$10 Million Paid for Contamination by Nuclear Plant
A 10-year court fight over land contaminated by radioactivity from the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant ended Monday with five landowners’ collecting about $10 million from the federal government, a county and a city.
The U.S. Department of Energy and Rockwell International, which has operated the plant since 1975, also agreed to bring radioactivity levels on 2,000 acres to within state guidelines.
Included in the out-of-court settlement was the sale of some of the land for county and city parks and for expansion of a reservoir owned by the city of Broomfield.
The federal government’s share of the cash settlement was about $8.75 million. Jefferson County paid another $1.15 million, while Broomfield put up $849,900, a spokesman for Rocky Flats said.
The landowners sued the Energy Department, Rockwell and Dow Chemical, the former plant operator, in 1975, asking $23 million in damages, claiming that Rocky Flats contamination had made their land unfit for human habitation and useless for most development.
The suit was to go to trial early this year, but a settlement was reached in December. It became final Monday.
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