Jefferson Parkway not dead yet, but dealt a blow that may prove fatal

In my October 20, 2015, entry I at first stated that the Jefferson Parkway had been canceled. This not true. A key highway transport group, the WestConnect Coalition,  has withdrawn its support from the parkway. What follows is the latest article from the Golden Newsletter, explaining in detail the current situation with the proposed parkway.

Q&A REGARDING WESTCONNECT COALITION
From: Dan Hartman, 10/20/15
As I mentioned at [Golden City] council on the 8th we had some concerns with the information in Dick [Sugg]’s article posted in your news letter about the WestConnect process and the Jefferson Parkway. I met with Dick and discussed it and he is updating information. I will continue to work with Dick regarding his concerns about the Jefferson Parkway, and specifically using public money to build it.
This Q and A sheet will give your readers the best information on the WestConnect process and Golden’s participation.
******
DRAFT 10/07/15 City of Golden
Questions and Answers Regarding the WestConnect Coalition Process
Members of the community have recently asked about the WestConnect Coalition, a regional transportation forum working to improve transportation through Golden and the entire northwest region of the Denver metropolitan area. Specifically, a resident asked whether the Coalition has eliminated the possibility of constructing the proposed Jefferson Parkway between SH 128 in Broomfield to SH93 in Arvada. The answer is no. A decision whether to build or not build the Jefferson Parkway will be made outside of the WestConnect process. Nothing the WestConnect Coalition is doing is designed to make the Jefferson Parkway more or less likely.
What is the West Connect Coalition?
The WestConnect Coalition is a cooperative effort of cities, counties, and agencies like the Colorado Department of Transportation to analyze mobility, environmental, and economic issues and solutions from C-470 and Kipling north to Boulder. Members of the Coalition include the City of Golden, Jefferson County, the City of Arvada, CDOT, the City of Boulder, the City of Lakewood, Douglas County, the City of Boulder, the Town of Morrison and the Town of Superior. Under the Coalition’s Charter, decisions will be made by consensus.
Is the Golden Plan part of the WestConnect study?
Yes, the Golden Plan will be considered as improvements to SH93 and U.S. 6. The City of Golden has also indicated that it is willing to consider implementing the Golden Plan in phases to secure its benefits as soon as possible. For example, the U.S. 6 and 19th Streetinterchange is proceeding now.
Has the WestConnect Steering Committee eliminated the Jefferson Parkway as a segment of the proposed “Western Beltway”?
No. The WestConnect Steering Committee concluded that the decision of whether to build the Jefferson Parkway should be made outside of the WestConnect process. Thus, WestConnect is neither eliminating nor promoting the Jefferson Parkway.
Will any analysis of the Jefferson Parkway be done in the WestConnect Planning and Environmental Linkages Study?
Yes, it is important to understand the effects of the proposed Jefferson Parkway on other highways in the region, such as U.S. 6 and SH 93, and the environment. Similarly, it is important to understand how different options for roads in the WestConnect study area (like U.S. 6 or SH 93) would have on the Jefferson Parkway concept. As a result, the WestConnect Study will consider two scenarios for the Jefferson Parkway: (1) that it will be built as proposed by the Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority; and (2) that it will not be built.
Will the WestConnect Planning and Environmental Linkages Study consider alternatives or modifications to the Jefferson Parkway?
No. The Study will only look at scenarios with and without the proposed Jefferson Parkway. Any consideration of alternatives to the Jefferson Parkway (such as different numbers of lanes, alignments, or interchange locations) will be done outside of the WestConnectCoalition process.
Who will make the decision about whether to proceed with the Jefferson Parkway and how will it be made?
The Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority will make the primary decision whether to proceed with that highway. However, to connect to SH 93, SH 72 and SH 128, the Authority will need permission from CDOT, which it will make only after analysis of the environmental impacts of the connections. The Authority has applied for this permission through the CDOT “1601” process. CDOT has assured that the public will have an opportunity to comment on the Authority application and the CDOT environmental analysis. In addition, the Authority will need approvals from sources of funds, such as private investors or public entities.
Has the WestConnect Coalition made any determinations regarding funding for the Jefferson Parkway?
No. Financing the Jefferson Parkway is outside of the scope of the WestConnect process. The Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority is still seeking private and public funds to construct the Jefferson Parkway. The WestConnect Coalition will not make any decisions regarding whether and how the Jefferson Parkway could be financed.
How can I find out more about the WestConnect Coalition?
Soon, the Coalition will have a stand-alone website. For now, some information on the Coalition can be found on the Jefferson County website, at http://jeffco.us/transportation-and-engineering/westconnect

