Full Body Burden (54 page)
Authors: Kristen Iversen
Thanks to physicist Robert Philbin, who helped me understand the complexities of radioactivity, and Ross Proctor, lieutenant with the Memphis Police Department, for helping me understand issues of domestic preparedness and nuclear weapons.
I am grateful to the research assistants who helped with transcriptions and footnotes: Wendy Sumner Winter, JD Wilson, Andrew Sall, Matt Martin, John Schulze, Derek Gray, Sean Meek, and especially, in the final stretch, Colleen Pawling and Tom Useted. Gwendolyn Ashbaugh Mooney and Greg Larson read the manuscript closely. Thanks to my colleagues in the MFA program at the University of Memphis for their encouragement and support, particularly Richard Bausch, Rebecca Skloot, Sonja Livingston, and Aram Goudsouzian. I’m grateful to Stephen Usery at Book Talk and Corey Mesler at Burke’s Books. They are the heart of the literary community in Memphis.
I am indebted to Grant and Peggy Pound at Colorado Art Ranch and the remarkable residents of Trinidad and Libre, Colorado, for two writing residencies that gave me the time and quiet space to complete the final stages of this project. Thanks to the San Jose Literary Arts Council and the University of Memphis for grants, and Denver International
Airport and Colorado Art Ranch for exhibiting photos and text from this book over the summer of 2010.
I owe deep gratitude to the people who made this book happen. John Glusman was extraordinarily enthusiastic, and his comments in the early stages were invaluable. I am extremely fortunate to have the talent and energy of Rachel Klayman, my editor at Crown, as well as the other wonderful people at Crown, including Mark Birkey, Chris Brand, Julie Cepler, Stephanie Chan, Michael Gentile, Leila Lee, Rachel Rokicki, Annsley Rosner, Jay Sones, and Barbara Sturman. Publisher Molly Stern has been hugely supportive of this book. A very special thank-you to my agent, Ellen Levine.
Molly Giles believed in this book—and me—from the very first sentence. Heartfelt gratitude—and lefse and lutefisk—to Greg Larson, for love, support, and late-night editing. It turns out that a Norwegian and a Swede make a pretty good team. Thanks, most of all, to my remarkable family: my two sons, Sean and Nathan; my mother, now gone; my father; and my beloved siblings, Karin, Karma, and Kurt.
*
1942 The Manhattan Project begins.
1945 The U.S. Army conducts its first nuclear weapons test on July 16, 1945 in New Mexico. The weapon is referred to as “the Gadget.” On August 6, the “Little Boy” atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, the “Fat Man” nuclear bomb, an implosion-design plutonium device, is dropped on Nagasaki.
1946 President Harry S. Truman signs the Atomic Energy Act, creating the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).
1951 The
Denver Post
reports, “There Is Good News Today: U.S. to Build $45 Million A-Plant near Denver.” The site for the plant lies sixteen miles from central Denver and nine miles from Boulder, and site plans rely erroneously on wind pattern reports from Stapleton Airport, not the high mesa of Rocky Flats. Dow Chemical is chosen as the operating contractor.
1957 A major fire occurs in plutonium processing Building 771. Despite the spread of radioactive and toxic contamination to the Denver metropolitan area, residents are not told about the fire until 1970.
1962 The Cuban missile crisis between the United States and the Soviet Union brings the world to the brink of nuclear war.
1969 A major fire in plutonium processing Buildings 776 and 777 becomes the costliest industrial accident in the United States at that time. Cleanup takes two years. The public is largely unaware of the fire.
1970 After a team of independent scientists discovers plutonium at off-site areas around Rocky Flats, the AEC admits to the contamination but announces that it is not a result of the 1969 fire, but rather of the 1957 fire—of which the public was never informed—and of thousands of drums that have been leaking radioactive and toxic materials since the 1960s.
1972 The AEC expands the buffer zone around Rocky Flats and Congress spends $6 million to purchase an additional 4,600 acres, bringing the Rocky Flats site to a total of approximately 6,400 acres.
