From hazard to habitat (or hazardous habitat)

I Introduction

Nature writer Jennifer Price contrasts the supposedly nature-less city of Los Angeles (where she lives) with the more ostensibly close-to-nature city of Boulder, Colorado (where she used to live). Though the college town presents itself as an ‘anti-LA’, what Price sees is a city in denial: ‘you can keep your air clean more easily when the factories that manufacture your SUVs and Gore-Tex jackets lie in distant cities’. ‘It is too easy to call your town the Great Right Place’, she claims, ‘when you live with far fewer of the problems you create’ (Price, 2005). In fact, Boulder is not at all divorced from the real world of ‘fallen’ nature. For 60 years, its residents have lived in the shadow of an environmental hazard equal to anything Los Angelenos face.

Eighteen kilometres south of Boulder, at 6000 ft, lies Rocky Flats (RF), a former weapons components plant that Price overlooks. Between 1952 and closure in 1989, this is where the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and its successors – US Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) and Department of Energy (DOE) – assembled the fissionable plutonium trigger (pit) for every weapon in the US nuclear arsenal. In its heyday, RF was Colorado’s seventh largest employer, the productive facility occupied an area half the size of Manhattan, and it housed sufficient bombs to make Colorado the world’s fourth largest nuclear power ( Denver Rocky Mountain News, 1999).

In 2007, after the largest remediation operation in American history (1996–2005), jurisdiction over 4000 acres of buffer zone was gifted to the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Six years later, though, Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge (RFNWA) still exists only in name; there are no current plans to admit the public ‘due to a lack of appropriations for refuge management operations’ (USFWS, 2012). This essay explores the site’s strange career, specifically how this hotspot of contamination – a cornerstone of the ‘Dead West’ (Davis, 1999) – metamorphosed from hazard to habitat and liability to asset. The title of a book about the earlier cleanup of a toxic sister site on the other side of Denver – When Nature Heals: The Greening of Rocky Mountain Arsenal (Shattil et al., 1990; see also Obmascik, 1995) – implied that nature itself took the initiative in the ‘weapons to wildlife’ (W2W) conversion (Havlick, 2006).

Yet the W2W conversion ( Backpacker Magazine, 1992) at RF is not the automatic outcome of the disarming of the ‘Gunbelt’ (the primary geographical locale of the US military-industrial complex that emerged in the 1950s). Before disposing of property to a private interest, the Department of Defense (DOD) must grant fellow federal agencies the right of first refusal (Lewis, 1994). Between 1988, when the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process was initiated, and 2004, the DOD transferred 21 military bases representing 1.1 million acres to the USFWS (Dycus, 1996; Havlick, 2006; Williams, 1999). However rich the biotic resources that many of these facilities unwittingly harboured, this acreage represents just 5% of the area occupied by c.400 military installations decommissioned to date. Multiple reuse is the most likely future they face.

This essay examines distinct phases in the recent history of the ‘Rocky horror show’ (Lemonick, 1993) (closure, cleanup, transition to wildlife refuge and management planning) with reference to these themes: the acquisition of biodiversity value; debate among interest groups over the ‘end-state’ of the decommissioned and decontaminated plant/site (Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments, 1999); remembering the site’s past; and options for management of a refuge in an arrested state of development. ¹

II Militarized island of biodiversity

Located 24 km northwest of downtown (and downwind) Denver, RF was just one of the area’s militarized sites. Another was Rocky Mountain Arsenal (RMA), 16 km northeast of downtown, where the US military produced a bevy of chemical weapons between 1942 and 1982 (private companies also leased areas to manufacture pesticides). In 2004, the USFWS inherited a chunk of the 17,000-acre buffer zone for Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge (RMANWR). Journalists loved the irony, penning headlines such as ‘toxic deathtrap becomes a wildlife haven’ (Stein, 2003). These sites’ unanticipated ecological value, explained Mark Udall, the Democratic congressman for Boulder who sponsored the RF refuge bill in the House of Representatives, was a ‘hidden reward for having closed off these areas’ (Rosner, 2005).

In The World Without Us, in which he tries to imagine what would be left of the world we have made if our species suddenly disappeared, Weisman (2007) refers to the ‘alchemy’ of RMA’s and RF’s transmutation into wildlife refuges. This sense of a quasi-magical development also informs the announcement of Wayne Allard (Republican-Colorado), Senate co-sponsor of refuge legislation, that he wanted to convert RF from an ‘active’ weapons manufacturing site into an ‘active refuge’ for wildlife (Congressional Record – Senate, 2000). Yet, like the buffer zones of other US military installations (Butt, 1994), RF was already far from inactive as a wildlife sanctuary, if de facto.

