Cleanup at Rocky Flats, the Colorado Superfund site with the most hazardous wastes, could be basically done by Halloween, although a few environmental projects will continue.
The looming date means Colorado leaders must scramble to put in place a series of important policies, because in the future federal officials won’t be as focused as they are now on solving lingering problems at the site.
Topping the list are private mineral rights that, if developed, could wreck plans to make Rocky Flats a wildlife refuge.
For 50 years, the government used a few hundred acres at the core of the Rocky Flats site for nuclear weapons production. The industrial area was contaminated and will remain the Department of Energy’s burden.
Outside the core, the government left about 6,000 acres as a security and safety zone. Today that relatively untouched buffer zone harbors some of the last natural short-grass prairie on the Front Range – prime habitat for several endangered species. In a few years, after environmental reports are finished, the U.S. Department of Interior is slated to manage the old buffer zone as a wildlife refuge.
But the feds never acquired rights to gravel, oil and other minerals under the site. Interior officials fret that it will make no sense to operate a wildlife refuge if the property could be mined.
Four years ago, U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, and U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, an Eldorado Springs Democrat, successfully co-sponsored a bill designating Rocky Flats’ buffer as a national wildlife refuge once the cleanup is done.
Two weeks ago, Allard and Colorado’s U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, a Democrat, got the Senate to OK $10 million to buy part of the mineral rights. This month, Udall is supposed to serve on a conference committee, where he will work to ensure that the federal agencies involved have legal authority to buy the mineral rights. Udall and U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez, a suburban Republican, also are co-sponsoring a bill that would permit an exchange of Rocky Flats mineral claims for mineral rights elsewhere. Meanwhile, Allard is pushing a Senate version of the bill giving federal agencies the clout to buy the minerals.
But the group that represents cities and counties near the site, the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments, has raised important red flags.
Allard’s bill deals with only four parcels covering 540 acres, but there are at least another 2,200 acres of mineral rights at Rocky Flats. The federal government should acquire all of them.
Worse, in exchange for acquiring the minerals, the DOE wants off the hook for potential future legal liabilities. The federal Superfund law gives states like Colorado the right to seek reimbursement if their natural resources, such as clean water or soils, were harmed by Superfund sites. Colorado no doubt could file such claims. But Allard’s measure would exempt the DOE not only for damages that already have happened, but also from any future liability even if problems were found with the Rocky Flats cleanup decades from now. That’s a concern because the DOE isn’t cleaning up all the contamination. For example, there’s neither the federal funds nor the technology to completely cleanse the site’s soils. Bluntly, the DOE wants to strong-arm Colorado into surrendering its legal rights far into the future in exchange for doing what the feds ought to be doing anyway.
Allard, Salazar, Udall and Beauprez deserve praise for trying to resolve the minerals issue. But Colorado shouldn’t have to give up its right to seek compensation in case something goes wrong at the site years from now.
