Why this site exists

This website was set up by David Wood with no financial support or interference by anyone involved in developing or building houses around Rocky Flats, or any commercial or governmental entity.

DMW was desperately busy at the time he was doing ‘due diligence’ while buying a lot in Candelas: teaching courses, supervising students, measuring background radiation from Lakewood up to Firestone to decide whether Candelas was `normal’ [it was], getting soil samples done [Pu levels below 0.08 pCi/g], and reading as many peer-reviewed journal articles about radiation around Rocky Flats as he had time for. “This required me to assess the reliability of what I read in social media, and quickly to discard it.” After he retired DMW decided to make sure that less technical people would not have to drown in metric boatloads of nonsense from opinionated and science-ignorant anti-Refuge activists. This site exists so you don’t have to worry the way I did. As with all science, there are usually several different ways to arrive at the same conclusion, as you will see.

Our information

Although information from the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment is readable and excellent, and from the Department of Energy is thorough, our site is intended to educate rather than to just convey facts.  The focus is very much on recent data and recent science.  This site is intended for those who wish to understand at a variety of levels (from the very non-technical through post-undergraduate) the science behind the assurances that living near or visiting the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge is completely safe for adults and children. We have been careful to draw information (whenever possible) from the recent scientific literature and from international (not simply US federal) sources. The website is intended as a ‘one-stop shop’ for carefully vetted scientific information about radiation, available recent measurements, the Superfund cleanup, radiation biology, health physics, and radiation epidemiology, with data drawn from Rocky Flats.

Aspirations

  • Assist the people actually living around the Refuge in acquiring more political clout than anti-Refuge activists united on the basis of ideology rather than proximity. This may entail becoming registered as a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, if funding permits.
  • Acquire ‘legal standing’ for our group in order to file amicus curiae briefs to bolster anti-Activist positions. Quite a bit of information on the website is not known even to long-time followers of Rocky Flats issues.
  • Bring legal consequences to groups which distribute misinformation about Rocky Flats.
  • Provide local municipalities with a set of definitive yet relatively digestible documents, with which to resist the noisy misinformation coming from anti-Refuge activist groups.

Personnel

David Wood, site administrator, blogger, and technical content.

B.A. in physics from Princeton University with honors in physics (1974) and Ph.D in physics from Cornell University (1981). DMW spent 7 years at the Solar Energy Research Institute (now the National Renewable Energy Laboratory) predicting properties of new semiconductors before joining the physics faculty at the Colorado School of Mines in 1989, supervising a handful of MS and Ph.D students and teaching mostly graduate courses in mathematical physics, quantum mechanics, electrodynamics, statistical mechanics, and condensed matter physics.  He retired in July 2017 to “enjoy his remaining limbs”, as Dumbledore said of a professor who taught Care of Magical Creatures. A Candelas resident, he has measured background radiation on Refuge trails, radon levels pre- and post-remediation in his house, and is an amateur gamma ray spectrometrist (2″ diameter NaI:Tl scintillator with 95 pounds of lead shot shielding). He is a member of the SAFECAST network (global data on radiation levels near and far from nuclear facilities and background measurements).

“I am not an expert in the effects of nuclear radiation on human health. That is precisely the point: that someone can educate himself or herself on the issues and reach reasonable conclusions without deferring directly to “experts” or panicking as a result of what they read in social media.”

Kim is a Candelas resident and active participant in the dialogue regarding the legacy management of Rocky Flats..  With a background in healthcare, business, and a Masters Degree in Healthcare Systems from the University of Denver, scientific data and evidence-based thinking have provided a compelling case as to the safety of Rocky Flats and the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, with access to hiking and biking trails and the planned Visitor Center. Kim has been a member of the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council since 2017 and continues to serve as a private citizen and Arvada resident.  Currently retired, Kim has held a number of positions in various organizations in nursing, case management, senior leadership, organizational performance improvement, and strategic operations. Kim has served on numerous boards during her career, including Rocky Mountain Performance Excellence, American Healthcare Association, Donor Alliance (the organ and tissue procurement organization for Colorado and most of Wyoming), and Donor Alliance Foundation, which was created to extend the mission of organ and tissue donation and transplantation by building partnerships and breaking down barriers to influence change to positively affect the donation and transplantation community.