable Unit") was determined to be suitable for unrestricted use. Every five years, the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment review environmental data to assess whether the remedy is functioning as intended. The last five-year review concluded the remedy is effective. The next five-year review will be produced in 2017.
1950s
Following World War II, the United States increased production of nuclear weapons. The AEC chose the Dow Chemical Company to manage the bomb production facility. A 4-square-mile (10 km2) site about 15 miles (25 km) northwest of Denver on a windy plateau called Rocky Flats was chosen for the facility. On July 10, 1951, ground was broken on the first building in the facility. Contemporary news reports stated that the site would not be used to produce nuclear bombs.
In 1953, the plant began production of bomb components, manufacturing plutonium triggers, or "pits", which were used at the Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas to assemble nuclear weapons. By 1957, the plant had expanded to 27 buildings.
On September 11, 1957, a plutonium fire occurred in one of the gloveboxes used to handle radioactive materials, igniting the combustible rubber gloves and plexiglas windows of the box. Metallic plutonium is a fire hazard and pyrophoric; under the right conditions it may ignite in air at room temperature. The accident resulted in the contamination of Building 771, the release of plutonium into the atmosphere, and caused $818,600 in damage. An incinerator for plutonium-contaminated waste was installed in Building 771 in 1958.
Barrels of radioactive waste were found to be leaking into an open field in 1959. This was not made publicly known until 1970 when wind-borne particles were detected in Denver.
1960s
Throughout the 1960s, the plant continued to enlarge and add buildings. The 1960s also brought more contamination to the site. In 1967, 3,500 barrels (560 m3) of plutonium-contaminated lubricants and solvents were stored on Pad 903. A large number of them were found to be leaking, and low-level contaminated soil was becoming wind-borne from this area. This pad was covered with gravel and paved over with asphalt in 1969.
May 11, 1969 saw a major fire in a glovebox in Building 776/777. This was the costliest industrial accident ever to occur in the United States up to that time. Cleanup from the accident took two years and led to safety upgrades on the site, including fire sprinkler systems and firewalls.
1970s
In order to reduce the danger of public contamination and to create a security area around the plant following protests, the United States Congress authorized the purchase of a 4,600-acre (7.2 sq mi; 19 km2) buffer zone around the plant in 1972. In 1973, nearby Walnut Creek and the Great Western Reservoir were found to have elevated tritium levels. The tritium was determined to have been released from contaminated materials shipped to Rocky Flats from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Discovery of the contamination by the Colorado Department of Health led to investigations by the AEC and United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As a result of the investigation, several mitigation efforts were put in place to prevent further contamination. Some of the elements included channeling of wastewater runoff to three dams for testing before release into the water system and construction of a reverse osmosis facility to clean up wastewater.
The next year, elevated plutonium levels were found in the topsoil near the now covered Pad 903. An additional 4,500 acres (18 km²) of buffer zone were purchased.
1975 saw Rockwell International replacing Dow Chemical as the contractor for the site. This year also saw local landowners suing for property contamination caused by the plant.
In 1978, 60 protesters belonging to the Rocky Flats Truth Force, or Satyagraha Affinity Group, based in Boulder, Colorado, were arrested for trespassing at Rocky Flats, and were brought to trial before Judge Kim Goldberger. Dr. John Candler Cobb, Professor of Preventive Medicine at the University of Colorado Medical Center, testified that the most significant danger of radioactive contamination came from the 1967 incident in which oil barrels containing plutonium leaked 5,000 US gallons (19,000 L) of oil into sand under the barrels, which was then blown by strong winds as far away as Denver. Radioactivity of the sand at the spill site was measured at 30 million disintegrations per minute per gram (about 220 ppm plutonium in the sand by weight), 15 million times higher than the state standard of two disintegrations per minute.
Dr. Carl Johnson, Jefferson County health director from 1973 to 1981, directed numerous studies on contamination levels and health risks the plant posed to public health. Based on his conclusions, Johnson opposed housing development near Rocky Flats. He was fired. Later studies confirmed many of his findings.
