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Similar to Rocky Flats Horror Show: Rocky Flats, Candelas, and the Consequences of Nuclear Waste
Similar to Rocky Flats Horror Show: Rocky Flats, Candelas, and the Consequences of Nuclear Waste (20)
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Rocky Flats Horror Show: Rocky Flats, Candelas, and the Consequences of Nuclear Waste
- 1. Rocky Flats, Candelas, and the Consequences of Nuclear Waste
- 2. Roadmap Research Questions Background on Rocky Flats and Candelas Academic Research on Environmental Justice Rocky Flats Stewardship Council v. Candelas Glows Discrepancies in Environmental Justice
- 3. Research Questions • How is capitalistic development at odds with environmental justice? • What is the relationship between environmental justice and nuclear waste? • How do community groups around Rocky Flats advocate for environmental justice?
- 4. Rocky Flats • Former nuclear weapons facility located less than twenty miles northwest of Denver in operation from 1952-1992 • Now Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge • Refuge and surrounding areas have high levels of plutonium and other toxic chemicals • In 1957 and 1969, two fires blew toxic plumes over the Denver area, making it likely that radioactive chemicals aren’t confined to the nearby regions
- 5. Rocky Flats or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb • The Cold War shrouded most of the nuclear weapons complex in secrecy under the guise of national security • Local communities were not informed of Rocky Flats’ true production – most thought it produced cleaning chemicals • No emergency evacuation plan was ever created in case of a criticality • Creation of plutonium pits led to the leakage of chemicals like uranium, tritium, nitrate, strontium, cesium and iodine due to poor waste disposal and safety violations
- 6. Candelas • Suburban development that borders Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge • While Colorado Department of Health and Environment declares it safe enough for human inhabitation, the health consequences of inhaling plutonium are dire
- 7. Environmental Justice • Most of EJ is concerned with issues of injustice in poor and majority-minority areas • Towns surrounding Rocky Flats have always been largely white, middle-class, and occupied by those with a high school degree or higher • Site chosen to take advantage of the middle-class industrial workforce and a traditionally conservative voting record • Executive Order 12898
- 8. Environmental Injustice • Former workers not warned of exposure risks, encouraged to cut corners to maximize production • No signage at Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge warning about the potential exposure for risk • Potential homeowners have not been warned since the creation of the plant about the potential risk for exposure in their purchase agreements
- 9. • Government sponsored • Concerned primarily with containment and tracking issues related to former site employees • Works with the Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management
- 10. Candelas Glows • Seeks to raise awareness of the ongoing radioactive dangers at Rocky Flats • Advocates for a complete halt on development and converting the Wildlife Refuge into a National Sacrifice Zone • Concerned about climate change’s affects on the spread of toxic waste
- 11. Conclusion • Capital development is incompatible with environmental justice • Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act (2000) • Not seen as an environmental justice issue
Editor's Notes
- The land seen here was remediated in the early 2000s, but most of the buffer zone and everything outside the area was not remediated. Since Rocky Flats was designated a National Wildlife Refuge, cleanup requirements were less stringent since it would not be zoned for commercial or residential use. Rocky Flats was permitted 651 picocuries per gram of soil, a measurement higher than what is found at the Nevada Test Site where nuclear bombs were tested above and below ground frequently from the 1950s to the 1990s. The cleanup, completed in 2007, is lauded by the Department of Energy as one of the largest and most successful nuclear decommissioning projects completed anywhere in the world.
- Candelas is a master-planned community in Arvada, which borders the Refuge to the South. Chinook winds measuring over 100 mph can come off the mountains and kick up unremediated soils brought to the surface by burrowing animals and carrying plutonium particles to Candelas and throughout the western Denver region.
- Executive Order 12898, signed by Bill Clinton in, requires federal agencies to identity and address adverse human health and environmental impacts on minority and low-income populations. Because the population surrounding Rocky Flats is not minority nor low-income, federal agencies like the Department of Energy, which oversees the former facility core – the region seen here in the slide – and the Fish and Wildlife Service – which oversees the rest of the refuge – are not required to consider issues of environmental justice when conducting environmental assessment. The conversion of the buffer zone to a wildlife refuge also means that the majority of visitors will be white and middle class due to their overwhelming representation in outdoor recreation.
- The Rocky Flats Stewardship Council was created in 2006 to monitor the region and is run by a Board of Directors composed of mostly elected officials from nearby counties and cities, one member from three different advocacy groups, and one civilian resident. The Board was created by the Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management to provide continuing local oversight of activities at the former site and ensure that local government and community interests are met with regards to long-term stewardship of residual contamination.
- Candelas Glows is worried about drought conditions and a potential Dust Bowl stirring up the lesser or unremediated lower soils and spreading the contamination throughout Denver. In 2013, a major flood caused soil erosion in the former core area of the plant, spreading tiny amounts of plutonium and americium to the creeks near Rocky Flats that drain towards the South Platte River. The Colorado Dept of Public Health continues to state that the levels are safe, but research shows that there is no safe level of exposure to plutonium, and that even the smallest breathed-in particle can lodge itself in the lungs and cause cancers twenty or thirty years later. Candelas Glows is mostly an advocacy group that mostly attends public hearings and stages protests against developments and does not have formal funding – they do their organizing on Facebook and through word of mouth.
- Capital development is incompatible with environmental justice. The Rocky Flats Stewardship Council is more concerned with maintaining the productivity of the land, which includes allowing public access to the refuge. IN recent years, the council has been monitoring the development of a visitor center at the Wildlife Refuge and tracking the development of the Jefferson County Parkway. It considers advocacy out of the scope of its organization and as such only weigh in on development issues if there is an issue with the Rocky Flats Refuge Act, which is concerned with things like prohibiting the annexation of the land by any unit of local government and prohibiting the construction of public roads through Rocky Flats. Candelas Glows advocates for monetary compensation, a memorial or monument to the workers affected by downwind and groundwater poisons, and halting all access to the core area and preventing further development to not exposure the future. The Rocky Flats Stewardship Council deals only with the injustices of the past with seemingly no concern with potential future environmental injustices. The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act passed in 2000 attempted to right these sort of occupational injustices, but provides no compensation for local communities affected, and the burden of proof is placed on the employees to prove that their cancer or illness was caused by radioactive exposure. Unfortunately, most of these former employees do not have access to their health records, with the government citing concerns of national security, and as such it is difficult to blame. Finally, because radioactive toxins cannot be smelled, seen, or felt, and because the community affected is mostly white and affluent, it is difficult for Rocky Flats to be considered an environmental justice issue.