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Regarding your story "The Half-life of Memory," I had the pleasure of serving on the Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board (RFCAB), and in 2000 we had the chance to tour Building 771 (HCN, 2/16/09). The DOE considered 771 to be the most dangerous building in America. The opportunity to walk through a building that was essentially a nuclear ghost town in and of itself was a fascinating look into a facility that I grew up downwind from for 25 years. It really emphasized the dire need to demolish and clean up Rocky Flats. It's unfortunate that your article didn't mention RFCAB. There were many dedicated people on that board who were more passionate about seeing Rocky Flats cleaned up than it seemed the feds themselves were. RFCAB, I thought, did much in getting the state and federal agencies to see the bigger picture of what Rocky Flats was and would become. I remember the heated discussions about how "clean" clean could be. What I find most unfortunate is that so many people are willing to forget what happened at Rocky Flats and all the ordinary people who made the plant and subsequent cleanup possible.

Money allocated by Congress for the restoration of the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons site will jump-start nearly $10 million for open spaces, prairie restoration and other environmental care in Jefferson County, trustees of the federal money said Tuesday. "They're building up the entire Rocky Flats area," said Dr. Paul Kilburn of the Jefferson County Nature Association, one of the organizations putting up matching money. One project will use $300,000 to combat non-native weeds by restoring the native prairie grasses in parts of the 4,000-acre Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, for decades the site of a nuclear weapons plant between Golden and Boulder. The program will squeeze out knapweed, thistles and other non-native plants whose seeds scatter far from Rocky Flats to clog native Colorado ecosystems, Kilburn said. The other projects are:

The federal government has failed to act on information that could help sick and dying Rocky Flats workers - or their survivors, the Rocky Mountain News has learned. A year ago, the Rocky reported that Colorado officials have data showing thousands of Flats workers were exposed to the type of radiation that was supposed to automatically qualify them for medical care and compensation if they developed certain cancers. At the time, federal officials dismissed the data as nothing new.

Udall introduces Senate bill to help sick Rocky Flats and other nuclear workers The nuclear bombs Charlie Wolf built helped win the Cold War. But his toughest battles came afterward, when he applied to a troubled federal compensation program intended for those whose top-secret work made them sick. Wolf wound up battling a bureaucratic morass for more than six years - all while fighting brain cancer that was supposed to have killed him in six months - trying to prove he qualified for financial and medical aid.

GRAND JURY FOREMAN WES MCKINLEY: "... I kind of like the bomb. We are the super country on the planet because we got the biggest weapon ... I wasn't a red-hot activist or had an ax to grind, or anything. ... "The engineers at Rocky Flats, not in testimony but later, told me we didn't need to do it. Jim Kelly, (who) was a fierce defender of the jobs at Rocky Flats, in his obituary last week, it quoted him as saying, 'The sad thing about it was, we didn't need to pollute like that.' The rabbits were hot. The mosquitoes, you get a mosquito bite, you were polluted. ... "There's lots of people out there with stories that we didn't hear. Some people say, 'Why didn't you subpoena them? Why didn't you?' Well, we didn't know about it, and how much are you going to haul in your truck? You're not hauling your whole load of wheat at one time, you just haul a load at a time. And that's kind of where we're at. This is a load. This is about all I can carry. I can't carry much, I'm kind of limited."

Playing with plutonium is not a good idea. But this is exactly what will happen if the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) implements its plan to open the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge for public recreation. For almost four decades the Rocky Flats Plant located about nine miles south of Boulder produced the explosive plutonium "pit" at the core of every warhead in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Major accidents and routine operations released very fine plutonium particles to the environment on and off the site. Because this highly toxic material remains radioactive for a quarter-million years, its presence in the environment poses a permanent danger. Inhaling or otherwise taking such particles into the body can induce cancer, disrupt the immune system or damage genetic material. Children, who would be encouraged to visit the refuge, are especially vulnerable, because they stir up dust, breath in gasps, eat dirt, or may scrape a knee or elbow.

Playing with plutonium is not a good idea. But this is exactly what will happen if the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) implements its plan to open the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge for public recreation. For almost four decades the Rocky Flats Plant located about nine miles south of Boulder produced the explosive plutonium "pit" at the core of every warhead in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Major accidents and routine operations released very fine plutonium particles to the environment on and off the site. Because this highly toxic material remains radioactive for a quarter-million years, its presence in the environment poses a permanent danger. Inhaling or otherwise taking such particles into the body can induce cancer, disrupt the immune system or damage genetic material. Children, who would be encouraged to visit the refuge, are especially vulnerable, because they stir up dust, breath in gasps, eat dirt, or may scrape a knee or elbow.

From the top of the isolated, windy plateau along the southern border of Rocky Flats, you can see the extended mass of metro Denver and, on a clear day, the distant line of the beltway around it. In anticipation of that line one day extending into the Jefferson Parkway, earth-movers have already piled huge mounds of dirt and landowners posted "Property Available" signs. But Charles McKay already owns a large chunk of the land that he and others plan to turn into the 2,000-acre Candelas, a development with more than 4,000 single-family homes and 7.2 million square feet of office, retail and industrial space that will be located in western Arvada, just below the former nuclear-weapons plant that's being turned into a wildlife refuge.

Debbie Chisholm Kerr has no illusions about her share of the $926 million a judge ordered former Rocky Flats contractors to pay neighbors of the long-defunct nuclear weapons plant. "We'll be lucky if we ever see it," Kerr said Tuesday. "I'm realistic. If you got a dollar you'd be lucky. You don't count on it." Kerr is among 13,000 current and former property owners due east of Rocky Flats whose land was polluted by radioactive soil that blew from the plant, where nuclear weapons were manufactured for more than 45 years. Federal District Court Judge John L. Kane ruled Monday that two companies, Rockwell International Corp. and Dow Chemical Co., owe residents nearly $726 million in compensation. Kane also hit the firms with some $200 million in punitive damages.

