It’s an enormously consequential Trump administration decision affecting airborne toxins, bacterial blooms, mental health and human anatomy, and yet somehow this monumental change is being underexposed in the media. We’re here to fix that.
We’re talking, of course, about the Transportation Security Administration’s announcement that we no longer must take our shoes off at the airport.
Twenty-four years we’ve been dealing with the aftermath of the al Qaeda-affiliated “shoe bomber,” whose fuse-dampening flop sweat and general incompetence spared the lives of hundreds of passengers on a Paris-to-Miami flight in 2001. It will be easier in retrospect to call the minor inconveniences for billions of travelers a small price for airline security and civility.
But still, it’s very nice to see the notorious shoe rules gone, or soon to be, from DIA and other airports. Some things do get a little better.
And in the time you’ll save leaving those sweet kicks on your feet, you can read these other consequential news items. Thanks for flying with us.
Michael Booth
Reporter
TEMP CHECK
LEGACIES
Activate a park? Or is it too (radio)active?
A biker crosses the Walnut Creek Loop Trail at the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge in Jefferson County in 2022. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)“It is not safe for any type of development: residential, commercial or recreational. It’s putting people’s lives at risk.”
— Chris Allred, Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center
600
Plutonium bomb trigger “pits” removed from Rocky Flats during a $7.7 billion cleanup
We’ve settled on a simple convention while interviewing folks about the looming expansion of recreation on the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons production site, known to newer generations of Coloradans as the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge:
Are you willing to walk there yourself?
Though the thousands of acres of short-grass prairie with Flatirons views are popular with many walkers and birders, people hedge a bit when asked the direct question. The legacy of thousands of tons of plutonium once handled on site will do that to the imagination.
It took billions of dollars in federal money to clean up most of Rocky Flats, and the center section that used to house production buildings is still a no-go zone for the public. Then-Denver Post reporter Mark Obmascik wrote about the “infinity rooms,” where plutonium contamination spiked far above a Geiger counter’s ability to estimate. Parts of Rocky Flats were among the most toxic spots in America.
But the local governments that want to expand recreation at Rocky Flats say they rely on official testing and safety reports that show toxins in public areas were either removed or entombed under reliable trail cover. It’s not as if dragging your foot on gravel there releases a looming cloud of plutonium onto Arvada, they say.
The refuge first opened for recreation in 2018, but safety and access issues have heated up again as a coalition of local governments prepare to open new trail connectors at the edges in August.
The coalition has fallen apart over the years, with Westminster as a prime example. That city dropped out and declined to formally pave social connector trails across its property at a busy eastern access point. Now an interagency group of open space coordinators is discussing the warning language that should go on signs at the new access areas.
Meanwhile, a longtime push by some cities to finish the Jefferson Parkway portion of the metro beltway on the eastern edge of Rocky Flats is still alive, despite all the dubious dust the construction would kick up.
And some Pueblo leaders’ interest in putting a nuclear power reactor at the soon-to-be-retired coal-burning Comanche station means the uranium-plutonium debate in Colorado remains, well, radioactive. Is it atomic amnesia, or nuclear hysteria?
Opponents of reviving or paving over Colorado’s nuclear past are determined to educate new generations of state residents.
The Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, for one, has been working to get local governments to drop out of the Rocky Flats work for years.
“When it is being sold to the public as a place for recreation and residential and commercial development, that’s a very misleading way to present this area to the public,” said Chris Allred, nuclear guardianship coordinator with the center. “Because it is not safe for any type of development: residential, commercial or recreational. It’s putting people’s lives at risk, and it’s covering up the history of weapons of mass destruction and the impact that has on the community.”
We’ll be digging in, much deeper, in an upcoming Sunday edition of The Sun, so keep watching the horizon for dust clouds propelled by history and anxiety.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
BUDGET SLASH
Boulder’s federal research hubs taking a massive hit
Susie House was among the March protesters of Elon Musk-recommended budget cuts at federal science agencies like NOAA, outside the campus in Boulder. (Alyte Katilius, Special to The Colorado Sun)“Reckless and shortsighted.”
— Rep. Joe Neguse and Sen. Michael Bennet, on NOAA budget cuts
$1.5 billion
NOAA budget hit for 2026, or one-third of this year’s spending
Many of the gold-standard labs that have made Boulder an international hub for atmospheric and climate research in recent decades would be shuttered under the Trump administration’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal, slashing NOAA by nearly one-third.
The $1.5 billion cut NOAA is offering to its own budget is meant to take federal agencies out of the climate analysis and projection business, and instead slim down and refocus the work to weather forecasting.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, headquartered in Maryland but with a major research focus in Boulder, teamed with the National Center for Atmospheric Research and labs around the world to define and measure climate change. Other related labs also funded by NOAA teamed with top university researchers at the University of Colorado, Colorado State University and elsewhere in respected collaborations like the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
All those cooperative institutes are cut. As well as Boulder’s Earth System Research Laboratories, which include the Global Monitoring Laboratory, the Global Systems Laboratory, the Chemical Sciences Laboratory and the Physical Sciences Laboratory. The Colorado losses alone would mean hundreds of well-paying jobs, and the priceless knowledge previously targeting what most nations believe is the fundamental human challenge of our time.
