Money allocated by Congress for the restoration of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons site will jump-start nearly $10 million for open spaces, prairie restoration and other environmental care in Jefferson County, trustees of the federal money said Tuesday.
“They’re building up the entire Rocky Flats area,” said Dr. Paul Kilburn of the Jefferson County Nature Association, one of the organizations putting up matching money.
One project will use $300,000 to combat non-native weeds by restoring the native prairie grasses in parts of the 4,000-acre Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, for decades the site of a nuclear weapons plant between Golden and Boulder.
The program will squeeze out knapweed, thistles and other non-native plants whose seeds scatter far from Rocky Flats to clog native Colorado ecosystems, Kilburn said.
The other projects are:
• About $6 million to buy 182 acres of prairie grassland in Superior.
• About $200,000 in cash and an estimated $98,000 in volunteer labor for native seeds, xeric tallgrass and Preble’s meadow jumping mouse habitat restoration by Boulder County, the city of Boulder and Wildlands Restoration Volunteers.
• About $1.6 million to acquire 314 acres of mineral rights on the northwest buffer of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge by the Trust for Public Land, the Department of Energy and a local landowner.
• About $1.7 million to acquire and replant 26 acres of prairie for a wildland buffer with Westminster.
“These five projects will help preserve and restore yet another important swath of Colorado open space for future generations,” Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, who serves of the board that oversees the federal restoration money, said in a statement.
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service became the owner of the site in 2007, two years after the Department of Energy completed a 10-year, $7 billion cleanup.
The weapons plant was closed after a raid by federal agents in 1989 found environmental violations. The plant’s contractor, Rockwell International, was fined $18.2 million.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