1973 The Colorado Department of Health discovers tritium in drinking water downstream of Rocky Flats, but does not alert local officials for five months. The AEC initially denies the presence of tritium.
1974 Governor Richard Lamm and Representative Timothy Wirth establish the Lamm-Wirth Task Force on Rocky Flats to help determine the future of Rocky Flats, given its proximity to the Denver metropolitan area. The task force concludes that nuclear-weapons work should be ended at Rocky Flats and moved to another location.
1975 Rockwell International replaces Dow Chemical as managing contractor of Rocky Flats.
1978 Large-scale protests begin at Rocky Flats. Protesters set up camp on railroad tracks leading into the plant site and remain on the tracks from April until January 1979.
1979 A core meltdown of Unit 2 at the Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, occurs on March 28. On April 28, thousands of protestors rally at Rocky Flats, including Daniel Ellsberg, Allen Ginsberg, Bonnie Raitt, and Jackson Browne. A counterdemonstration is held by pro–Rocky Flats workers and the United Steelworkers of America.
1983 More than fifteen thousand protesters link hands and nearly encircle the seventeen-mile perimeter of the plant on October 15.
1984 The first Rocky Flats worker is diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease, an incurable illness irrefutably linked with work conditions at the plant.
1986 The Department of Energy (DOE), the Colorado Department of Health, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sign an agreement to allow, for the first time, partial regulation of radioactive and hazardous waste at Rocky Flats. That same year, the Chernobyl disaster on April 26 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine releases a large amount of radioactive contamination that spreads over much of Europe. At the time, it is considered the worst nuclear accident in history.
1987 The Rocky Flats Environmental Monitoring Council, a community oversight organization, is formed.
1989 The FBI raids Rocky Flats to collect evidence of alleged environmental lawbreaking at the plant. Production of plutonium triggers ends. A federal grand jury is impaneled to review the evidence and embarks on a nearly three-year-long investigation, hearing hundreds of witnesses and examining thousands of documents.
1990 EG&G takes over from Rockwell as the operator of Rocky Flats. A class-action lawsuit,
Cook v. Rockwell International Corporation
, is filed on behalf of thousands of residents living downwind of the plant. The suit alleges that Dow and Rockwell allowed plutonium from Rocky Flats to contaminate residents’ land.
1991 The Soviet Union is dissolved. The Cold War ends. This same year, the Rocky Flats Beryllium Health Surveillance Program is initiated.
1992 The U.S. Attorney and Department of Justice bypass the grand jury and negotiate an out-of-court settlement with Rockwell in which the company pleads guilty to ten violations of the Clean Water Act and federal hazardous waste laws, including illegal storage of hazardous wastes. Rockwell pays a fine of $18.5 million. Outraged grand jurors refuse to be dismissed and write their own report detailing ongoing contamination and calling for the indictment and trial of several Rockwell and DOE officials. Though the report is sealed by the judge and jurors are forbidden to speak about the case, someone leaks a redacted version of the report to
Westword
, a Denver weekly. Meanwhile, President George H. W. Bush announces the end of the W88 warhead program, effectively ending production at Rocky Flats.
1993 The Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board replaces the Rocky Flats Environmental Monitoring Council, its mission to provide ongoing community and local government oversight of the cleanup at Rocky Flats.
1994 The Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant is renamed the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site.
1995 In the ongoing class-action lawsuit
Cook v. Rockwell International
, a U.S. district judge holds the DOE in contempt of court for failure to release millions of pages of documentation regarding missing plutonium, health issues, and other information about the plant. The DOE estimates that it would take seventy years and $36 billion to clean up Rocky Flats, and says that the technology to do an adequate cleanup may not exist. Also, the DOE, the EPA, and the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment sign the Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement, which specifies cleanup levels for soils contaminated with radioactive materials at Rocky Flats. Local residents and scientists protest that the levels are too high.
1999 Shipments of transuranic (i.e., plutonium-laden) nuclear waste from Rocky Flats to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, east of Carlsbad, New Mexico, begin.