Joe Farmer turns 80 next week. On Thursday, the retired nuclear bomb engineer drove 50 miles round trip on snow and ice to the FedEx office in Salida. He sent federal officials in Denver an affidavit about the irradiation of a former co-worker at the Rocky Flats bomb factory. Farmer was told his information could help the co-worker's widow get compensation given to those whose health or lives were lost making the nation's Cold War nuclear weapons. Farmer's wife didn't think it was really necessary for him to take a risk driving on slippery roads 7,000 feet high in the Rocky Mountains. Turns out, she was probably right.

For five years, former Rocky Flats worker E. Levi Samora Jr. was denied compensation meant for sick nuclear weapons workers, even though he had a diagnosis of a bomb-related illness from Rocky Flats doctors. Early in the compensation program, chronic beryllium disease was considered a rare, almost certain approval. Unlike invisible radiation, beryllium leaves its mark. Samora, 48, had the medical test that tied his lung damage directly to the unusual metal, which was used to make nuclear weapons in the sprawling plant northwest of Denver.

Lane Christenson has been dead for more than a decade, but he is causing problems for the federal government. The story of what's happened to the family of this burly, former atomic bomb builder shows how federal officials have ignored evidence and their own rules to avoid compensating the nation's sick nuclear weapons workers. The government has steadfastly maintained for more than three years that no evidence exists to show Rocky Flats workers have been shut out of automatic compensation for certain victims of Cold War nuclear weapons production. The problem Christenson's case presents is this: His records do exist.

On Mother's Day in 1969, Stanley Skinger and William Dennison bent to tape the cuffs of their coveralls, pulled on their rubber gloves, adjusted their masks, looked at each other and thought, "Let's go." Then, without knowing anything about how to fight a fire, the pair waded into the worst industrial conflagration the country had ever seen. It wasn't safe, Skinger knew, but the alternative was far worse. Forty years ago, when Building 776-777 on the Rocky Flats campus eight miles south of Boulder caught fire, it contained 7,600 pounds of plutonium, enough for 1,000 nuclear bombs.

The U.S. Department of Energy plans to digitally copy, then destroy 500 boxes of documents related to the former Rocky Flats nuclear- weapons plant, prompting vigorous objections from a local coalition and two Colorado congressmen. The decision is "extremely troubling," U.S. Reps. Mark Udall and Ed Perlmutter said in a recent letter to the DOE Office of Legacy Management. "These documents, which have been part of the public record for years, are critical to understanding the history of Rocky Flats and cleanup activities and should be preserved," the congressmen said.

The Charlie Wolf Act would smooth the way for ailing nuclear-weapons workers. Charlie Wolf of Highlands Ranch, shown with his wife, Kathy, in 2008, died this year after years of fighting the U.S. government over his brain cancer, which he blamed on his work at Rocky Flats. (Photo courtesy of Wolf family ) The nuclear bombs Charlie Wolf built helped win the Cold War. But his toughest battles came afterward, when he applied to a troubled federal compensation program intended for those whose top-secret work made them sick. Wolf, who worked for a time overseeing the dismantling of the Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons facility northwest of Denver, wound up battling a bureaucratic morass for more than six years while fighting brain cancer that was supposed to have killed him in six months, trying to prove that he qualified for financial and medical aid.

The final decision on whether most sick and dying Rocky Flats workers are eligible for medical and financial aid came in a flurry of last-minute meetings in the waning days of the Bush administration. When the decision landed in a FedEx envelope on the front porch of former Flats worker Jennifer Thompson this week, she wasn't surprised at the answer. Denied again.

State and federal officials are in a dispute over data that could determine whether some former workers at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant are eligible for benefits if they develop certain cancers. The Rocky Mountain News reported Monday that federal officials haven't acted on information gathered by a state health department researcher that could make some of the workers automatically eligible.

Colorado's congressional delegation believes a new president might help the chances that former workers at the old Rocky Flats will get compensation. The plant north of Golden made nuclear weapons components until 1991. Workers say they suffered from cancer and other illnesses. They were denied compensation but the Health and Human Services Department is considering an appeal.

Several members of Colorado's congressional delegation want the federal government to delay a decision on compensation for former Rocky Flats workers until the new administration takes over. Sens. Mark Udall and Ken Salazar and five Colorado members of the House - all Democrats - signed the letter sent Friday to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. Leavitt is considering an appeal of a decision rejecting a special status for former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons workers that would compensate them for cancer or other job-related diseases. Colorado officials say there are several problems with the data and the process and want the government to defer a decision on the appeal.

A federal judge has upheld a jury verdict of $350 million against the former operators of the defunct Rocky Flats nuclear plant in a class-action lawsuit brought by the plant's neighbors. Judge John Kane affirmed the February 2006 verdict in a 73-page ruling released Tuesday and tacked on 8 percent interest compounded annually dating back to the time the suit was filed in January 1990.

The U.S. Department of Labor says it has paid more than $408 million to compensate Coloradans sickened by working in the atomic weapons industry, including some who worked at the former Rocky Flats weapons plant near Denver. The money went to 5,042 Colorado claimants under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, which was created to help people suffering cancer and other illnesses caused by exposure to toxic substances, the department said Tuesday. The act covers several facilities in Colorado including Rocky Flats, the Rulison Nuclear Explosion Site, and the Rio Blanco nuclear explosion site. Coloradans have filed 8,713 cases under the act, but about 15 percent were ineligible for benefits, the Labor Department said. There are 929 cases awaiting a final decision. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said more needs to be done to ensure people who worked at Cold War-era weapons sites receive compensation.