On April 28, 1979, a few weeks after the Three Mile Island accident, a crowd of close to 15,000 protesters assembled at a nearby site. Singers Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt took the stage along with various speakers. The following day, 286 protesters including Daniel Ellsberg were arrested for civil disobedience/trespassing on the Rocky Flats facility.
1980s
Dark Circle is a 1982 American documentary film that focuses on the Rocky Flats Plant and its plutonium contamination of the area's environment. The film won the Grand Prize for documentary at the Sundance Film Festival and received a national Emmy Award for "Outstanding individual achievement in news and documentary".
Rocky Flats became a focus of protest by peace activists throughout the 1980s. In 1983, a demonstration was organized that brought together 17,000 people who joined hands in an encirclement around the 17-mile (27 km) perimeter of the plant.
A perimeter security zone was installed around the facility in 1983 and was upgraded with remote detection abilities in 1985. Also in 1983, the first radioactive waste was processed through the aqueous recovery system, creating a plutonium button.
A celebration of 250,000 continuous safe hours by the employees at Rocky Flats happened in 1985. The same year, Rockwell received Industrial Research Magazine's IR-100 award for a process to remove actinide contamination from wastewater at the plant. The next year, the site received a National Safety Council Award of Honor for outstanding safety performance.
On August 10, 1987, 320 demonstrators were arrested after they tried to force a one-day shutdown of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.
In 1988, a Department of Energy (DOE) safety evaluation resulted in a report that was critical of safety measures at the plant. The EPA fined the plant for polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) leaks from a transformer. A solid waste form, called pondcrete, was found not to have cured properly and was leaking from containers. A boxcar of transuranic waste from the site was refused entry into Idaho and returned to the plant. Plans to potentially close the plant were released.
In 1989 an employee left a faucet running, resulting in chromic acid being released into the sanitary water system. The Colorado Department of Health and the EPA both posted full-time personnel at the plant to monitor safety. Plutonium production was suspended due to safety violations.
In August 1989, an estimated 3,500 people turned out for a demonstration at Rocky Flats.
Investigation by FBI and EPA
Insiders at the plant started to covertly inform the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about the unsafe conditions in 1987. Late that year the FBI commenced clandestine flights of light aircraft over the area and noticed that the incinerator was apparently being used late into the night. After several months of collecting evidence both from workers and via direct measurement, the FBI informed the DOE on June 6, 1989 that they wanted to meet to discuss a potential terrorist threat.
Dubbed "Operation Desert Glow", the raid, sponsored by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), began at 9 a.m. on June 6, 1989. After the FBI got past the DOE's heavily armed, authorized to shoot-to-kill security—whose armament included surface-to-air missiles—they served the search warrant to Dominick Sanchini, Rockwell International's manager of Rocky Flats. (Ironically, Sanchini died the next year in Boulder of cancer.). The FBI discovered numerous violations of federal anti-pollution laws, including limited contamination of water and soil. In 1992, Rockwell International was charged with environmental crimes including violations of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), and the Clean Water Act. Rockwell pleaded guilty and paid an $18.5 million fine. This was the largest fine for an environmental crime to that date.
After the June 1989 FBI raid, federal authorities used the subsequent grand jury investigation to gather evidence of wrongdoing and then sealed the record. In October 2006, DOE announced completion of the Rocky Flats cleanup without this information being available.
The FBI raid led to the formation of Colorado's first special grand jury in 1989, the juried testimony of 110 witnesses, reviews of 2,000 exhibits, and ultimately a 1992 plea agreement in which Rockwell admitted to 10 federal environmental crimes and agreed to pay $18.5 million in fines out of its own funds. This amount was less than the company had been paid in bonuses for running the plant as determined by the Government Accounting Office (GAO), and yet was also by far the highest hazardous-waste fine ever; four times larger than the previous record. Due to indemnification of nuclear contractors, without some form of settlement being arrived at between the U.S. Justice Department and Rockwell, the cost of paying any civil penalties would ultimately have been borne by U.S. taxpayers. While any criminal penalties allotted to Rockwell would not have been covered, for its part Rockwell claimed that the Department of Energy had specifically exempted them from most environmental laws, including hazardous waste.
