Marshall Fire Rocky Flats Marshall Fire Rocky Flats
Marshall Fire Rocky Flats Marshall Fire Rocky Flats
This video was published only days after the Marshall Fire. The Producer makes no reference to Rocky Flats. In making this video, Mr. Cannon was presumably unaware of our local history. How can we local Coloradan’s explain what he sees here?
Please watch:
Watching may be upsetting to people directly affected by the fire.
NuClub Boulder is your community voice for radiological readiness in Colorado.
Our mission is to correct course where it concerns toxic forms of contamination along the Front Range.
There is no room to deny that we are nuclear, still we must brace for the consequences.
WARNING:
Nuclear contamination exists in the Central Operating Unit of Rocky Flats, around and off-site of the 6200-acre Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge, in creeks, irrigation channels, and in open space areas in Boulder and Jefferson County. Dumping may have taken place on Boulder County waterways. This residual contamination is radioactive, carcinogenic, and may lead to spontaneous wildfires. I believe Rocky Flats’ contaminants were involved in the Marshall Fire and that is why we need a full spectrum examination of the ash. Contamination of this sort is usually measured by the billionth or trillionth of a gram. The Marshall Fire covered over 6000 acres of south Boulder County.
This advisory from 1979 gives us plenty of warning:
Join me in looking in to the science.
*Experts say they have no knowledge of offsite dumping or plutonium contamination in Marshall Lake.
Marshall Mesa is not thought an area of concern.
Dear Coloradan,
Local residents need to understand that the legacy of Rocky Flats is not some old controversy from the cold war. With a half-life of 24,000 years, plutonium contamination is bound to play new and unexpected roles in the lives of Front Range residents for millennia.
Students, tourists and new residents have no idea that the federal government is so committed to preventing this public information from being released and made actionable. Congress pays upward of $106,000 a year to keep our exposure from becoming a public concern. They would pay more, and only to keep this exposure constant because the true cost of remediation is a much bigger figure. The cost of bringing Rocky Flats back to a natural habitat is prohibitive.
Instead of a thorough clean up, public organizations are playing down the legacy of radioactive contamination along the Front Range. Citizens need to raise their expectations. If we act as though the radioactive contamination from the old Rocky Flats plant is inert and safe to play on, we are being shortsighted.
Plutonium is pyrophoric, it loves fire. For a close-up view of some of the unique characteristics of this heavy metal, watch this 1967 Hanford experiment.
The Science: Plutonium was first produced by the Manhattan Project in 1940. Three small gadgets were placed into the first three atomic bombs. In early August 1945, President Truman ordered the release of two bombs. They detonated above the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for maximal effect in the strategic effort to get Emperor Tito to surrender, ending the Second World War.
Why not call the Cold War the Third World War?
The arms race put the major players in a position of mass production. We’d get the best out of the war - in a sense - because we would build for a war that would never produce itself. The only casualties, if containment strategies would be successful, would be the sacrifices we made testing and the losses we incurred pushing our economic and public health limits in the production of a nuclear arsenal.
The Rocky Flats Stewardship Council today:
Don’t miss it: May 13, 2024 Executive Board Meeting of the RFSC Notification
May 8, 2024 Special Meeting 4 Full Video
April 1, 2024 RFSC Meeting 99% Complete Video
March 29, 2024 Special Meeting 3 Full Video
March 4, 2024 Special Meeting 2 Video
Feb 20, 2024 Special Meeting 1 Full Video
February 5th, 2024 RFSC Meeting Full Video
Jan 8, 2024 Executive Board Meeting discussing the agenda for all future meetings.
