Gov't To Create Rocky Flats Reserve

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Tuesday May 18 10:37 AM ET 

Gov't To Create Rocky Flats Reserve

GOLDEN, Colo. (AP) - About 800 acres of the former Rocky Flats 
nuclear weapons plant will be set aside for wildlife, Energy 
Secretary Bill Richardson said.  

The Department of Energy and the Fish and Wildlife Service will 
create ``Rock Creek Reserve,'' a protected area of tall grass prairie 
and wetlands at the nuclear waste cleanup site about 15 miles 
northwest of downtown Denver, he said Monday.  

``The reserve represents a remnant of the prairie and a reminder of 
our collective past,'' Richardson said. ``It symbolizes the 
importance of living in harmony with the land as our tribal leaders 
teach us.''  

The reserve, in a 6,000-acre ``buffer zone'' around the core of the 
site, is home to several rare species, including the threatened 
Preble's meadow jumping mouse, bald eagles, peregrine falcons, 
Eastern short-horned lizards and Eastern burrowing owls.  

Officials are busy trying to clean up the radioactive waste left at 
Rocky Flats by nearly 40 years of nuclear weapons production. An 
accelerated cleanup began in 1995, and Richardson reiterated his 
pledge that the job would be finished by 2006.  

The plan's critics are worried about the safety of moving 
contaminated materials.

Tom Marshall, who works for the Rocky Mountain Peace and 
Justice Center, said Richardson's wildlife announcement is just a 
distraction from the environmental issues at Rocky Flats.  

``I think this is window dressing,'' Marshall said. ``The real issue is 
whether Rocky Flats gets cleaned up.''

The first shipments of waste are being prepared for transport in mid-
June to a storage facility in New Mexico, site manager Jessie 
Roberson said. 

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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