Nature Makes a Comeback at a Notoriously Toxic Site

Part of the former Rocky Mountain Arsenal, once among the most contaminated places in the nation, opens this weekend as a national wildlife refuge.

Rolling prairie where defense workers for four decades produced deadly sarin, mustard gas and napalm is now home to more than 300 species, from white pelicans to foxes to bald eagles.

Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, preparing for today’s opening of the first phase of the refuge, said Friday that the project would serve as both a habitat and an oasis of open space in the rapidly urbanizing Denver suburbs.

“It is a wonderful legacy,” Norton said.

Not everyone is convinced that opening the site to the public is a good idea.

The former arsenal is a federal Superfund site, still undergoing a cleanup expected to cost $2.2 billion. Ten grapefruit-size sarin gas bomblets were found in 2000 and 2001, four years after historic tours of the facility had begun. Just six weeks ago, another canister designed to hold sarin was found, though it contained only water.

“That site should never have been and should never be open to the public,” said Adrienne Anderson, a University of Colorado professor and environmental activist.

“We are worried. I think it just doesn’t make sense to have people near a hazardous-waste cleanup site while the cleanup is going on,” said Sandra Horrocks, chairwoman of the arsenal committee for the Colorado branch of the Sierra Club.

However, other environmental groups support the conversion.

Stephen Torbit, director of the Rocky Mountain Natural Resource Center of the National Wildlife Federation, said the eagles and other wildlife were the best possible barometer of the ecosystem at the site. “And they are doing just fine.”

“Our assessment is that this is the best and highest use for that land -- a wildlife oasis in the middle of the concrete jungle of Denver,” Torbit said.

The site consists of 17,000 acres of rolling grassland about 10 miles northeast of the city. Perched at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, it is dotted with small man-made lakes.

As reporters toured the area, deer ambled across empty roads and tumbleweeds blew past.

This weekend, 5,000 acres of the refuge will open to limited public use.

Walking trails will give access to about 2,000 of the acres, and tram tours will take visitors to the rest.

An additional 10,000 acres will become part of the refuge by 2011, though some of that area will be closed to the public as eagle habitat. The most seriously contaminated area, about 1,000 acres, will be permanently controlled by the Army.