The size of the original RF withdrawal (1942) was 2520 acres, of which plant facilities consumed 384 acres. The rest remained ‘undeveloped’ save for firebreaks, holding ponds, effluent monitoring stations and gravel pits. RF was expanded to 7660 acres in 1975, creating a 6000-acre buffer zone. The federal government seized large swathes of ranch land to maximize security and secrecy, but to protect the Industrial Area against private property encroachment as well. Site expansion also provided an extra margin of safety for the burgeoning Denver area, whose population leapt by 29% between 1940 and 1950 (from 322,000 to 416,000) and by almost as much over the next decade (to 494,000 in 1960).

When health and safety concerns surfaced in the late 1960s and a critical mass of protestors coalesced, activists wondered why the military chose a site so close to a growing metropolitan area. Yet, in addition to the ‘strategic invulnerability’ a heartland location conferred, Pentagon planners (to the near-universal acclaim of local politicians, community officials and business interests) chose RF precisely because of the adjacent workforce and infrastructure (Ackland, 1999; Markusen et al., 1991). The area’s vigorous population expansion continued: ‘the [plant] will not enjoy rural isolation much longer’ (ERDA, 1976).

Each time another undeveloped acre was consumed, the ecological value of RF’s buffer zone lands crept up a little. Two important biomes – the Rocky Mountains and the high Great Plains – meet and overlap here, producing a mosaic of sagebrush, ‘upland’ wetland and dry (xeric) tall grass prairie (the latter one of North America’s largest remnants) that support 600 species of flora. The site also houses c.1300 animal species, including mule deer, whitetail deer, porcupine, striped skunk, coyote, badger, bald eagle, prairie falcon, great-horned owl and Swainson’s hawk; mountain lion, elk, and black bear occasionally visit (USFWS, 2005). Nonetheless, the most illustrious of the species inadvertently protected for half a century within a ‘self-contained’ militarized ‘island’ of biodiversity (Leslie et al., 1996) is Preble’s meadow jumping mouse. This example of charismatic mini-fauna is endemic to the Front Range of Colorado and southeast Wyoming, where its preferred habitat is damp streamside meadow. Since the 1950s, though, agricultural, residential and commercial developments have gobbled up 90% of its dwelling space (Edgerton, Germeshausen and Grier Inc./DOE, 1992). The marginalized mouse’s status in federal wildlife law (since 1998) is threatened, the category below endangered.

The buffer zone’s role was not confined, though, to passive protection for a pre-existing wealth of biodiversity. Military appropriation triggered a process of environmental improvement. The quality of vegetation on the rangelands surrounding the core had deteriorated progressively since ranching’s late 19th-century arrival. Heavy grazing on rocky ground subject to uneven rainfall and harsh, dry winds had encouraged the spread of prickly pear, Spanish bayonet (yucca) and Russian thistle, as well as cheat grass and other invasive plants. Cattle removal after 1952 initiated floral recovery. By the mid-1970s, native grasses had re-established their hegemony in the buffer zone. In turn, a host of beleaguered wild herbivores and associated predators returned. ERDA acknowledged increased levels of plutonium in certain species, but insisted that health was unimpaired: ‘The presence of numerous and varied animals … suggests that operations … are having no adverse effect … the restricted, undeveloped areas … are [a factor] in an improving, ecological environment at RF’ (ERDA, 1976).

III Replacing weapons with wildlife

For much of its American history, the cause of wildlife preservation has been spearheaded by citizen groups such as the American Bison Society, the Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation, working with the USFWS (and its predecessors). The conversion of the first US military reservation into a wildlife sanctuary, for instance, was the brainchild of a wildlife conservationist elevated to the presidency. Theodore Roosevelt’s executive order (1912) established 19,131-acre Fort Niobrara, a frontier outpost in Nebraska (1879–1911), as a ‘preserve and breeding ground for native birds’ (a remit quickly expanded to include bison and elk conservation).

