Legal updates Rocky Flats

Rocky Flats News
Written By Sasha Stiles

Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) espouse “we must prevent what we cannot cure.” The former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, Golden, Colorado (Rocky Flats) was a weapons-grade plutonium-239 trigger manufacturing site for US thermo-nuclear bombs. Rocky Flats was also a neglected open radioactive waste disposal facility, crime scene and a portion is a current Superfund site that contributed to “Cancer Incidence in an Area Contaminated with Radionuclides Near a Nuclear Installation.” (Dr. Carl J. Johnson, 1981, pp. 176-182). Cancer causing agents from Rocky Flats activities and operations have eluded a cure.

The incurable cancer threat remains despite the recent anthropogenic geographical interstices of the Rocky Flats Superfund site: the current Rocky Flats Site (OU1), Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge (OU2), Jefferson Parkway (OU2), and offsite lands (OU3) where respirable - Plutonium Dioxide - dust remains. The pretermitted remediation of Rocky Flats also involves the lack of independent verification. Currently and in furtherance of independent verification, community organizations have lodged four (4) federal lawsuits amounting to “Five Imminent Threats" to public health at Rocky Flats: 1) construction of the Jefferson Parkway which will entrain Rocky Flats contaminants downwind to inhabited areas; 2) construction of the Rocky Mountain Greenway trail system which will entrain Rocky Flats contaminants downwind to populated areas; 3) and 4) The Rocky Flats National Wildlife Trail Build-out and visitor center will entrain Rocky Flats contaminants downwind to populated areas; and, 5) The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation (COGCC) Oil and Gas Development Permit Applications. (Pat Mellen, 2019, pp. 8-13).

Additional legal issues include the US Department of Energy planned breach of earthen terminal pond dams laden with radioactive and hazardous wastes in 2020; ongoing soil disturbance of Rocky Flats Site remaining infrastructure contaminated with radioactive and hazardous wastes; and, Colorado Attorney General’s office and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) ill-advised decision to denude the established Colorado Construction guidelines intended to protect the public from weapons-grade plutonium-239 releases of contamination. The prophylaxis for cancer from Rocky Flats is the cessation of operations, construction and demolition, and independent verification of the comprehensive risk analysis to public health and environment. Current Post authored by Jon Lipsky, MAS and FBI Retired.

Sasha Stiles

Dr. Stiles is a Medical Doctor, educated and trained at the University of California San Francisco, with a Master’s in Public Health from the University of California Berkeley.  She is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Denver.

Sasha is a resident of Superior, Colorado, a small town that directly abuts the buffer zone of the former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, now named the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge.  As a result, concerns about the health effects from Rocky Flats contamination is not only professional but also personal to Sasha. She has worked to define parameters for a risk assessment process of Rocky Flats and its buffer zone.  The goal of the work is to ensure such assessments are based on human rights, rather than assumptions or mathematical models. She is interested in identifying biomarkers of radiation damage, particularly given that government agencies have failed to do so and thus escaped the responsibility of health harms.  Sasha is dedicated to citizen health, public safety, and exposing the ramifications of radiation injuries

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