By Adrienne Anderson

What to do with the wastes of war?

Today’s fix is to deny it’s there and cover it up. With cement. And lots of it.

At least that’s the apparent approach of the Bush administration and a well-connected corporation that operates with the kiss of approval of the Pentagon and some of its top contractors, like Lockheed Martin. Former personnel of such polluters are the chief executives and managers for this firm, called International Risk Group (IRG). It operates through a variety of subsidiaries with different names and its profits are tied to pollution cover-ups of some of the worst sites throughout the U.S. and beyond.

In Colorado, one such project is the proposed “Lowry Vista ” development at the former Lowry Air Force Base in Denver. IRG bought an 80-acre parcel there for $10, with plans to make millions.

Records show an atomic weapons training school once operated at Lowry. There, warheads were maintained for Titan missiles inside a top secret black hangar, and a fleet of bombers was maintained on alert. Wastes from such operations were dumped at the far southeast corner of the base in open trenches dug and filled in succession over decades until ending along Alameda Avenue at the south central portion of the base, the area IRG wishes to build hundreds of housing units.

Recently, IRG launched a new website for its Lowry Vista proposal, touting it as an “environmentally responsible” plan which they’d strive to make a “Greenprint Denver Development.” Recycled materials would be used for its trash cans and benches. Small “pocket parks” would form an “emerald necklace” for its prospective residents to gather, a perfect use for the “dormant” property.

Last week the Littleton-based conglomerate held two “open houses” in the now redeveloped area. At the meetings, though, IRG didn’t mention that the land has laid fallow because of radioactive and toxic hazards that no one wanted to touch with a ten foot pole or pay to remediate properly, including the U.S. Air Force who put it there. Some of the radionuclides detected around the dump are man-made ones, and clearly are not “naturally occurring.” Combined radiation levels are at very high levels beyond those considered safe in some studies, and in 100% of the wells tested surrounding the dump.

IRG also failed to disclose that the property is so polluted with radiation that the City of Denver refused to take title to it as part of their open space lands. No doubt Denver officials have learned their lesson after 1964 when the federal government sold the city a 464 acre lemon with its own looming legacy on the Lowry Bombing Range three miles east of the base, used for its weapons training activities. Though studies in the 80’s and early 90’s found the site loaded with plutonium and 25 other radionuclides, it - like its sister dump in Denver - sits with only soil and trash atop its hot contents, like a lid on a bottomless bowl.

Last summer, RMPJC had provided evidence of the high radiation level in groundwater around this dump to the Denver city councilperson representing area residents, Marcia Johnson. In response, she sought an opinion from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment as to whether such a development as IRG proposed was a proper use of the land. Soon after, she received a reply from Jeff Edson, then CDPHE’s senior staffer overseeing all projects involving Pentagon-related environmental hazard sites throughout the state.

“The short answer is no,” Edson said bluntly.

Nonetheless, the Lowry Vista project by IRG marches forth, no doubt expecting Governor Bill Ritter’s CDPHE officials and Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s Environmental Health Division staffers to turn their heads, as the lucrative plans to cover-up lurking threats loom further forward.

Elsewhere in the U.S., IRG irks.

At a site in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, California, IRG acquired land where the state’s first nuclear reactor once operated. The same site was later used for rocket development by Rockwell – the same company that criminally operated the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant between Boulder and Denver for years. NASA further used the same property for activities related to its Apollo Program, which launched shuttles powered fueled by deadly hydrazine-based fuels. IRG brokered a deal for Kaiser to build a hospital atop this toxic and radioactive legacy, lands which area residents say has sickened those exposed to it for years.

Paving over our military’s radioactive past is only putting a patch on a problem that will last into perpetuity. As sins of the past have a way of becoming unearthed, such pockmarks on our precious planet must be fully acknowledged and abated to the degree technically possible at present. Radioactive wastes should be safely excavated under controlled conditions and placed in monitored storage where they can be later retrieved pending future viable technologies. In the interim, we need to quit making more of a problem for which no viable solution exists.

What to do with the wastes of war? While we figure out better solutions than covering it up, maybe we shouldn’t be waging any further wars.

Adrienne Anderson coordinates the Nuclear Nexus Project for the Rocky Mountain Peace & Justice Center. A former CU faculty member for over a decade, Anderson taught courses for the Environmental and Ethnic Studies programs, including one called, “The War Environment.”

See below a short video clip by Denver Direct TV from a March 11th meeting on Lowry Vista sponsored by the prospective developer, IRG. (NOTE: In the comments made by Adrienne Anderson, note one error, an inadvertent reference to "asbestos" when "asphalt" was the word meant).