Denver Direct: Denver Federal Center Dig

Our own nationally-known environmental investigator, Adrienne Anderson, has come out with both barrels blasting in a new study of the pollution buried at the Denver Federal Center. Portions of the plot have been sold for development, and a hospital is being built there right now.

(Excerpted from the report)

Key Findings

– Citizens of Colorado are not getting a comprehensive clean-up of toxic and radioactive land and water at the Denver Federal Center. Grounds where a half century of combined toxic uses by the military and waste disposal by other government agencies are simply being moved around, reburied onsite, and/or sent to other locations around metro Denver not licensed to accept hazardous or nuclear-contaminated wastes, as a part of redevelopment plans now underway since the federal government sold off the site in 2007 in a $25 million privatization deal.

– Unknown to the general public and workers on the site, records obtained from CDPHE in a two-months investigation reveal that the west end of former Denver Federal Center government-owned property were once burial grounds for radioactive wastes by the agency operating the State of Colorado’s only nuclear reactor, the U.S. Geological Survey. Though apparently done during the Atomic Energy Commission (which also operated at the Denver Federal Center), and now the responsibility of the U.S. Department of Energy, no public investigation into this history or the fate of these drums and their impact to the surrounding environment is of record.

Download the report (pdf)