Regardless, and as forewarned by the prosecuting U.S. Attorney, Ken Fimberg/Scott, the Department of Justice's stated findings and plea agreement with Rockwell were heavily contested by its own, 23-member special grand jury. Press leaks on both sides—members of the DOJ and the grand jury—occurred in violation of secrecy regarding grand jury information, a federal crime punishable by a prison sentence. The public contest led to U.S. Congressional oversight committee hearings chaired by Congressman Howard Wolpe, which issued subpoenas to DOJ principals despite several instances of DOJ's refusal to comply. The hearings, whose findings include that the Justice Department had "bargained away the truth", ultimately still did not fully reveal to the public the special grand jury's report, which remains sealed by the DOJ courts.
The special grand jury report was nonetheless leaked to Westword. According to its subsequent publications, the Rocky Flats special grand jury had compiled indictments charging three DOE officials and five Rockwell employees with environmental crimes. The grand jury also wrote a report, intended for the public's consumption per their charter, lambasting the conduct of DOE and Rocky Flats contractors for "engaging in a continuing campaign of distraction, deception and dishonesty" and noted that Rocky Flats, for many years, had discharged pollutants, hazardous materials and radioactive matter into nearby creeks and Broomfield's and Westminster's water supplies.
The DOE itself, in a study released in December of the year prior to the FBI raid, had called Rocky Flats' ground water the single greatest environmental hazard at any of its nuclear facilities.
Withheld records
Court records from the grand jury proceeding on Rocky Flats have been sealed for a number of years. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which govern federal grand jury proceedings, explicitly require grand jury proceedings to be kept secret unless otherwise provided by the Rules. Rocky Flats' secret grand jury proceedings were not unique.
However, some activists dispute the reasons for records confidentiality: Dr. Leroy Brown, a Boulder scientist, retired FBI Special Agent Jon Lipsky, who led the FBI's raid of the Rocky Flats plant to investigate illegal plutonium burning and other environmental crimes, and Wes McKinley, who was the foreman of the grand jury investigation into the operations at Rocky Flats and is today a Colorado State Representative.
Former grand jury foreman McKinley chronicles his experiences in the 2004 book he co-authored with attorney Caron Balkany, The Ambushed Grand Jury, which begins with an open letter to the U.S. Congress from Special Agent Lipsky:
I am an FBI agent. My superiors have ordered me to lie about a criminal investigation I headed in 1989. We were investigating the US Department of Energy, but the US Justice Department covered up the truth.
I have refused to follow the orders to lie about what really happened during that criminal investigation at Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. Instead, I have told the author of this book the truth. Her promise to me if I told her what really happened was that she would put it in a book to tell Congress and the American people.
Some dangerous decisions are now being made based on that government cover-up. Please read this book. I believe you know what needs to happen.
1990s
Rockwell International was replaced by EG&G as primary contractor for the Rocky Flats plant. EG&G began an aggressive work safety and cleanup plan for the site that included construction of a system to remove contamination from the groundwater of the site. The Sierra Club vs. Rockwell case was decided in favor of the Sierra Club. The ruling directed Rocky Flats to manage plutonium residues as hazardous waste.
In 1991, an interagency agreement between DOE, the Colorado Department of Health, and the EPA outlined multiyear schedules for environmental restoration studies and remediation activities. DOE released a report that advocated downsizing the plant's production into a more streamlined facility. Due to the fall of the Soviet Union, production of most of the systems at Rocky Flats was no longer needed, leaving only the W88 warhead triggers.
In 1992, due to an order by President G.H.W. Bush, production of submarine-based missiles using the W88 trigger was discontinued, leading to the layoff of 4,500 employees at the plant; 4,000 others were retained for long-term cleanup of the facility. The Rocky Flats Plant Transition Plan outlined the environmental restoration process. The DOE announced that 61 pounds (28 kg) of plutonium lined the exhaust ductwork in six buildings on the site.
