Keep Kids Off Rocky Flats

“Basically there’s enough uncertainty about the safety that we should be cautious when it comes to our children.”

Keep Kids Off Rocky Flats is a project of the Rocky Mountain Peace & Justice Center and the Rocky Flats Nuclear Guardianship. It’s an effort to raise awareness about the ongoing risks  posed by plutonium contamination on the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge.

The refuge, surrounds an active Superfund cleanup site and former nuclear weapons facility, and Chris Hormel with Rocky Flats Nuclear Guardianship  says the area is not safe from the radioactive hazards of plutonium; those particles are subject to the disturbances of wind, rain, and burrowing animals.  He says it’s imperative that children be kept away from the area and he’s urging people to sign a petition to local school boards to keep school groups and children away from the refuge.

“Basically there’s enough uncertainty about the safety that we should be cautious when it comes to our children who are the most vulnerable ones when it comes to inhaling a particle of plutonium, they would carry it around their whole life and it would give them cancer or some other disease and be fatal. This is what we’re trying to avoid, we’re trying to avoid school trips and scout troupes, all of those things that you would normally encourage kids to do at a wildlife refuge.  In this case it just is not applying the correct amount of caution that we should be applying when it comes to our children.”

The Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge is scheduled to open to the public next year. The construction of trails has already begun.

On October 6th, from 6:30 to 8:30pm, there will be a meeting, what’s being called a Sharing Session, the first in a series of collaborations and the beginning of an ongoing dialogue with refuge neighbors and the fish and wildlife service.

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