However, the recent additions of RMA and RF to the national wildlife refuge system bucked the trend. Wildlife managers and environmentalists did not take the initiative. That the main critics were not the forces of commerce that traditionally chafed against ‘lock up’ of extractive resources in wildlife refuges and parks also ran against the grain. Local boosters supported extension of formal protection to informal reserves. They saw the potential of RF’s buffer zone to remove the stigma of the local ‘death factory’ by serving as urban amenity and visitor attraction.

IV Cleaning up the mess

Production at RF was suspended following Operation Desert Glow, a raid in June 1989 by 80 FBI agents acting on reports of multiple violations of health and safety and environmental regulations by its operator, Rockwell International (1975–1989). The following summer, FBI agents raided the plant again, along with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials (Zaffos, 2004). ² Five weeks after the Soviet Union’s dissolution (1992), the DOE announced that production would not resume.

As the plant’s mission shifted to remediation, RF was in good company: the ‘Superfund’ National Priorities List, first drawn up in 1982, embraces toxic legacies on non-militarized and non-federal lands as well as ‘formerly used defense sites’ (FUDS). Yet the DOD owned 81% of federal facilities on the initial list (Durant, 2007; Shulman, 1992; Wegman and Bailey, 1994). ³ At the same time, the scale of the task was unprecedented. In 1995, the DOE estimated that remediation at the renamed (1994) Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site (RFETS) would take 50 years and cost US$36.6 billion. Then, a few months later (October 1995), Kaiser-Hill (an environmental engineering company that had recently assumed charge) announced an accelerated operation lasting just seven years and costing only US$6 billion. Visiting RFETS in early August 1997, Energy Secretary Federico Pena, former mayor of Denver, revised these estimates upwards – but not by much. The job would be done by 2006 and cost US$7 billion (Eddy, 1998a, 1998b; Kaiser-Hill, 2005). In the event, Kaiser-Hill finished over a year ahead of schedule in October 2005 (Clark et al., 2006).

According to the established rule of toxic remediation, if the envisaged future use is residential, then the standard will be more exacting than for an industrial end-state. In its final report, the Rocky Flats Industrial Area Transition Task Force (RFIATTF) recommended cleanup within the core area to a level suitable for an industrial park. It also noted that dedication as open space would set the least demanding target (Rocky Flats Stewardship Council, 2008). RF cleanup legislation stipulated that the person to be protected was the ‘maximally exposed individual’, who, according to the yardstick adopted by the DOE, EPA and Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment, was the ‘putative wildlife refuge’ worker. This person ‘will not eat local food. He will not bring his children to the site, so they will not be exposed to the soil. He will drink little, if any, of the local water. His time exposed to plutonium left in the soil will be a fraction of that of a permanent resident’. If he was protected, then so, by default, would be all potentially exposed others (Makhijani and Gopal, 2001).

The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) disputed this approach. Regulators’ criteria required treatment of soil materials registering up to 50 picocuries (a picocurie measures the level of radioactivity); but, as IEER (2001) reported to the Boulder-based Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center (RMPJC), this effectively confined cleanup to the surface layer down to 3 ft. Between 3 and 6 ft, concentrations up to 1000 picocuries would be tolerated, while soil below 6 ft would be essentially ignored. IEER posited an alternative ‘maximally exposed individual’. The subsistence (aka backyard) farmer scenario involved ‘a hypothetical person who lives on the land, consumes local water and eats only locally produced food’ (Makhijani, 2001; Makhijani and Moore, 2001). In all previous instances of wildlife refuge creation, the refuge has been regarded as a permanent end-state. But IEER/RMPJC did not regard this condition as inalienable – especially in an area where, by 1994, over two million people lived within 50 miles (Reed et al., 1997): ‘If a law can create a wildlife refuge out of a plutonium contaminated site in a few months time, a reversal of such a decision can also be made. The pressures of development make such a reversal plausible, if not likely’ (Makhijani and Gopal, 2001). RMPJC’s co-founder, LeRoy Moore, was less circumspect: ‘[W]e should assume that eventually people will live on the site … cleaning … only to the refuge worker level provides poor protection for unsuspecting future residents’ (Moore, 2001).

V Winning a wildlife refuge: whose victory?

Discussion of RF’s future began while production was still going strong. The Lamm-Wirth Task Force on Rocky Flats (1975) recommended phasing out weapons manufacture and relocation of plant functions. ⁴ As for reuse, the task force urged retooling to a ‘less hazardous energy-related industry’, such as solar energy research (Lamm-Wirth Task Force on Rocky Flats, 1975; Moore, 1979). The following year, ERDA announced that ‘the land could be returned, essentially to its original condition, for long-term agricultural, industrial, or residential use provided adequate resources were committed’ (ERDA, 1976). Neither was a wildlife refuge among the options contemplated under the rallying cry ‘Convert Rocky Flats’ (RFAG, 1979).

Neither was a refuge on the cards when reuse planning began in earnest. Visiting in June 1992, Energy Secretary James Watkins envisaged the cleansed site as a magnet for manufacturing and business (Roberts, 1992). In February 1998, the Rocky Flats Local Impacts Initiative (RFLII: a panel of community and government leaders preparing for the economic impact of conversion) disclosed six options. Four had been previously aired: a conventional industrial estate/office park; a more innovative eco-industry park; a renewable energy research facility; and an environmental remediation research facility. But the fifth and sixth options were making a fresh appearance: a Cold War museum and open space (RFIATTF, 1998).

The open space option had been floated in 1995 by the Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board (RFCAB), established to advise the DOE on closure and cleanup (Rocky Flats Future Site Use Working Group, 1995; RFCAB, 1991). However, understandings of ‘open space’ varied enormously during the post-production planning phase (one planner suggested a golf course). One of the earliest calls for reuse as refuge was issued by Tim Heaton, RFLII’s director, who told a journalist that ‘the place where the wildlife gather is pristine enough to give serious thought to a wildlife refuge’. Noting that owls roosted in the rafters of an old ranch house and elk wandered in and out of the buffer zone, the reporter pointed out that prairie grassland ‘unfettered by plows or horses’ was a ‘rare commodity’ locally (Scanlon, 1992).

In May 1999, speaking at a lectern near the aforementioned Lindsay Ranch, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced the creation of Rock Creek Reserve. He referred to this 800-acre wildlife sanctuary in the buffer zone, which hosts species like Preble’s mouse, as ‘a unique habitat untouched by human development for 25 years’ (Eddy, 1999). A few months later (also speaking on site), Udall and Allard announced their intention to introduce full refuge legislation, ⁵ which noted that the site had largely ‘remained undisturbed’ since 1952 (Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge Act, 2001; RFCAB, 2002). In a cross-party initiative, Allard introduced the bill to transform RF from ‘producing weapons to protecting wildlife’ (Congressional Record – Senate, 2000).

When President George W. Bush signed the bill (28 December 2001), Allard hailed it as a ‘victory for our wildlife’ (Stein, 2001). But which human groups also claimed victory? W2W is often regarded as a win-win scenario. The DOD offloads surplus lands and the USFWS expands its holdings (Havlick, 2007). Yet, just as W2W is not BRAC’s most likely outcome, nor is it necessarily a source of delight for wildlife managers and environmentalists. US military lands contain more biodiversity per acre than any other category of federal lands, but they are also the most heavily contaminated of these lands – which is as important a trigger for reinvention as wondrous biodiversity.

According to RFCAB (2002), refuge creation enjoyed extensive local support. Yet this support was resigned as well as enthusiastic. Others were openly critical. For many locals whose efforts to close the plant spanned decades, refuge opposition was inseparable from criticism of cleanup. As cleanup wound down, Moore (who had campaigned against the plant since 1979) contended that if the site’s intended future use had been residential, farmland or public park, the operation would have been more rigorous: refuge status was an ‘excuse for a cheaper cleanup’ (Moore, 2005).

Critics of ‘dirty closure’ also queried the neat distinction between a small contaminated core and a large and clean buffer zone, for wind and fire and the movement of soil and water (ground and surface) dispersed particles. Bioturbation also assisted contaminant spread. The City of Boulder pointed out that black-tailed prairie dogs could burrow to 15 ft and, moving between core and buffer, create new frontiers of contamination (USFWS, 2004). Nor were critics impressed by the apparently healthy condition of buffer zone wildlife (USFWS, 2004). The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (a nationwide network of organizations representing communities downwind and downstream of nuclear plants and waste disposal sites) warned that, though individual specimens might appear largely unaffected, plutonium exposure’s longer-term evolutionary/genetic effects (‘body burden’) were poorly understood (Makhijani and Gopal, 2001; USFWS, 2004).

