Activists Ignore the Science of Safe
You may know that certain anti-development activist groups and their supporters are opposed to the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge.
Now, some of them are using fear, misinformation, and publicity-generating lawsuits to stop the Refuge from ever opening to the public.
Some of these opponents argue that the Refuge represents a massive government-corporate conspiracy to cover-up the truth about dangerous levels of radiation they claim exists all over the Refuge and adjacent lands.
Some also allege that the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council, formed to provide ongoing local government and community oversight, is part of the conspiracy because many of its members have “financial interests in development of the area around Rocky Flats.”
Thirteen years after the largest environmental clean-up in history removed and remediated the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, activists’ allegations have been repeatedly proven false through ongoing monitoring, scientific studies of millions and millions of data points, and an overwhelming agreement among public health, environmental, energy, wildlife, and scientific agencies.
Kim Griffiths, a Candelas resident and recently-elected citizen member of the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council, compared the activists to climate change deniers who exploit a very small minority of scientific opinions to assert that warming global temperatures are not caused by humans.
“It’s ironic considering that most of these same activists ridicule people who say global warming hasn’t been proven despite all of the scientific data that clearly proves it does,” she says. “But in the case of Rocky Flats they won’t believe, or admit to it believing, what the overwhelmingly-supported scientific facts are, regardless how much legitimate data and evidence you put in front of them.”
The activists “have stoked exaggerated fears of Rocky Flats for too long,” wrote former Denver Post editorial page editor Vince Carroll. “The rest of us can only marvel at their dismissal of the science that has been conducted at the site and the consensus among relevant government agencies.”