2000 The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act is established to compensate nuclear industry workers whose health may have been harmed by workplace exposure to radioactive and chemical toxins. Due to missing and inaccurate records, many workers find it difficult to prove exposure.
2001 The Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge Act is signed into law. Kaiser-Hill LLC agrees to clean up the Rocky Flats site for an estimated cost of $7.3 billion and sets a target completion date of 2010.
2003 DOE, EPA, and CDPHE revise the Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement, setting new cleanup levels for radioactive materials in the soil at the site.
2004 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announces that public recreation will be allowed at the proposed Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge.
2005 Kaiser-Hill announces that it has completed the cleanup of Rocky Flats more than fourteen months ahead of schedule.
Cook v. Rockwell International
goes to trial. It is the largest environmental class-action lawsuit in Colorado history. Property owners seek $500 million in damages.
2006 The jury in
Cook v. Rockwell International
awards the plaintiffs almost $554 million. The Rocky Flats Stewardship Council is formed to provide ongoing local government and community oversight of the postclosure management of the Rocky Flats site.
2007 Nearly four thousand acres of the former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Site are transferred to the Department of the Interior for management by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. As of the publication of this book, the refuge has not been opened to the public.
2008 The judge in
Cook v. Rockwell International
issues a final award of $926 million, including compensatory damages, interest, and exemplary damages.
2010 A three-judge appeals court at the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver overturns the decision in
Cook v. Rockwell International
and throws out the award.
2011 Following an earthquake and tsunami, on March 11 three nuclear reactors undergo a full meltdown at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, leading to extensive radioactive contamination on the level of the Chernobyl disaster. Radioactivity from Fukushima is measurable on the West Coast of the United States.
*
Adapted from a timeline prepared by the Rocky Flats Stewardship Council.
W
RITING THIS
book was the work of twelve years. Each chapter is closely based on primary and secondary sources, including books, newspaper articles, journals, technical reports, government reports, and court documentation. In addition, I conducted extensive personal interviews and drew on the more than 150 interviews at the Maria Rogers Oral History Program on Rocky Flats at the Carnegie Branch Library for Local History in Boulder, Colorado. Many of these resources are available on the Internet.
All dialogue is as close to verbatim as possible based on interviews, newspaper articles, audio and video documentation, and other sources. I am thankful for the work of investigative journalists with the
Rocky Mountain News
, the
Denver Post, Westword
, the
New York Times
, the
Los Angeles Times
, the
Washington Post
, and the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
, and particularly grateful to have been able to consult Len Ackland’s book,
Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West
(University of New Mexico Press, 1999), which was vital to nearly every chapter but particularly the section on the 1969 Mother’s Day fire. Interviews with Bill Dennison, Stan Skinger, and Willie Warling were also essential to that section.
My account of the FBI raid and subsequent grand jury investigation is based on articles, court documentation, and many interviews with Jim Stone, Jon Lipsky, Wes McKinley, Jacque Brever, Peter Nordberg, and others. The book
The Ambushed Grand Jury: How the Justice Department Covered Up Nuclear Crime: And How We Caught Them Red-Handed
by Wes McKinley and Caron Balkany (Apex Press, 2004) was useful.
Sections describing protests at Rocky Flats are based on newspaper articles and firsthand accounts as well as interviews conducted by me or
the Maria Rogers Oral History Program with Daniel Ellsberg, Debby Clark, Pam Solo, and others, and a very illuminating article by Edward Abbey.
Technical information is based on extensive DOE documentation (and that of its subcontractors) as cited below, as well as the work of Ed Martell, Carl Johnson, Gregg Wilkinson, Shawn Smallwood, Marco Kaltofen, and others, and several articles by LeRoy Moore. Numerous interviews with Tamara Smith Meza, Peter and Mykaila Nordberg, Ann White, Laura and Jeff Schultz, Charlie Wolf, Charles McKay, Pat McCormick, and Randy Sullivan were particularly helpful, and I am grateful for their willingness to share their lives for this book.