Local politicians’ concern revolved around public safety: ‘When you or I take our kids out in open space and walk on trails and observe wildlife and ride our bikes’, objected the Broomfield City Councilman Hank Stovall, ‘we don’t expect to be breathing high levels of plutonium’ ( Denver Rocky Mountain News, 1999). Refuge sponsors Udall and Allard denied that it was a cheap ploy to justify a minimalist cleanup. They opposed detoxification to residential use standard as this would encourage the view that a more demanding cleanup ‘should result in a commensurate return on this investment … through development’ (Udall and Allard, 1999).

Most environmentalists disagreed that a cleaner cleanup potentially jeopardized ecological values (Morson, 2004). Whistleblowers were equally suspicious of the refuge. Wes McKinley, foreman of the federal grand jury that conducted a three-year investigation of RF’s operator, Rockwell International, and DOE officials, regarded it as a calculated attempt to erase awareness of past misdeeds and their persisting legacy. In a co-authored book about the alleged cover-up (2004), McKinley asked ‘Why speak out now?’. Because ‘a decade later [after the grand jury investigation], unaware of what really happened at Rocky Flats, officials have announced that the former nuclear weapons plant can be partially cleaned up, turned into a wildlife refuge, and opened for recreation’ (McKinley and Balkany, 2004; see also McGuire, 2005).

RFCAB (2002) noted that ‘a former nuclear weapons facility is not a typical addition to the refuge system, and careful precautions must be taken to ensure a successful transfer’. USFWS staff are mostly biologists with little toxic hazard expertise, let alone radiological knowledge. Moreover, the Service is notoriously underfunded, receiving fewer dollars per acre than any other federal land management agency (at RF, it cannot even afford to tackle the invasive plants that threaten the biodiversity the refuge is supposed to protect; Hooper, 2011). Unsurprisingly, some agents regard decommissioned lands as burdensome (Havlick, 2010; 2011).

VI Managing the refuge

Refuge establishment awaited EPA’s verification of cleanup completion to a satisfactory standard. In June 2007, EPA removed the so-called Offsite Areas at RF from the National Priorities List (Superfund), to which the entire site had been added in 1989. This act of Partial Site Deletion covered more than 25,000 acres of surface and subsurface media (including groundwater) in the buffer zone (EPA, 2007; Federal Register, 2007a, 2007b). But planning by the new owners was already under way. On 19 February 2004, the USFWS issued a draft combined Comprehensive Conservation Plan and Environmental Impact Statement for the refuge’s first 15 years. Public meetings in local communities supplemented the 45-day public comment period. Feedback was invited on four potential ‘use options’. Alternative A was a ‘no action’ plan. ‘Alternative B – Wildlife, Habitat and Public Use’, the plan the USFWS backed, proposed management for a compatible combination of wildlife/habitat conservation with public uses such as (limited) hunting, off-road driving, cycling, walking and horseback riding. Alternative C was ecological restoration to ‘replicate pre-settlement conditions’, with provision for limited public use and minimal facilities. Alternative D offered various more intensive public uses, including educational programmes for schoolchildren, consonant with the refuge’s ‘wildlife-first’ mandate (Bunch, 2004; USFWS, 2004).

Over 5000 comments were received in the form of public testimony, letters and emails. Boulder County’s Board of County Commissioners was among the 63% of commentators who backed the refuge proposal, but was unhappy about the level of public access Alternatives B and D envisaged. Support for Alternative A (no action) was informed by the discovery at RMANWR in 2001 of bombs containing the deadly nerve gas sarin, which forced temporary closure and re-evaluation of the affected portion of the refuge. Arguing that the entire RF site was more or less contaminated, and that recreational activity could stir up and resuspend radioactive particles, the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability recommended public closure for at least two centuries. Colorado’s Division of Wildlife, the City of Arvada, the City and County of Broomfield, and the City of Westminster supported the official recommendation (B). Without endorsing a particular option, the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments reiterated its general support for the refuge and the principle of continuing federal ownership (USFWS, 2004).

Alternative C also precipitated extensive commentary. Boulder's County Commissioners selected ecological restoration, as the next best way to protect the public and the site's wildlife populations. ⁶ Other respondents probed deeper into the meaning of ecological restoration. Replying to a request for clarification from the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners regarding ‘pre-settlement’ conditions, the USFWS explained that ‘conceptual goals for habitat restoration [were] based on ecological conditions that existed prior to ranching and modern use and disturbance of the site’. Insofar as possible, pre-settlement species and ecological processes would be reinstated and Euro-American influences removed (USFWS, 2004).