“The FY 2026 budget request refocuses the NOAA budget on core activities including collecting essential scientific observations like ocean and weather data to support navigation and forecasting,” the NOAA budget says. “A leaner NOAA that focuses on core operational needs, eliminates unnecessary layers of bureaucracy, terminates nonessential grant programs, and ends activities that do not warrant a Federal role, will provide better value to the American public while maintaining activities that are essential to protecting lives and property.”
Colorado’s Democratic delegation blasted the proposed cuts, from both a local and global perspective.
“These senseless proposed funding cuts would have devastating impacts felt nationwide and undermine the science our research communities rely on for generations to come,” Rep. Joe Neguse, Boulder, and Sen. Michael Bennet said in a joint statement.
“The critical work that researchers are doing everyday at NOAA and its Cooperative Institutes cannot be overstated. Their work is imperative to the personal safety and daily lives of all Americans. To eliminate funding for NOAA and its CI’s would be reckless and short-sighted.”
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
OPEN SPACE
Know before you go, Boulder fans
Some of the city of Boulder’s most popular open space parks are offering live parking lot cams to help trail users plan for parking and weather. This view of Flatirons Vista showed a few spaces available Monday on a very hot day. (City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks cam)The city of Boulder has just gone “no excuses” on your next hiking outing. Or maybe, depending on what the live webcams show, they’ve actually provided you with the best excuse to stay home with your feet up.
Whether the parking lots are already full or the lightning is about to hit at your favorite Boulder trailhead is now an answerable question, before you leave the house or exit the turnpike. Boulder has launched live streams from popular park trailheads like Flagstaff, Chautauqua, Wonderland Lake and Flatiron Vista. Just for fun, they’ve also thrown in a gorgeous view of the Flatirons from atop the Chautauqua Ranger Cottage.
More trailhead cameras at other parks will be added in coming months. While Boulder encourages everyone to recreate “responsibly,” regardless of camera presence, you just know what’s coming on the live screens: Romantic partners and expecting parents with a flair for the dramatic, go ahead and plan your prom asks and gender reveals with a Boulder background.
As for whether Boulder is keeping recordings of the live webcam footage, and whether law enforcement would have any access to that for investigations, we’ve asked. Look for answers in a follow-up story later this week at ColoradoSun.com.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
MORE ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH NEWS
Thornton wins another round in its long fight for a water pipeline. A state court judge has ruled Larimer County properly approved Thornton’s bid to construct a portion of a key water pipeline across county land, rejecting environmental activists’ effort to overturn the permit. The judge in Larimer County’s district court said county commissioners evaluated the permit application and considered alternatives as part of a proper review in the “1041” process, named after a state law giving counties oversight of major public works construction projects. Do longtime Colorado ranchers have any creative solutions for their wolf problems? With Western Slope ranchers continuing to voice concerns that reintroduced wolves are biting deep into their livelihoods with livestock predations, Tracy Ross explores whether there are alternatives to the current wolf/rancher stalemate. Could legacy ranchers somehow be paid for helping to contribute to successful reintroduction, rather than just being paid for dead cattle? Zebra mussels still threaten Colorado River mainstem. Hints of potentially destructive new forces in the West’s most important river keep showing up, like the trailer for a horror film. Shannon Mullane reports that a year after finding zebra mussel larvae, or veligers, in the river and the Government Highline Canal, new testing found another larvae in a different part of the river. Wildlife officials are redoubling efforts to find the source and educate boaters about breaking the chain of spread for the voracious critters. Malaysia just became another country saying “no” to U.S. plastic trash. China upended the recycling/waste world a few years ago when it refused to accept plastic waste as a return trip on the ships that delivered Chinese consumer goods to U.S. shores. Now Malaysia and other Asian countries are doing the same. A good NYT story once again raises questions about what really happens with all the plastics we sort into our purple bins.— New York TimesCHART OF THE WEEK
Atomic science has always been a perilous split between clean energy production and military applications. Here’s where the growth of nuclear weapons has left the world, on the “atoms for explosions” side. (Federation of American Scientists)As time goes by and Colorado’s extensive nuclear weapons history is literally buried, at Rocky Flats and at forgotten intercontinental missile silos under the prairie soil east of Fort Collins, a snapshot of information can go a long way toward underlining reality.
At the height of its production in the 1960s and 1970s, Rocky Flats was producing 1,000 to 2,000 nuclear weapon pits a year. Those pits were then shipped out of state and assembled into missiles and bombs for the U.S. military, with the fissionable Rocky Flats-refined plutonium at their heart.
Israeli and U.S. bombing may have set back Iran’s nuclear weapons production ambitions, but the map from nuclear watchdogs shows the weapons legacy of the atomic age. There are thousands of unimaginably destructive atomic bombs on a trigger around the world. We have learned to ignore the fact, but it’s rarely healthy to forget facts entirely.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
That was a lot of news, so we’ll just slip on our flip-flops and exit a side door. Thanks for hanging with us. Oh, and now that we can keep our shoes on, we’re saving up for these.
— Michael & John
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