Buying a Home in Candelas Comes With a Rocky Flats Disclosure. What About Renters?

Tiffany Hansen

Oct 5

6 min read

A recorded Candelas development agreement required homebuyers to receive and sign a report discussing the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons site next door. The document raises a different question for people who rent their homes.

People buying certain homes in Candelas have been given a document that many people elsewhere in the Denver metro area may never have seen. It is called a Contiguous Area Report, or CAR. The report provides information about properties surrounding the Candelas development in northwest Arvada. Its first subject is the property's neighbor immediately to the north: Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge.

But the significance of the document goes beyond what it says about Rocky Flats. A recorded development agreement shows that providing the report to Candelas homebuyers wasn't simply an informal sales practice. Homebuilders were contractually required to provide it to their buyers, obtain their signatures, record the signed reports, and return copies through the developer to the City of Arvada.

That raises another question: What information is provided to people who rent homes in the same community?

What Candelas homebuyers were told

The Contiguous Area Report included in a 2016 Candelas Filing No. 1 development agreement addresses the person receiving it as:

“the purchaser of a home in Candelas Filing No. 1.”

The purchaser's signature was intended to acknowledge receipt of the report. The signed document was then to be returned to the homebuilder and recorded. Rocky Flats appears first among the surrounding properties described. The report tells buyers that Candelas Filing No. 1 is “bounded directly on the north” by the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge and identifies the refuge as land that “was formerly a nuclear defense facility operated by the U.S. Department of Energy.” It describes the transition from weapons production to environmental cleanup and closure and references the 2006 Corrective Action Decision/Record of Decision governing the former nuclear weapons facility. The report also tells buyers that approximately 1,300 acres in the central area remain under Department of Energy control with institutional controls, including two landfill covers, three passive groundwater treatment systems, and long-term groundwater and surface-water monitoring systems. In other words, a person purchasing a covered Candelas home was given written information establishing that the property immediately north of the development had been part of a nuclear weapons facility and that environmental management and monitoring continued at portions of the former site.

This was more than a brochure

The underlying development agreement is particularly revealing. It says the developer prepared the CAR to provide information to “future builders and homeowners” about surrounding properties and potential land uses. The subjects specifically identified include Rocky Flats, the proposed Jefferson Parkway, and surrounding non-residential development.

Section 27 goes further. The developer was required to ensure that homebuilders were contractually obligated to obtain a signed CAR from each homebuyer, provide a copy back to the developer, and record the signed report. The developer was then required to provide the City with copies it received. That created a documented chain of disclosure and acknowledgment for purchasers covered by the agreement.

What about someone who rents the same house?

This is where the documents raise a question they do not answer. The development agreement and CAR we reviewed repeatedly refer to homebuilders, homeowners, purchasers and homebuyers. The CAR itself is addressed to a “purchaser of a home.” Its acknowledgment section is signed by the owner of the property. We found no provision in this document requiring a landlord to provide the CAR to a subsequent tenant.

That distinction matters.

A house covered by the original disclosure requirement can later become a rental property. The owner may have received and signed the CAR when purchasing the home, while the person actually living in that house years later may not have participated in the original purchase transaction. The documents reviewed by Rocky Flats Downwinders do not tell us whether landlords voluntarily provide the CAR to their tenants, whether individual leases contain similar information, or whether another law or agreement creates a separate renter-disclosure requirement.

So we should not conclude from this document alone that no Candelas renter is informed about Rocky Flats. But we can say something more precise: The disclosure mechanism established in this Candelas development agreement is directed at homebuyers. We found no corresponding tenant-disclosure requirement in the agreement.

Why that distinction matters

The information contained in the CAR isn't relevant only to someone's decision to purchase real estate. It tells residents about the history and continuing management of the property immediately north of their community. A renter can live in the same neighborhood, use the same parks and trails, raise children there, and spend just as many years in the community as someone who owns a home. Yet the disclosure system documented here is triggered by the purchase of a home, not simply by living there. That creates a reasonable public-information question:

If this information was considered important enough to require a purchaser's signature and a recorded acknowledgment, should people renting those same homes also have access to it?

That question does not require assuming that Candelas is unsafe or that living there causes illness. It is fundamentally a question about access to information.

The disclosure itself says buyers should investigate further

Interestingly, the CAR does not present itself as a complete source of information. It says the report is provided for “general information purposes only” and acknowledges that it will answer:

“some, but not all, questions”

about surrounding property. It also cautions that the information “should not be relied upon without further inquiry.”

That language makes access to the document particularly relevant. A person cannot decide whether to make further inquiries about something they were never told about in the first place.

What the Candelas disclosure does not say

There is another important limitation. Although the report identifies Rocky Flats as a former nuclear defense facility and describes cleanup, continuing DOE control, landfill covers, groundwater treatment and environmental monitoring, its Rocky Flats section does not discuss the historical off-site plutonium contamination described in the 1979 HUD Rocky Flats Advisory Notice. Nor does this CAR discuss historical fires and releases, the 903 Pad, health studies or the long-running community debate about potential exposure.That does not establish that the developer was legally required to include those subjects. The document we reviewed provides no basis for making that claim.

It simply tells us what this particular disclosure did and did not tell purchasers.

From a 1979 federal warning to a 2016 development disclosure

The Candelas CAR becomes even more interesting when viewed alongside an earlier document. In 1979, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a Rocky Flats Advisory Notice to certain prospective homebuyers near the plant. That notice explicitly discussed “varying levels of plutonium contamination of the soil” in portions of Boulder and Jefferson counties and informed recipients about the Rocky Flats radiological emergency-response plan.

Nearly four decades later, the Candelas CAR again placed Rocky Flats information into the home-purchase process—but with very different language. The documents come from different eras, served different purposes and applied under different circumstances. They should not be treated as equivalent disclosures. But together they document something important: For decades, information about Rocky Flats has intersected with decisions about residential development and buying homes near the site. The question now is who receives that information—and who does not.

Disclosure shouldn't depend on whether you own or rent

Rocky Flats Downwinders believes people living near Rocky Flats should have access to clear, accurate historical and environmental information regardless of whether they own their home or rent it. The Candelas Contiguous Area Report provides one piece of that history.

It tells us what certain homebuyers were required to receive and acknowledge. It also leaves us with questions worth asking: Are current Candelas buyers still receiving this information? What happens when one of these homes is resold? What happens when it becomes a rental? Do tenants ever see the disclosure signed by the property's owner? And should residents have an easier way to find this information regardless of how they came to live in the community?

Those are questions Rocky Flats Downwinders believes deserve clear answers.

Read the Original Documents

Complete 2016 Candelas Filing No. 1 Amendment No. 2 — Subdivider’s and Development Agreement-This is the complete 19-page recorded agreement containing the contractual requirements for providing the Contiguous Area Report to homebuyers, as well as the CAR itself as Exhibit B. Read the Complete Development Agreement

Candelas Contiguous Area Report — Original Pages 15–19-This is the five-page CAR extracted from the recorded document for easier reading and sharing. The pages themselves have not been rewritten or reformatte Read the Contiguous Area Report