In the context of frequent descriptions of the site as ‘(relatively) undisturbed’ for 50 years, the meaning of ‘disturbance’ also generated considerable comment. As Boulder’s Open Space and Mountain Parks Department emphasized, various forms of natural disturbance essential to healthy ecosystem functioning, such as grassland fire and grazing, were suppressed during plant operation. Given half a century’s worth of fire prevention in the buffer zone, it was misleading to refer to militarization’s total conservation of a pre-settlement environment. The even longer absence of wild bovines had also left its mark on buffer zone ecosystems. To replicate the bison’s pre-settlement grazing regime, the USFWS proposed ‘flash grazing’ by cattle, with goats deployed to control the post-settlement spread of invasive weeds. The USFWS also prescribed burning and mowing to mimic a ‘more natural’ disturbance regime (USFWS, 2004; 2005).

VII Remembering RF: the danger of erasure

Reservations about ecological restoration and public safety were supplemented by criticism of a wholly different sort. A vocal local constituency felt that refuge creation endangered the memory of the site’s multiple layers of identity as ranchland, weapons factory, place of work and rallying point for anti-nuclear protest. Critics identified two competing narratives: an uplifting environmental story and a human history that the former obscured, whether deliberately or inadvertently. Human geographer J.S. Davis captured this concern in the notion of double erasure – of both pre-military social history and the military era – formulated with reference to a Puerto Rican example of W2W (a former US Navy bombing range that is now the Caribbean’s biggest wildlife refuge) (Davis, 2007a; Davis et al., 2007b). A wildlife refuge, in short, is regarded as a weapon against the past.

At RF, to date, the notion of double erasure is not so clearly applicable (nor was it a decade earlier at RMA). ⁷ In ‘Rocky Flats unilateral mushroom transplant serenade’, a poem delivered in 1987 at a protest poetry reading on the rail tracks entering the Industrial Area, Michael Brownstein challenged the plant:

The stance of plant protesters is more complex, however, than this sentiment suggests. Critics indubitably wanted to relegate the plant to history’s footnotes. Yet they did not want to see its nefarious memory cleansed. Plant critics felt that the new environmental narrative with its happy ending in a wildlife refuge directly competed with the unsavoury Cold War story Brownstein addressed. Public memory of the toxic-tragic history of these shadowed and tainted grounds was in danger of erasure because ‘it would be unreasonable to assume long-term site control or that site use will not be changed in the future due to loss of institutional control and institutional memory’ (Makhijani and Gopal, 2001). As Nature trumps History, so to speak, they were concerned that tales of secrecy and subterfuge, of the subordination of safety and the democratic process to national security and profit, would be rubbed out.

Len Ackland, author of the authoritative history of the working plant (Ackland, 1999), has created an interactive online virtual museum about a fire at the plant in 1969 (its worst). ‘There is an effort to normalize Rocky Flats and hide its history’, he observed, but ‘if the story isn’t told, the place where Rocky Flats existed is going to vanish and merge with the rest of the Front Range’ (Long, 2002; Lozano, 2006). ⁸ The radiological half-life of a radioactive substance is the time it takes for half the original quantity of radioactivity to decay; for uranium and plutonium residues, this begins at 24,000 years. The other half-life, the biological half-life, is much shorter. And those who seek to commemorate the plant’s history fear that the half-life of human memory may be even briefer: ‘Rocky Flats’ contested history is now invisible to the naked eye’ (Nordhaus, 2009).

Yet there is no inherent conflict between the site’s human elements and histories and its non-human stories and components. In 1997, the National Park Service placed RF on the National Register of Historic Places. And the provision to establish a museum as a ‘tribute to the Cold War and those who worked at Rocky Flats’ was squarely part of refuge legislation and a central feature of the ‘Public Use, Education and Interpretation’ management objective (USFWS, 2004; 2005). Friends of the Rocky Flats Cold War Museum (FRFCWM) received its initial operating grant from Kaiser-Hill (supplemented by a congressional appropriation that Allard secured). The Friends’ mission is to ‘document the historical, social, environmental and scientific aspects of Rocky Flats, and to educate the public about Rocky Flats, the Cold War, and their legacies through preservation of key artifacts and development of interpretive and educational programs’. The museum website gives eight reasons to donate. The first is the imperative, now the buildings are gone and ‘memories are fading fast’, to preserve the site’s stories and material relics. Yet sharing information about the refuge’s wildlife and ecology is also stipulated as a reason to support the cause (see http://www.rockyflatscoldwarmuseum.org).

