Skip to content

Friday, Mar. 14, 2025

Did an airport contamination lawsuit create a thriving Denver wildlife refuge?

Por Jaijongkit, The Colorado Sun
yes

The Bluff Lake Natural Area was created as part of a settlement between the Sierra Club and the Denver Department of Aviation. Today, the 123-acre site houses the nonprofit Bluff Lake Nature Center and is home to hundreds of species of birds, mammals, insects and plants. 

Before Denver’s Stapleton Airport closed in 1995, Bluff Lake was a buffer zone for plane crashes. Remaining fenced off at the end of a runway, the lake attracted a variety of wildlife. Before the airport was developed, the lake served as an irrigation pond. 

The Sierra Club sued Denver’s Stapleton Airport for allowing airplane de-icing fluid to spill into the nearby Sand Creek during rain events, killing fish. Denver preserved the nearby Bluff Lake area and spent $3 million restoring it as part of the settlement. 

Denver’s Department of Aviation owned the site until 2008, when it was transferred to the Bluff Lake Nature Center. 

See a full discussion of this at The Colorado Sun

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

The Colorado Sun is a journalist-founded, award-winning and nonprofit news outlet based in Denver that strives to cover all of Colorado so that our state — our community — can better understand itself. In this way, we believe we can contribute to a more vibrant, informed and whole Colorado. We are committed to fact-based, in-depth and nonpartisan journalism. We cover everything from politics and culture to the outdoor industry and education. Our goal is to produce the best possible journalism. We do that with the help of you, our readers, and community backers. We launched on Sept. 10, 2018.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.