Rocky Flats - Safe for Jefferson Parkway Development?
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
ARVADA, Colo. - Critics are raising questions about the safety of a major parkway through land which once housed the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons production facility. Developers of the private toll road seek to purchase a 3.5-mile-long segment northwest of Denver in what is now the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge.
The plan is to complete the 10-mile long Jefferson Parkway from the Jefferson County Airport to Golden. The Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority (JPPHA) says the land in question - in a former Superfund site - has been found by numerous government studies to be safe to use without restriction.
But Dr. Harvey Nichols, an emeritus professor of biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, says, not so fast.
"It would certainly stir up dust from that site and the workers would affected by that, and of course, the dust could potentially, with the high winds in that area, get around to quite a bit of the metro area."
Federal or state development of the land would require a new environmental impact report, something Dr. Nichols says a private owner wouldn't need to do. He would like any sale to include the requirement of a report of the impacts of construction on contaminated soil before the sale is finalized and construction begins.
LeRoy Moore with the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center says it should be kept in mind that, although the soil has been declared "safe," that could change if the ground is disturbed. He believes the disruptive process of road construction could unleash a host of problems.
"We're talking about plutonium in the environment. It remains dangerously radioactive for a quarter of a million years. And it's dangerous in tiny particles, if those particles are ingested or inhaled."
The Parkway directors agreed to buy the 100 acres in question - which is a strip just 350 feet wide - from the federal government for $2.8 million.
The bidding process for the construction contract ended this month, with a winning proposal set to be identified in July. Construction on the project could begin in September of next year, with the Jefferson Parkway open to traffic as early as July of 2015.
The JPPHA website is www.jppha.org
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