Wildlife service endorses plan for 16 trails on former Rocky Flats plant after cleanup; dissent brews

By DAN ELLIOTT
Associated Press writer

DENVER — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service endorsed a plan Friday that would let visitors roam 16 miles of trails across a scenic, wind-swept plateau that once housed the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.

A state health official said the 6,240-acre site will be safe for public use after a $7 billion cleanup of plutonium, but an activist disagreed.

"It's really unwise to allow public recreation on a site that's still contaminated with some levels of plutonium and toxic materials," said LeRoy Moore of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center.

The cleanup of the site, set against the foothills northwest of Denver, is expected to be complete in 2006, and the refuge could open in 2008. Parts would remain off-limits because of buried wastes, but officials say the cleanup will remove surface contamination.

The Fish and Wildlife Service's draft management plan and environmental impact statement, released Friday, include four alternatives, ranging from limited guided tours to opening up 21 miles of trails for broad public access.

The agency's preferred option includes hiking, cycling, horseback riding and some hunting. Most of the trails would use existing roads. A seasonally staffed visitor center, parking and developed overlooks would be constructed.

The agency proposed removing unused roads, preserving the habitat of a federally protected mouse species and managing native plants, deer, elk and prairie dogs.

The preferred option will likely become the final plan early next year unless some new and significant obstacle surfaces, said Mark Sattelberg, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist at Rocky Flats.

Sattelberg said that's unlikely, given that the agency has already reviewed about 5,000 public comments.

Steve Gunderson of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which shares oversight of the cleanup process with the federal government, said the state has no objections to the plan.

"The cleanup will be protective to any sort of access to the land, either by the public or by the Fish and Wildlife Service," he said. Radiation levels are about the same at Rocky Flats as anywhere else in the state, he said.

Gunderson said hunters would face little danger consuming animals killed at Rocky Flats. Tests showed radiation in deer from the site were "extremely low or impossible to detect," he said.