The Rocky Mountain Arsenal (RMA) is a large tract of land to the NE of Denver. It was the main manufacturing site for chemical weaponry for the US until we declared we weren’t gonna make war that way no more, some time in the 50s/60s.
After that time, portions of the facilities were leased to folks like Chevron and Shell to manufacture pestacides, which makes horrifying sense, of course.
Now, oddly enough, because this is such a massive tract of land, it’s also one of the few undeveloped bits of land of its type within some distance of Denver. And among all the other critters living there (kept fenced away from the Truly Horrid sites on-base, which are actually few and far between), there are nesting areas for eagles. Indeed, it’s one of the best bald eagle nesting areas in this neck of the woods.
Over the last 10-20 years, since RMA was declared a Superfund site, it’s been being slowly cleaned up. The base is still Army property, but there’s some funky joint military/state government jurisdiction over it, since it’s no longer an active military site. The two parties have a long history of finger-pointing, natch, as the Army sees the state as a bunch of bungling intruders and the state sees the Army as a neglectful polluter.
Events like this are both typical and do very little to dispel misunderstandings. Not to mention not serving the mission of everyone involved: to clean up the site, to get it off the Army’s back, to make it a large wildlife sanctuary, etc.
(My company used to be a major sub to Foster Wheeler at the site, assisting with O&M of the facility. Another “Boy, could I tell you stories” sort of thing.)