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Fifteen thousand property owners near Arvada and Westminster sued the operators of the nuclear weapons plant in 1990, alleging wide-spread plutonium contamination. Now, the sides have come to an agreement, according to an attorney for the plaintiffs.
If approved by a judge, the settlement will be paid out by the companies that ran the plant -- Dow Chemical and Rockwell International, now owned by Boeing. It’s not clear how much the federal government is on the hook for; details of the settlement were not immediately available.
Rocky Flats opened after World War II. For more than three decades it produced nuclear weapon components. It’s now a wildlife refuge.