When I brought forward my concerns about the Marshall Fire to the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council (in the meeting of Sept 19 2022) Executive Director David Ableson got very upset with me. He stood from his chair calling me absurd and my presentation specious. He was standing over my chair threatening me while all the other board members and attendees held their breath. Astonished by these proceedings, I began to look into the history of the Stewardship Council. Looking back, it is clear that David has been playing these bureaucratic games since the board was founded. Here is the history:
In 2006 until 2010, public comment given in live meetings were not recorded in the minutes of the meetings. Anne Fenerty, Mary Harlow and LeRoy Moore called the organization out: What kind of advisory group doesn’t convey the public’s opinion? Answer: The Stewardship Council is Not an advisory group at all and still it has a duty to record and convey comments the public brings to this board without comment or contrition. Public comments in the meetings would be summarized in the minutes, and written comments would be posted to the website starting in 2010.
In 2022, I wrote letters and still had difficulty having my letters posted. David said that a comment to the website had to be followed up with a copy sent to his personal email. Only then would my comments be posted. I obliged.
The next year, 2023, David, without a vote or a discussion from the board, introduced the project of rebuilding the RFSC website. This was done by way of an executive announcement. The new design, when it was later unveiled, had removed all public comments that had been listed from 2010 to the present. Fourteen years of public contributions to the institutional memory of Rocky Flats - gone.
David Ableson and Mayor Jan Kulmann of the RFSC
Today, at www.rockyflatssc.org, your public comments will not be posted. Who knows if they’re being read by the board, or the DOE/Legacy Management (the underwriter of this organization)?
Boulder County is under attack from the past.
Boulder County is under attack from the past.
Boulder County is under attack from the past.
Boulder County is under attack from the past.
Two months ago, I realized the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council had removed all of the bodies of water in their Map of Member Governments, including the second largest body of water in the region: Marshall Lake. This map has been a tool used to explain the powers of the member governments since 2012.
See for yourself. After identifying this oversight, I started looking for regional maps that include Rocky Flats and Marshall Lake. At first, I couldn’t find many local maps that included both sites, so I made my own map, compiling two maps together. That’s when I realized the destructiveness of the Marshall Fire lines up shockingly well with an old institutional blind spot of the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council.
I believe Marshall Lake was chosen as a site to dump and hide 50-gallon drums of contaminated waste. These may have ignited in the wind, causing hotspots that reached incredible temperatures on the morning of the Marshall Fire. Simply stated: the science we have on what took place that day is incomplete.
*Special Thanks to the Rocky Flats Downwinders.
Without Marshall Lake:
With Marshall Lake/Marshall Fire:
We were not lucky.
My goal:
I want NuClub Boulder to become a meeting place and an orienting space for people who are concerned about wildfires and radioactive emergencies along Colorado’s Front Range. My goal is to educate people about the history of Rocky Flats and to consult with neighboring governments about the environmental consequences of this history.
My posts will be of special interest to survivors of the Marshall Fire. Your health continues to be at risk. I hope my posts will serve as a warning to developers who aspire to monetize this contaminated part of Northern Colorado. I believe the Marshall Fire was not a county fire but a federal fire, fed by federal weapons production waste. The Marshall Fire was a National Disaster.
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I am a Penguin Random House author. I have published two books. The first, The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power, is a memoir about my early cycling activism. The second, A Comedy & A Tragedy, is a memoir that explores my journey through education. Neither of these books make me uniquely qualified to be an expert on Colorado wildfire mitigation. I only hope my attention to Rocky Flats contamination can in the long-run improve the salience and health of a fragile region.
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I was raised in a small house near Swanson Elementary School (6139 70th Street) between Ingalls Pl. and Ingalls Ct. My family left Colorado in 1980. I returned to Colorado holding a degree in theater and a degree in writing in 2007.
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I have been a resident of the City of Boulder since 2007. I am an affordable housing and a sustainable transportation advocate.
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DOE is not going to hide the facts about the connection between toxic waste and The Marshall Fire. Rather, it is going to pay the RFSC to suppress these connections.
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Heavy metal fires do not require oxygen to burn. They can burn underground or in otherwise oxygen starved environments. Heavy metal fires can rekindle even when we think they are completely safe.
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nuclubboulder@gmail.com
*the rules of NuClub are simple: participate.
**Thank you to current members whose inspiration I depend on.