Initially, board and members were mainly drawn from the ranks of long-serving retired plant workers. Representation has since diversified. Moore joined the board in 2001 and membership now encompasses former peace activists, as well as environmentalists and local community figures. So, among the artifacts already donated to the future museum are not just glove boxes, protective suits and radiation measuring equipment but also banners wielded at anti-plant demonstrations and the tepee erected across the rail tracks to disrupt the flow of radioactive materials. Former antagonists – workers and protesters separated by barbed wire – agree on the imperative to preserve the pre-refuge past. The museum lobby’s major accomplishment to date, in the bid to forestall memory loss, is 90 videotaped interviews with plant workers, regulators, local citizens and community activists (FRFCWM, 2007). ⁹

Since January 2007, the Friends have published a regular newsletter entitled Weapons to Wildlife (though the refuge itself rarely features). The search for a museum site ended in 2011 when a lease was taken on the former post office in Arvada. The anticipated opening date of September 2012 was delayed but the museum opened on this temporary site in September 2013 (FRFCWM, 2011; Arvada News, 3 September 2013). In the meantime, persisting concern over memory loss is reflected in debate about future signage at the refuge. Should signs simply inform, or also warn? Since he was elected to the state legislature in 2005, McKinley, supported by environmentalists, has tried to pass a bill requiring refuge managers to post signs informing visitors about what happened there once upon a time and the environmental legacy. To date, they have been repelled by local politicians concerned about negative publicity: specifically, the impact on real estate values and the area’s appeal to potential residents (Nordhaus, 2009).

The USFWS also wants to be candid about the risks associated with a visit, and it is just as sensitive as the Jefferson County Historical Society to the heritage value of the Lindsay Ranch, which every refuge management report acknowledges. The USFWS is not averse to restoring and interpreting this site. It simply lacks the resources. RF has not been released from grubby but honest history and elevated to a pure and somehow deceitful realm of nature. On the basis of the evidence currently available, the applicability to RF of a de-historicizing and re-naturalizing narrative that is re-inventing the site as a floral and faunal wonderland that buries deep the less palatable history of weapons manufacture can be robustly questioned.

VIII Rocky Flats today

Many of the problems refuge managers at RF confront are the same as those faced at more conventional wildlife refuges. Others, pertaining to public access (wildlife refuges are mandated to provide opportunities for scientific research, education and recreation), are more specific to W2W refuges. The attentive visitor to RMANWR, which has admitted the public since 1997, can spot species such as black-tailed prairie dogs, coyotes and Swainson’s hawk. The biggest animal draw, however, is the bison, whose reintroduction reflects a shift from preservation by default to active conservation management: to restore the bulk of the site to a condition akin to that encountered by the first Euro-Americans. The Arsenal also hosts ‘nature and educational activities’. In October 2012, a 9-mile ‘Wildlife Drive’ opened up the refuge’s main habitats though it steers well clear of the most contaminated sites and landfills. Moreover, for a number of years, attractions unrelated to wildlife, publicized in Wild News, the Arsenal’s regular newsletter, also became an established part of the refuge’s rhythm. ‘Old West Day’ in October was billed as ‘a free family celebration of the American West and National Wildlife Refuge Week’. Visitors could take a hayride and fortify themselves with a chuck wagon meal. Musical entertainment was provided by the likes of Ron Ball, The Singing Cowboy.

To raise the stakes of objection at RF, McKinley insisted that its ‘radioactive fields’ were also intended for recreation, including horseback riding and hiking, but especially as a destination for school trips (McKinley and Balkany, 2004). Like whistleblowers and various community outfits, environmental groups have warned against activities such as education tours since the late 1990s (Gerhardt, 1997; Lowrie and Greenberg, 1998). The Comprehensive Conservation Plan and Environmental Impact Statement the USFWS released in 2005 envisaged increasing public use over the next 15 years, as financial and human resources became available. Projected facilities consist of 3.8 miles of hiking trails and 12.8 miles of multi-use trails (mountain biking and horseback riding as well as hiking), converted, mostly, from existing dirt roads, a seasonally staffed visitor station, trailhead parking lots and outlook points. Limited hunting is also contemplated. So are environmental classes for high school and college students (McGuire, 2004: USFWS, 2005).