Starting in 1993, weapons-grade plutonium began to be shipped to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Savannah River Site.
In 1994 the site was renamed the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site, reflecting the changed nature of the site from weapon production to environmental cleanup and restoration. The cleanup effort was contracted to the Kaiser-Hill Company, which proposed the release of 4,100 acres (6.4 sq mi; 16.6 km2) of the buffer zone for public access.
In 1998, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's Cancer Registry conducted an independent study of cancer rates in areas around the Rocky Flats Site. Data showed no pattern of increased cancers tied to Rocky Flats.
Throughout the remainder of the 1990s and into the 2000s, cleanup of contaminated sites and dismantling of contaminated buildings continued with the waste materials being shipped to the Nevada Test Site, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, and the Envirocare company facility in Utah, which is now EnergySolutions.
2000s
In 2001, Congress passed the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge Act. In July 2007, the U.S. Department of Energy transferred nearly 4,000 acres (6 sq mi; 16 km2) of land on the Rocky Flats site to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to establish the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Surveys of the site reveal 630 species of vascular plants, 76% of which are native. Herds of elk are commonly seen on the site. However, the DOE retained the central area of the site, the Central Operable Unit.
The last contaminated building was removed and the last weapons-grade plutonium was shipped out in 2003, ending the cleanup based on a modified cleanup agreement. The modified agreement required a higher level of cleanup in the first 3 feet (0.9 m) of soil in exchange for not having to remove any contamination below that point unless it posed a chance of migrating to the surface or contaminating the groundwater. About half of the 800 buildings previously existing on the site had been dismantled by early December 2004.
The site is contaminated with residual plutonium due to several industrial fires that occurred on the site and other inadvertent releases caused by wind at a waste storage area. The other major contaminant is carbon tetrachloride (CCl4). Both of these substances affected areas adjacent to the site. In addition, there were small releases of beryllium and tritium, as well as dioxin from incineration.
Cleanup was declared complete on October 13, 2005. About 1,300 acres (2 sq mi; 5 km2) of the original site, the former industrial area, remains under U.S. DOE Office of Legacy Management control for ongoing environmental monitoring and remediation. On March 14, 2007, DOE, EPA, and CDPHE entered into the Rocky Flats Legacy Management Agreement (RFLMA). The agreement establishes the regulatory framework for implementing the final remedy for the Rocky Flats site and ensuring the protection of human health and the environment.
In September 2010, after a 20-year legal battle, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a $926 million award in a class-action lawsuit against Dow Chemical and Rockwell International. The three-judge panel said that the jury reached its decision on faulty instructions that incorrectly stated the law. The appeals court tossed the jury verdict and sent the case back to the District Court. According to the Appellate Court, the owners of 12,000 properties in the class-action area had not proved their properties were damaged or that they suffered bodily injury from plutonium that blew onto their properties.
In response to historic and ongoing reports of health issues by people who live and lived near Rocky Flats, an online health survey was launched in May 2016 by Metropolitan State University, Rocky Flats Downwinders, and other local universities and health agencies to test thousands of Coloradans who lived east of the Rocky Flats plant while it was operational.
On May 19, 2016, a $375 million settlement was reached over claims by more than 15,000 nearby homeowners that plutonium releases from the plant risked their health and devalued their property. This settlement ended a 26-year legal battle between residents and the two corporations that ran the Rocky Flats Plant, Dow Chemical and Rockwell International, for the Department of Energy.
June 2014 marked a quarter century since the historic FBI and EPA raid of the Rocky Flats plant. A 3-day weekend of events from Friday, June 6 through Sunday, June 8 took place at the Arvada Center for the Arts, "Rocky Flats Then and Now: 25 Years After the Raid". Panel discussions covered various aspects of the Rocky Flats raid and its aftermath. On display were historical photographs and artifacts, as well as Rocky Flats-inspired art.