"Mommy," asked my five-year-old son, "will I live to grow up?" A chilling question for a mom. My son had just been through a nuclear bomb attack drill at school. That was twenty years ago, a decade before the end of the Cold War and the collapse of our dreaded enemy, the Soviet Union.

The fear of nuclear attack has faded dramatically since the end of the Cold War, but the legacy of that era has not. For those of us who live in the Denver Metropolitan Area, Rocky Flats is a strong reminder of America's nuclear complex that produced weapons for our own arsenal. Cleaning up that complex has become a critical and complicated task for our country. It will require the construction of long-term safe storage facilities and the transportation of hazardous waste over our highways. Because of the inherent risks, this will take thoughtful discussion and negotiation among citizens and governments at all levels. Make no mistake, there are no simple answers to cleaning up our nuclear weapons facilities. There is no room for demagoguery or grandstanding here. Our safety depends on solving these problems.

Let's take Rocky Flats. Over the last several years, I worked with a large group of citizens, local elected officials, and state and federal agencies to negotiate a cleanup agreement for that facility. Rocky Flats contains a variety of radioactive and other hazardous wastes. The most dangerous is the plutonium that was made at the facility and used to make triggers for nuclear bombs. Plutonium is already being moved out of Rocky Flats for treatment and storage in other states. But, to remove all of the plutonium, we must have a permanent storage facility that can safely contain it for tens of thousands of years. That facility will not be in Colorado. Clearly, this means that, in order to safely store the plutonium for the long term, it will have to be transported across Colorado and many other states. We will need to negotiate the terms of this transportation with affected citizens and governments and we will need to make sure that strong safety measures are in place. While the plutonium remains here, however, it is a threat to the two million people who live in and around Denver.

Rocky Flats has other, far less dangerous, types of waste that will also need long-term, safe storage. For example, all the equipment that comes into contact with plutonium during the cleanup process-gloves, protective clothing and so on-must be packaged and stored for thousands of years. Some of this waste is scheduled to be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico. After many years of work, permits, lawsuits and billions of dollars, that facility is still not open. Rocky Flats cannot be cleaned up until it is.

Other less dangerous waste is being stored in Utah. But, that site cannot take all our waste. Until we build or find another facility, that radioactive waste will remain at Rocky Flats. Again, Rocky Flats cannot be cleaned up until this storage problem is solved.

That brings us to Colorado. There is an existing hazardous waste facility on the plains east of Denver. Discussions have been going on about upgrading that site to take radioactive waste from Rocky Flats. This is where the grandstanding comes in. Some officials have proudly proclaimed that there will never be a radioactive waste dump in Colorado. Well, my fellow Coloradans-Colorado already has a radioactive waste dump. It is called Rocky Flats. And it is smack in the middle of two million people. It can only be made safe if storage facilities are developed to take its radioactive waste. We may have to store some of Colorado's waste in Colorado. This problem is too serious and too dangerous to politicize. So, let's start the discussions about where and how we store this waste securely. Let's negotiate how we'll transport these wastes safely. And, let's figure out how we, as Americans dealing with the dangerous legacy of the Cold War, can make sure we don't leave our problems for our kids to solve.

There are solutions. We just have to have the courage and the vision to work them out and make them happen. It's not us against some phantom "them". We're all in this together.