'Rocky Flats'.  A word familiar to many of us who have been here awhile, and possibly those who are new.  About 5 miles southwest of Broomfield in 1951 a building was built with no fanfare or no ribbon cutting, just a building, a heavily guarded secret, opened, producing fission cores for weapons, used to igniting fusion and fissionable fuel.  Operated by Dow Chemical, it was the sole mass-producer of plutonium components for America's nuclear stockpile. 
In 1957 the fledgling community of Broomfield innocently had its beginnings, and no mention of Rocky Flats was published.  I personally arrived in 1964 and was only familiar with the word 'Dow" in reference to aluminum foil I purchased at the grocery store, not a nuclear facility producing plutonium.
Of course, commons sense should have told me a factory making such a household product was not guarded and fenced in as Rocky Flats was. My top concern was having dinner ready for my husband and a clean house. Newlyweds kept arriving in town buying their first homes and having multitude of children and creating a community. 
In the fall of 1957, the Plutonium Recovery and Fabrications Facility, spontaneously ignited, burning HEPFA filters in a plenum downstream. They eventual escaped from the building exhaust stacks.  It stopped at 10:40PM ending the plutonium release. 
I believe this was the fire that resulted in plutonium settling to the bottom of the Great Western Reservoir, Broomfield's water supply and creek beds.  
One heard whispers and jokes about glowing in the dark but there were so many wonderful things happening in our lives, that any amount of a catastrophic tragedy, surely would not happen to us.
With another fire in 1969 released plutonium and shavings causing a spontaneous combustible fire. This releasing plutonium in the air as well as from the barrels of radioactive waste.  
Then some of our young friends started dying, not by the hundreds but enough to bring fear to many of us. We were young and except for grandparents who died, young friends did not.   For me, it brought an awakening. I watched two young men, under 40 die of brain cancer and several women of ovarian cancer, all living in the 1st and 2nd filings of Broomfield.   
Like many disasters, where there had been money to be made and the government not to hold them liable for people dying of cancer.  They brought out charts and made the fall out of the plutonium innocent and adamantly declared it was coincident.
The Atomic Energy Commission's briefing, that there was a slight risk of light contamination.  No abnormal radioactivity was reported by the Colorado Public Health Services.
The 1969 fire raised public awareness of potential hazards the plant posed and led to years of increasing citizen protests and demand for plant closure.  Releases from previous years had been reported publicly before the; airborne-become-ground borne radioactive contamination extended well beyond the Rock Flats plant but was not reported until 1970. 
I'll bring you up to date on where this story ends. Have a fulfilling week in the cool air, a preview of fall.
Dotti
Information was obtained from Wikipedia, 
RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION FROM THE ROCKY FLATS PLANT