Summary

Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site, a former nuclear weapons production plant near Denver, Colorado, is scheduled for complete closure within the next decade. A number of important land use issues remain unresolved. High levels of uncertainty about future uses and dependence on decisions from DOE Headquarters regarding the fate of Plutonium make it difficult to produce a land use plan to guide cleanup and reuse decisions, and threaten the site’s ability to achieve the accelerated cleanup milestone set for 2006. We recommend a scenario-based participative land use planning process where competing interests, costs, risks and benefits of alternate future uses are made apparent to all on-site and off-site stakeholders.