Shell Oil Co., which made pesticides and other chemicals at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, will provide $21 million in cash and land under an agreement announced Thursday to settle a 25-year-old state lawsuit. The Army and the federal government are providing the rest.
Rocky Mountain Arsenal
Colo. gets $35 million from Army, Shell for arsenal cleanup
Shell, Army reach $35M Arsenal settlement with state
Shell Oil Co. and the federal government have agreed to a $35 million payout to settle the state of Colorado's quarter-century-old lawsuit over pollution at the Army's former Rocky Mountain Arsenal on the outskirts of Denver.
CHEMICAL IS CONTAMINATING WATER IN COMMUNITY NEAR ARMY ARSENAL
…in 1952 Shell Chemical took over. Among the substances produced were aldrin and dieldrin, both thought to cause cancer.
Robert C. Unruh, Associated Press 25 May 1986
For generations, a devil’s brew of waste nerve agents and chemicals has been percolating at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, where rolling plains in the shadow of downtown Denver’s skyscrapers belie the trouble underground.
The arsenal’s grasslands, dotted with old farm buildings, once were an isolated production site for government nerve gas and commercial pesticides and herbicides.
But as the Denver metropolitan area grew to the northeast, houses sprouted just yards from the arsenal’s barbed boundary fence. People began feeling uneasy about their neighbor, which at 17,000 acres is about one-fourth as big as the city.