Hot Properties: Depleted Uranium at Lowry Bombing Range

RMPJC’s Nuclear Nexus Project Unmasks Depleted Uranium Contamination at Former Lowry Bombing Range SE of Denver, Opposes Massive Development

By Adrienne Anderson

A Denver billionaire’s heavyweight team of developers failed to mention it. Neither did any of the three other teams vying to win bids to build a huge new community on a 26,000 acre section of the old Lowry Bombing and Gunnery Range at the southeast edge of metro Denver. Neither has the Denver Post or Rocky Mountain News.

The area was used as a top secret depleted uranium testing grounds by the military for years.

On Election Day and the day after, the Colorado State Land Board held public meetings to hear four development teams’ proposals – including ones from a Canadian corporation and an Australian firm - for turning the military site into mixed use communities. The land board's mission is to generate revenue from lands owned by the state held in trust to finance kindergarten- through-12th-grade public education.

Colorado’s now lame duck governor, Bill Owens, has referred to the area as the “Jewel of the Front Range,” amidst reported controversy over conflicts of interest of his appointees to the State Land Board. With prospects of huge profits, the flaws in the jewel might be ignored.

In an impressive display of greenwashing, the developers touted the “sustainability” and “environmentally friendly” components of their plans for the lands.

One bonus touted by Sturm’s Lowry Range Property Group, LLC proposal? They claimed they would power their subdivision off the gases being released from the Lowry Landfill, the controversial dumping grounds just west of the proposed development project.

Unmentioned was the fact that the Lowry Landfill is loaded with plutonium and other radioactive wastes.

Over a number of years, Rocky Flats, Martin Marietta, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Coors, Shattuck and a couple of hundred other corporations, including the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post used the area to get rid of their toxic wastes, leaving over 138 million gallons of mixed liquid wastes to ooze underground to points beyond. EPA’s 1994 Superfund Record of Decision and other documents showed extensive radioactive contamination of the area’s groundwater, surface water and soils, which EPA and the DOE have since tried to deny.

Following the Sturm group’s two hour presentation, the State Land Board allowed a total of nine minutes for public comment.

The Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center’s Nuclear Nexus Project, in three minutes allowed, urged that any development on the land be prohibited, based on its research about the area’s history after several decades of use by the US Army, Navy and Air Force and contractors, including explosion of DU weapons in testing and training.

RMPJC’s Nuclear Nexus Project pointed out that while some removal of DU shells and other unexploded ordnance was done in 1999, and hauled to Fort Carson for disposal, that simple removal of identifiable pieces of DU ordnance and some identified “hot spots” in soil would not be an adequate remediation for a site where DU weapons were fired, and where fine radioactive particles with a half life of 4.5 billion years would remain.

Inhalation or ingestion of such dusts pose potent public health threats, RMPJC advised the board, not only to any future homebuyers and their children, but to the construction workers who would build the subdivision, as well. RMPJC cited the soaring incidence of babies being born with horrific birth defects in Iraq, as over 2,000 pounds of DU has been dispersed in U.S. attacks, which now permanently contaminates major regions of the war-ravaged country. Nearly a quarter of a million Iraq veterans are on disability, with DU suspected as a cause of mysterious illnesses and disorders, and in one study, 66% of babies born to families of returning Iraq war veterans studied suffered birth defects or other major medical problems.

Also urging caution about the massive development was the Colorado Environmental Coalition, over concerns that the State Land Board was moving ahead too quickly to allow development before environmental conditions could be fully assessed, and questioning water availability. Previously unaware of the DU contamination, the CEC has asked to join forces with RMPJC to oppose the development.

The Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center’s Nuclear Nexus Project is also partnering with CU’s Student Environmental Action Coalition and other CU students for education and action about the radioactive legacy still left not only at Rocky Flats, but lesser known sites around Colorado which were part of the chain of nuclear weapons production, from development, from uranium mining to testing and waste disposal, all posing risks to our health and security.

RMPJC’s Nuclear Nexus supports calls with others around the world for bans on use of depleted uranium weapons as immoral and inhumane, violating international human rights laws and treaties, and posing genocidal threats to regions of the Middle East, which many analysts believe has been targeted in the so-called “War on Terror” to garner control of natural resources long coveted by corporations now at the helm in the Bush Administration, including Halliburton and Chevron.

RMPJC urges that development on any lands with histories of DU testing be prohibited here in Colorado and elsewhere in the U.S.

Depleted uranium poses threats not only in Iraq and elsewhere where the DU weapons have been used, including Afghanistan and Bosnia, but in many of our communities here at home where hidden hazards from DU weapons manufacture and testing poses undisclosed risks. While the Department of Defense continues to downplay the hazards of DU, the DOE has admitted in one report that some DU armaments have included wastes from military nuclear reactors, including plutonium.

We must work together to end the local hazards and the global threat. A good place to start for area citizens is the Lowry Bombing Range at the outskirts of Aurora, the “jewel” of greenwashing in Colorado.

A version of this column was published in the Colorado Daily on December 12, 2006

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