A major but little known plutonium fire (in 2003) at Rocky Flats

On a beautiful morning in May 2003, at the height of the cleanup at Rocky Flats, Randy Sullivan, head of firefighters at the plant, received a message: “A “pyrophoric incident” in Building 371. The newest, largest and most expensive of the plutonium buildings at the plant, 371 was where all the plutonium that remained at the plant after the end of production was taken to to be stabilized and prepared for removal from Rocky Flats to DOE’s Savannah River site in South Carolina. DOE and cleanup contractor Kaisere-Hill didn’t refer to a fire but to a “pyrophoric event.” Misleading as this is, it was technically accurate. “Pyrophoric” means that a given material — in this case plutonium — ignites spontaneously and bursts into flames when it is exposed to oxygen, which is why all work with plutonium at Rocky Flats was done in an oxygen-free atmosphere inside glove boxes.  Now one of the glove boxes three floors below ground in Building 371 was on fire.

The fire was serious, large, hard to control. Workers were exposed. So were the firefighters. I learned about this fire not from anybody at the DOE, EPA or Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, though as a participant in the Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement Focus Group I was meeting people from these agencies twice each month in meetings that lasted two-and-a-half to three hours. Neither I nor any of the thirty or so others in the Focus Group learned about this fire shortly after it happened. I learned about it from Kristen Iversen when she was writing Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, published in 2012. Anyone who wants a graphic description of this fire, should read pages 289-298 of her book.

The point of this blog entry is to say that a serious plutonium fire — a fire similar to the ones at Rocky Flats in 1957 and 1969 (there were numerous smaller fires) — happened when the cleanup was nearing completion and concerned people were routinely meeting with government personnel who never said a word about the fire. They were repeating an old pattern, since no one from these agencies told the public about the 1957 and 1969 fires. The story of serious plutonium fires at Rocky Flats was first revealed to the public in 1970 by radiochemist Ed Martell of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

Why weren’t citizens paying close attention to Rocky Flats told about the May 2003 fire immediately after it happened? I don’t know the answer to this question. But I suspect government personnel didn’t want to reveal a serious plutonium exposure problem at Rocky Flats when they were so close to finishing the cleanup and shutting things down. The public might think the place was still dangerous and that they didn’t have things under control.

One lesson from this is that One should remain skeptical about what government personnel say about anything related to Rocky Flats. Verify first, then trust.

 

Horse Sense about Jeff Gipe’s Cold War Horse

Sunday, October 18, 2015, was a ceremony commemorating artist Jeff Gipe’s “Cold War Horse.” He prepared the horse for the 25th anniversary of the FBI raid on Rocky Flats event at the Arvada Center in June 2014. The large horse sculpture wears a red hazmat suit, goggles and a gas mask — to protect it from plutonium blowing on the breeze at Rocky Flats. He wanted to place the horse on a permanent location near the Rocky Flats site. Earlier this year he finally found a very good location on a high point along Highway 72, a short distance west of Indiana St., not far south of the Rocky Flats site, just across the road from the Candelas development. In the summer someone vandalized the horse, pulled it down and hammered on it, badly damaging it. Jeff Gipe rebuilt it, remounted it, put a fence around it with motion-sensitive cameras and lights. And Sunday, October 18, he held a commemoration ceremony. Speakers were author Kristen Iversen, Jon Lipsky who  led the FBI raid in 1989, Wes McKinley who was foreman of the Rocky Flats Grand Jury, Randy Sullivan a former fireman at Rocky Flats and myself. Presiding was Eric Fretz of Regis University.  Here is a copy of the poem I read.

Horse Sense about Jeff Gipe’s Horse

Jeff Gipe’s Cold War Horse

signifies a problem,

the problem of Rocky Flats,

more specifically the problem

of plutonium at Rocky Flats.

This problem is denied

by government personnel who favor

opening the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge

to the public, with some on horseback.

These government personnel do not honor

the truth about plutonium,

though they know that some quantity

remains in the environment

after the purported cleanup of the site.

They know too that the incomplete cleanup was done

against the will and wisdom of concerned people.

Of course it was impossible to remove

all the plutonium buried in soil on the site,

but the responsible parties made no effort to remove

as much as possible with existing technology.

Instead, they chose a quicker, cheaper cleanup.

One more point about the so-called cleanup.

