At Tuesday’s Adams 14 school board meeting, members voted unanimously to indefinitely ban school field trips to the former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Manufacturing Site.

Members of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center (RMPJC) said they will not stop until all area children are safe from exposure to the remaining contaminants to the Superfund site.

On September 26 members of RMPJC told the Adams 14 school board of the ongoing and expected longtime dangers of exposure to the plutonium and other contaminants that were used in the manufacturing of nuclear bomb triggers and are believed to be impossible to eradicate despite a cleanup effort that lasted years past the closing of the plant in 1989.

Chris Allred, a member of RMPJC told the board last month, “This is is an urgent matter of public health for all students in the Denver metro area because US Fish and Wildlife plans to open the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge in the Summer of 2018.”

Over the spring, the US Fish and Wildlife Service held a series of community meetings informing of the Service’s plans to open up the area including trails and a visitor center.

Allred said that the proposed trails were too dangerously close to surface soil where residue Plutonium 239 and 240 still remain according to a 2006 Kaiser-Hill Study.  The board received maps provided by Allred detailing locations of the contamination.

In the spring, Boulder Valley School District was the first followed by St. Vrain School District to ban field trips to Rocky Flats.  Last month Westminster School District banned trips.  RMPJC intends to approach other area schools in the upcoming weeks.

Rhonda Adkins, a registered nurse responded to the vote,  “They seemed as though they had already weighed the evidence and the information that had already been presented to them.  They seem to have taken that to heart.  There’s now a trend of the school districts around Rocky Flats to take the potential risks very seriously.”

The Resolution: