Fifty for 150: FBI raids the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in 1989

In June 1989, an FBI agent named Jon Lipsky visited Rocky Flats for what staff at the nuclear weapons plant thought was a briefing on ecoterrorism. That was a pretext. Lipsky, with dozens of FBI and EPA investigators at the ready, in fact arrived at the Department of Energy property northwest of Denver to raid it. It was the first time the FBI raided another federal agency.

This story is part of Colorado at 150. Each Fifty for 150 story focuses on an event that helped define Colorado over 150 years of statehood. Newsline is publishing one Fifty for 150 story every weekday in reverse chronological order until the sesquicentennial, Aug. 1, when the final of 50 stories, about the declaration of statehood, will appear.

The action was the culmination of a two-year investigation into environmental violations at the plant, which was managed by Rockwell International. The search warrant alleged that between 1980 and 1988 Rocky Flats had violated multiple environmental laws, even though Rockwell and federal officials had falsely stated it was in compliance.

The site’s history helps illustrate the danger of the violations.

The federal government built the Rocky Flats plant in the 1950s on 6,000 acres of open land in the shadow of the foothills south of Boulder. Its purpose was to manufacture plutonium pits, spheres of radioactive material that are part of a nuclear bomb’s trigger system.

The plant was careless about the disposal of waste, and it often buried radioactive material at the site. Contaminated plumes from a plutonium fire in 1957 likely blew into downtown Denver, and another fire in 1969 was said to be the nation’s costliest industrial accident. A production facility on the property gained a reputation as “the most dangerous building in America,” and some independent studies raised alarms about cancer rates in neighborhoods downwind of the site.

Prosecutors later reached a deal with Rockwell, which acknowledged it had violated the Clean Water Act, and it was fined $18.5 million. Rocky Flats was designated an EPA Superfund site, and by October 2005, after $7 billion and 10 years of work — much cheaper and much quicker than the Department of Energy’s original cleanup estimates — the site’s rehabilitation was declared finished.

Many neighbors of the site and independent experts were skeptical of the cleanup. Their fear that it failed to fully remediate extensive contamination at Rocky Flats gained new urgency a decade ago as federal authorities planned to open the property to the public as a national wildlife refuge. Legal challenges and community objections failed to prevent the opening of public visits in September 2018, but some concerns about the site’s safety have only increased since then.

During the Marshall Fire in 2021, local and federal authorities issued pre-evacuation orders for an area that included Rocky Flats. A wildfire at the Flats could have launched radioactive material into neighboring communities and threatened the health of thousands of people, evidence from independent studies suggests. 

School districts have banned field trips to the site. Local governments have pulled out of a trail project planned at the property. Broomfield withdrew from a highway project adjacent to Rocky Flats. A local watchdog group has installed signs at the refuge warning visitors that they may be exposed to radioactive material.

In 2024, chemist Michael Ketterer, among the foremost independent experts on contamination at Rocky Flats, said in an affidavit for a lawsuit brought by the Physicians for Social Responsibility that sought to halt trail construction at Rocky Flats, that “plutonium is being dispersed under episodic high-wind conditions prevalent at the site” into nearby neighborhoods.

A federal judge allowed the trail project to proceed.

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