Jefferson County Government and Rocky Flats Plant: Partners in Poison
They poisoned us. They poisoned us and they lied to us. Many people upon discovering this would scream and rage. What did the Jefferson County government do? They sold the land that lies within the radioactive contamination regions of the Rocky Flats Plant to a housing development. It is now official that people will do anything for a dollar.
Rocky Flats produced nuclear weapons. They manufactured the weapons using plutonium and were located exactly 15 miles from the city of Denver. The Rocky Flats Plant caused radioactive (primarily plutonium, americium, and uranium) contamination within and outside its boundaries. The contamination resulted from two major plutonium fires in 1957 and 1969 and from wind-blown plutonium that leaked from barrels of radioactive waste. Much lower concentrations of radioactive isotopes were released throughout the plants run from 1952 to 1992, from smaller accidents and from normal operational releases of plutonium particles too small to be filtered. Prevailing winds from the plant swept airborne contamination south and east, into populated areas northwest of Denver and in Denver.
The contamination of the Denver area by plutonium from the fires and other sources was not publicly reported until the 1970s, that means the people of Jefferson County were poisoned for 20 years without their knowledge. According to a 1972 study coauthored by Edward Martell, "In the more densely populated areas of Denver, the Pu contamination level in surface soils is several times fallout", and the plutonium contamination “just east of the Rocky Flats plant ranges up to hundreds of times that from nuclear tests.” As noted by Carl Johnson in Ambio, “Exposures of a large population in the Denver area to plutonium and other radionuclides in the exhaust plumes from the plant date back to 1953.”. Sure, we got the factory closed, but at the end of the day there is still toxic waste in the ground and in our water supply.
The government, both local and federal, state that their water treatments are working and that there is nothing dangerous on the land. This is a lie, sure the water may be cleaner but there are still barrels of toxic waste and of nuclear waste buried all around the old compound. Employee Richard Gibson, who worked as a member of cleanup crew for the plant, reported that managers of his team told them to take the waste materials out far from the factory and bury them. Many residents don’t know unless they really A) research it or B) had a family member working there, that the company, for many years, had discharged pollutants, hazardous materials and radioactive matter into nearby creeks and into Broomfield's and Westminster's water supplies.
Cancer risks for those who ate meat from deer that lived in the vicinity of the factory have risen to 1 in every 210,000. Those who inhaled plutonium particles produced at the plant have an increased risk of lung cancer, liver cancer, bone cancer, and leukemia. In 2003, Dr. James Ruttenber led a study on the health effects of plutonium. Conducted by the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the study concluded that lung cancer is linked to plutonium inhalation. "We have supporting evidence from other studies that, along with our findings, support the hypothesis that plutonium exposure causes lung cancer," said Ruttenber. His group's findings were part of a broader study that tracked 16,303 people who worked at the Rocky Flats plant between 1952 and 1989. Their research also found that these workers were 2.5 times more likely to develop brain tumors than other people. Dr. Carl Johnson, health director for Jefferson County, showed a 45 % increase in congenital birth defects in Denver suburbs downwind of Rocky Flats compared to the rest of Colorado. Dr. Johnson also found a 16% increase in cancer rates for those living closest to the plant as compared to those on the outer perimeter of the area, and he estimated 491 excess cancer cases whereas the Department of Energy estimated one.
Those 491 cases of cancer are only the reported ones. Over a period of time families living in the Jefferson county area developed various cancers, whereas no forms of cancer had previously been reported in their families. Plutonium particles were found at an elementary school 12 miles away from the site and there was plutonium and radioactive particles found throughout the Denver metro area. Members of the Gibson and Zech family, two families who have lived in Jefferson county for several generations are now experiencing the effects of the plant even though it has been shut down for 27 years. Husband and wife Julia and Robert Zech developed fatal cases of, for Julia, brain tumors and, for Robert, prostate cancer. Their children Roy and Judith also developed cancers. Roy developed skin cancer and is currently in remission. Judith Gibson (nee Zech) has developed adenoid cystic carcinoma, which will stay within her body for years until it finally kills her. The family, up until the Rocky Flats plant had began producing nuclear weapons had no reports of cancer in their family.
Many of the former workers at Rock Flats who believe they became ill because of exposure to radiation and toxic materials at the site are still struggling to receive federal benefits. More than 4,600 Rocky Flats workers or their survivors have applied to a federal compensation and health coverage program. Fewer than half have been approved. If the federal government won’t approve people who worked at the plant and have solid evidence that they were exposed to radiation poisoning, what are the residents of Jefferson county who didn’t work there and also have concrete evidence that they were exposed supposed to do?
The plutonium-239 particles that we have been exposed to and that the future residents of the Candelas estates will be exposed to has a half-life of 24,000 years and will persist in the environment hundreds of thousands of years later. Mentioned earlier, Dr. Carl Johnson, after reporting his findings of the risks presented from living within the vicinity of the Rocky Flats plant had been terminated from his job as Director of the Jefferson County Health Department due to concerns by the board members that his reports of contamination would lower property values. Clearly the Jefferson County board members did not mention these potential risks to the company who built the Candelas estates, or if they did the company either didn’t care or didn’t see the risks as serious. This is not the only thing that the Jefferson County government has done. They proposed to initially turn Rocky Flats into a wildlife preserve. In October of 2016, LeRoy Moore, one of the founding members of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, argued there are multiple issues with the creation of Refuge. Among some of his concerns are the long half-life of plutonium and the difficulties of effectively cleaning up plutonium contaminated sites and effectively making them "safe" for public use.
With this knowledge in mind I implore the citizens of Jefferson County to not only fight back against this potential development of Rocky Flats, but to see that the site is permanently closed to any and all development. I implore those who have lived within the radioactive zones and who have developed illness and cancers linked to the radioactivity to demand that they receive benefits from the federal government. We as a community did not choose to be poisoned and lied to, and yet here we are. Please if any of what I have written has bothered you about what has happened or has angered you, use that anger and uncomfortable nature to fight back against the injustice that has been done to us. Fight the government of Jefferson County. Stop them from being allowed to continue poisoning our people.