When the EPA and the Colorado Department

of Public Health and the Environment

regulated the cleanup, the U.S. attorney

gave them the opportunity to examine

63 cartons of evidence of environmental crime

committed at Rocky Flats, documents collected

by the FBI, reviewed by a special grand jury

and sealed by the federal court.

Instead of reviewing this data the agencies declined,

preferring a cover-up to a real cleanup.

And now they expect us to forget

and to let the site be opened to the public.

No one can say

what beings will be harmed

by plutonium particles left behind –

particles too small to see

but available to be inhaled.

It is well known that once taken into the body

plutonium lodges in a specific location,

such as lung, liver, bone, brain, the gonads.

Thus lodged it will steadily bombard

with radiation the cells of nearby tissue,

typically for the rest of one’s life.

Tom K. Hei and colleagues at Columbia University

reported 18 years ago (in 1997) in the Proceedings

of the National Academy of Sciences

that inhaling a single particle of plutonium

can damage a cluster of cells

and that replication of these cells

constitutes genetic damage

that may not only wreck the individual’s health

but also harm future generations.

Instead of serving a harmful industry

and fostering an economy of urban sprawl,

why don’t government officials

act on the basis of such studies?

They are not ignorant,

but they do ignore the reality of such studies

and gamble with the health and well-being

of all creatures near Rocky Flats.

This is not a temporary problem,

since the plutonium-239 in the environment

remains radioactive for more than

a quarter-million years.

It will still be radioactive long after

the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge

ceases to exist.

According to some random schedule

animals, plants and water will bring

buried plutonium to the surface

where the wind common at Rocky Flats

can distribute it near and far,

ready to be inhaled

by some unsuspecting person

who decades later may have cancer

or some other ailment.

The government’s gambles

with the permanent problem of plutonium

at Rocky Flats are careless.

Jeff Gipe’s horse reminds us

of the necessity of being careful.

This is the essence of Nuclear Guardianship.

Thanks be to Jeff Gipe.

Major Victory: Jefferson Parkway canceled (However, read my introductory note to this entry)

The following expresses what I thought to be true, but the actual story is more complicated. The 10-4-15 Golden Newsletter reported that the West Connect Coalition was dropping the Jefferson Parkway. Others, however, continue to support it. So the highway is not dead yet, though it has suffered a defeat. See my October 29, 2015, blog entry for more details and update.

From the Golden Newsletter 10/04/15
From: Dick Sugg, Friday, October 02, 2015
A major decision was made in August that will prevent money from other organizations going to support the Jefferson Parkway toll road. Here is a draft article on the subject. Jim Smith is going to reword it for his Real Estate column and offer it to newspapers for publication.
Headline. WestConnect Coalition drops Jefferson Parkway
At the August meeting of the WestConnect Corridor Coalition the Steering Committee eliminated the Jefferson Parkway (JP) toll roadand an extension of the NW Parkway as segments of the proposed Western Beltway. Analysis and recommendations using the FHWA Planning and Environment Linkages (PEL) process will not be done for those two proposed segments. “These projects will be considered as future improvements to be implemented by others.” The US-6 and SH-93 segments through Golden remain as part of the PEL study.
The WestConnect Corridor Coalition was created with $750,000 of Jeffco taxpayers’ money to plan for completing a Western Beltway from C-470 to the NW Parkway that would include the JP toll road and the extension to the NW Parkway. The Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority (JPPHA) proposed building the JP toll road and for over seven years has spent millions of taxpayers’ dollars from Authority members; Jeffco, Arvada, and Broomfield; trying to implement the project modeled after the E-470 toll road. The reason that the proposed Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) has been unable to get an investor, foreign or domestic, is that toll revenue for the new four-lane highway will not come close to paying for designing, building, operating, and maintaining the highway. The shortfall is so great that, even with a grant from CDOT, additional money will be required to complete the project. Jeffco authorities have admitted that the project cannot be completed without raising taxes on residents and businesses in North Jeffco.
Jeffco formed the WestConnect Corridor Coalition to tie the JP toll road in with the lane additions being done by the C-470 Corridor Coalition in the hopes of getting some funding help for the JP from that relationship. The Steering Committee decision, however, has eliminated that possibility.
(Golden is one of six members of the Steering Committee. Although there are seven Affiliate Member communities and officials from CDOT, the FHWA, the Regional Transportation District (RTD), and DRCOG, the six Member communities are the sole decision makers. Now is the time for Jeffco taxpayers and responsible State authorities to convince the County Commissioners and the JPPHA to stop spending our money on an unneeded, unwanted, and too costly project that will not be built so long as there is such a shortage of funds for building new lanes in the state.)