When Homebuyers Near Rocky Flats Were Given a Federal Warning

A 1979 HUD advisory told prospective residents about plutonium contamination and emergency planning around Rocky Flats

On March 1, 1979, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a document with an unmistakable title: ROCKY FLATS ADVISORY NOTICE

The notice was intended for certain prospective residents purchasing property near the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant northwest of Denver.

Its purpose was straightforward:

“to inform you of certain facts regarding the United States Department of Energy Rocky Flats Plant which is located within ten miles of your prospective residence.”

What followed provides a remarkable window into what federal officials believed prospective residents should know about Rocky Flats in 1979.

“Varying levels of plutonium contamination”

The notice told prospective residents that portions of Boulder and Jefferson counties contained:

“varying levels of plutonium contamination of the soil.”

It attributed that contamination to the nearby Rocky Flats plant. At the same time, HUD told buyers that, according to the Department of Energy, contamination in the area where the prospective residence was located was below limits considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency. Both parts of that statement matter. The federal government was not telling prospective residents that every property within ten miles was contaminated at the same level, nor was the notice declaring the area uninhabitable.

But it was formally disclosing the existence of off-site plutonium contamination associated with Rocky Flats. DOE's own later history confirms that HUD began requiring purchasers of homes within a 10-mile radius of Rocky Flats to sign a disclosure statement when their purchase was financed through the Federal Housing Administration. Legacy Management Public Search

The notice also warned about a possible Rocky Flats accident

Plutonium already present in soil was only part of the advisory. HUD also informed prospective residents about the Colorado Radiological Emergency Response Plan for Rocky Flats. The notice explained that the plan established protective actions to be taken if an accidental release of radioactive material occurred at the plant.

It then told the prospective resident:

“Your prospective residence lies within the area covered by the Radiological Emergency Response Plan.”

The notice characterized the probability of such an accident as very small, but HUD still directed residents to obtain information about the emergency plan from local and state agencies. Historical DOE records confirm that Colorado's Rocky Flats emergency plan was designed for an incident involving radioactive material that could endanger the health and safety of the general public, with responsibilities assigned among state, county, federal and plant authorities. Legacy Management Public Search

Why would HUD issue a notice like this?

The advisory didn't appear in isolation. During the 1970s, questions about off-site plutonium contamination, residential development and emergency preparedness around Rocky Flats were receiving increasing attention. Just three years earlier, Jefferson County public health director Dr. Carl Johnson and U.S. Geological Survey scientists Ronald Tidball and Ronald Severson had published research in Science examining plutonium in respirable surface dust downwind of Rocky Flats. Their 1976 paper specifically discussed residential development proposed near the plant and questioned whether measuring plutonium in whole soil adequately represented the potential hazard from fine particles capable of becoming airborne and being inhaled.

The HUD notice demonstrates that concerns surrounding Rocky Flats were not confined to activists or independent researchers.

They had entered federal housing policy.

The notice was connected to FHA financing

This is an important detail. The historical record indicates that the disclosure applied when home purchases within the designated area involved Federal Housing Administration financing. DOE's historical account says purchasers within a 10-mile radius were required to sign the disclosure statement if the sale was financed through FHA. So we should not describe the notice as something necessarily given to every person buying a home within ten miles of Rocky Flats. But for buyers covered by the requirement, the federal government determined that information about Rocky Flats warranted disclosure as part of the home-purchase process. That is significant.

And then the warning disappeared

The disclosure requirement did not last. DOE's later Rocky Flats Plant Community Relations Plan states that the disclosure requirement remained in effect until June 1982. A historical review of Rocky Flats health and environmental issues describes a transition beginning in 1981 from the HUD advisory to a Colorado emergency-response brochure and reports that the warning program subsequently ended. HWB Docs

The underlying history of Rocky Flats, however, did not disappear with the notice.

What the notice does—and does not—tell us

The Rocky Flats Advisory Notice is an important historical document, but it needs to be read precisely. It does not establish that everyone living within ten miles of Rocky Flats received a harmful dose of plutonium. It does not demonstrate that a particular illness was caused by Rocky Flats. And it does not tell us what contamination exists on any particular property today.

What it establishes is something narrower—and historically important: In 1979, HUD formally advised certain prospective homebuyers near Rocky Flats that plutonium contamination existed in portions of Boulder and Jefferson counties and that their prospective residence was within the area covered by a radiological emergency-response plan for the plant.

That fact is worth remembering.

What did people know—and when did they know it?

Discussions about Rocky Flats sometimes treat public concern about living near the plant as something that developed much later—after the FBI raid in 1989, during cleanup, or during more recent disputes over the Wildlife Refuge and nearby development. The Rocky Flats Advisory Notice complicates that narrative.

By 1979, the federal government had decided that at least some prospective homeowners near Rocky Flats should receive a written notice acknowledging off-site plutonium contamination and explaining that they lived within an emergency-planning area for a nuclear weapons facility. The document raises questions that remain relevant today: What information about Rocky Flats has been given to people considering living nearby? How has that information changed over time? Why was a federal disclosure considered appropriate in 1979—and why did the requirement eventually end?

And perhaps most importantly: How much of this history do today's residents know?

For Rocky Flats Downwinders, preserving documents like the 1979 HUD advisory is part of preserving that history.

People deserve the opportunity to see the original records and understand for themselves what government agencies said about Rocky Flats at the time.