The Denver-Boulder metropolitan area’s population continues to grow. In 2009, 3.5 million people lived within 50 miles of RF; 300,000 reside within the site’s watershed. Readily accessible open space carries a higher than ever premium.

Yet access restrictions are precisely why wildlife has flourished at RF. It is perhaps better, for the sake of biodiversity – not to mention human health (concerned citizens recently located plutonium they claim is breathable in soil samples near the site; Environment News Service, 2010) – to keep the refuge off-limits for plutonium’s radiological half-life (at least) which, for Pu-239, is 24,000 years.

IX Conclusion

This essay has examined one example of the paradox that some of the most contaminated sites in the USA are adjacent to some of its richest environments (Greenberg et al., 1997). Humanities research on the geography of contamination has mainly focused on the legacy of unmitigated environmental ruin inflicted by nuclear testing and weapons production that dominates the ‘landscape of national sacrifice’ in the ‘ugly’ and poisoned American West (Beck, 2009; Davis, 1999; Kuletz, 1998; Riebsame, 1997). Increasingly, though (following Solnit’s lead), the attention of scholarship has shifted to the ‘unofficial’ nature surviving surprisingly at former nuclear and other militarized places that compares favourably with the ‘official’ nature formally protected within flagship national parks such as Yosemite and Yellowstone (Solnit, 1994; Wills, 2001). This case study of RF ponders the adaptability of non-human nature rather than restating the conventional narrative of ecological fragility and vulnerability. Are cases of survival at hybrid and layered sites such as RF as shocking as examples of the natural world’s demise elsewhere?

Yet it is hard to predict how long this unusually high level of biodiversity will survive. The Inspector General of the Department of the Interior, which houses the USFWS, recently noted that, since site remediation, ‘while the Refuge sat idle, invasive weeds displaced native species and increased the potential risk for migration of nuclear contaminants to surface water’ (Ashe, 2011). In a borderless world and in the absence of funding for robust management, the security of floral and faunal resources cannot be guaranteed even within a refuge closed to the public for the foreseeable future.

This exploration of the afterlife of a particular nuclear weapons manufacturing complex also engages with larger issues concerning environmental contamination, post-industrial uses and the co-existence of toxicity and biodiversity at obsolete nuclear sites. Scholars such as Havlick are rightly critical of the motivations often propelling W2W conversions, but the story of RF suggests that we should focus just as much on their incontrovertible ecological assets. This case study also queries J.S. Davis’ belief that ‘the labelling of any environment as “natural” necessarily involves the erasure of the social history of the landscape’ (Davis, 2007a). The unexpected biodiversity value of disused nuclear sites was the mushroom cloud’s silver lining. There is no inherent conflict between awareness of RF’s ‘natural’ assets and recognition of its recent human past. At other former nuclear sites, acknowledgement of intertwined human and environmental histories is also more evident than erasure (provided, that is, that erasure is defined as a deliberate act rather than a more incremental, passive process more akin to forgetting). The most recent example is the addition (August 2010) of the Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site (where the USA conducted 23 nuclear and thermonuclear weapons tests between 1946 and 1958) to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites. This monument and memorial to the nuclear era and superpowers’ arms race is also rich in biodiversity and harbours ecological systems considered to be in a state of recovery – though nobody is allowed to live there as the soil contains the radioactive isotope cesium-137, which would be taken up by any crop that residents might plant (Gwynne, 2012; Niedenthal, 2001, 2009: UNESCO, 2010). In fact, the UNESCO listing emphasizes that the ‘degradation of the human artifacts by the natural elements’, far from being antithetical, ‘forms part of the cultural process illustrated by the property’ (UNESCO, 2010).

A further aim of this essay is to cast light from beyond the sciences on a subject area often treated as the preserve of a specialist scientific literature. Nuclear contamination is a subject that has only occasionally featured in this journal – some time ago, and with reference to nuclear energy generation and the emergence of a plutonium-based economy rather than weapons manufacture (Eyre, 1978; O’Riordan, 1979). ¹⁰ As O’Riordan (1979) pointed out in his review of the incident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, the body of work by geographers on human responses to natural hazards and perceptions of risk, especially the public acceptability of involuntary risk, though already substantial, did not extend to nuclear matters. Building on research by human geographers such as Havlick and J.S. Davis, and studies by other humanities scholars such as Kuletz and Solnit, this essay contributes the perspective of an environmental historian working with a local case study and written records in an effort to advance our understanding of the remediation and redeployment of militarized landscapes of contamination.