DENVER—The Environmental Protection Agency has certified the cleanup of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, another step toward the planned conversion of the site to a wildlife refuge.
EPA spokesman Terry Andersen said Wednesday the property northwest of Denver will be turned over to the Interior Department, possibly within weeks, for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to manage.
Andersen said it would still be some time before any of the site is open to the public. Areas with the worst radioactive contamination will remain off-limits.
Rocky Flats, opened in 1951, made plutonium triggers for nuclear warheads. It was shut down in 1991 after a troubled history that included several fires. The FBI raided it in 1989, investigating claims that its operator had knowingly discharged chemicals into creeks that flowed into municipal water supplies, burned toxic waste and failed to adequately monitor groundwater.
The company, Rockwell International, was fined $18.5 million after it pleaded guilty to 10 hazardous waste and clean water violations.
A $7 billion cleanup of 6,200 acres at the site was completed in 2005. The site remains under monitoring and observation.
On Tuesday, a federal panel voted to recommend special medical compensation for about 4,000 more former workers at the plant, but stopped short of including everyone who had worked there.
The decision still leaves about 15,000 former workers—some of them with life-threatening diseases they blame on conditions at the plant—ineligible to receive automatic compensation, said Jennifer Thompson, a former Rocky Flats worker who petitioned for the special status for the workers.
