Full Body Burden (58 page)
Authors: Kristen Iversen
1
EG&G manufactures everything from:
Adriel Bettelheim, “EG&G a Key Nuclear Contractor,”
Denver Post
, September 23, 1989.
2
EG&G’s four-year contract:
Janet Day, “EG&G, U.S. Reach Accord on Operation of Rocky Flats,”
Rocky Mountain News
, October 7, 1989.
3
Response is swift, and more than:
Kristen Iversen, employee newsletter.
4
Rocky Flats officials settle:
Ann Breese White, interview by author, Denver, Colorado, July 31, 2004.
5
He knows he’s sitting:
Michael D. Lemonick, “Rocky Horror Show,”
Time
, November 27, 1995.
6
A DOE official comments:
Joan Lowy, “Rocky Flats Shutdown Will Take 20 Years,”
Rocky Mountain News
, February 3, 1989.
7
It was a real career:
Randy Sullivan, interviews by author, February 13 and 17, 2007, February 17, 2008, and e-mails. See also Randy Sullivan, interview by Hannah Nordhaus, November 8, 2005 (Maria Rogers Oral History Program, OH 1386).
8
The two top managers from EG&G and the DOE walk around:
Ward Marchant, “Rocky Flats’ Nuclear History Leaves Legacy of Peril and Plutonium in Colorado,”
Los Angeles Times
, February 26, 1995. Debra and Diane: The names of these two employees have been changed.
9
And as in the past, Rocky Flats is involved:
Doug Parker, interview by author, October 29, 2006.
10
One day Mr. K:
Name has been changed.
11
When I return to my desk, Anne:
Name has been changed.
12
On November 4, a memo:
Memo from A. H. Burlingame, president of EG&G, “Safe Operations Contingency Plan,” November 4, 1994.
13
The blow is softened:
Horizon
(Rocky Flats employee newsletter), November 3, 1994.
14
The narrator, Dave Marash:
ABC Nightline
, December 20, 1994. Much of this section is based on the
Nightline
transcript.
1
“people are scared of fires”:
Tom Clark, “Is Denver Safe from Rocky Flats?”
Denver Magazine
, March 1978.
2
The Arvada and Fairmount fire districts:
Brad Martisius, “Solution to Chemical-Waste Issue Sought,”
Denver Post
, December 19, 1979.
3
Property values in surrounding neighborhoods:
Peter Nordberg, interviews by author,
July 16, 2007, June 6, 2008, and e-mails.
4
On the night of January 29, 1997:
Mykaila Nordberg, interview by author, September 15, 2010. 284
5
Rocky Flats could become a sort of poster child:
Len Ackland, “The Other Cleanup at Rocky Flats: We’re Burying Its Significance,”
Denver Post
, August 7, 2005.
6
He was fifty-seven, and his time at Rocky Flats:
A Russian technical team visited Rocky Flats in 1994 and 1996.
7
“We may have done too good a job”:
Mark Obmascik, “Overworked Rocky Flats Manager Quits,”
Denver Post
, April 23, 1996.
8
In 2000, the same year, when Silverman’s cancer:
Kelley Hunsberger, “Finding Closure,” CH2M Hill/Kaiser-Hill, PM Network, January 2007.
9
Dr. Harvey Nichols and others:
Harvey Nichols, interview by Hannah Nordhaus, September 14, 2005. See also Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments Board Meeting Minutes, April 2, 2001,
http://www.broomfield.org/RFCLOG/rockyflatsminutes4_2_01.shtml
.
10
Paula Elofson-Gardine, a local resident:
Paula Elofson-Gardine and Susan Hurst, “Stop the Nuclear Brushfires,”
Earth Island Journal
, 2000. See also Paula Elofson-Gardine and Susan Elofson-Hurst, interview by Dorothy Ciarlo, February 23, 2007 (Maria Rogers Oral History Program, OH 01457V A-B).
1
Infinity Rooms—called that because:
Mark Obmascik, “Infinity Rooms: Rocky Flats’ Horror Show,”
Denver Post
, February 20, 1994. These rooms include Room No. 141 in Building 771, originally a plutonium storage vault, where several pumps leaked liquid plutonium nitrate in the 1960s. In 1968 the steel door to Room No. 141 was welded shut, sealing in a ladder, a jackhammer, and hoses, due to lack of funding to decontaminate the room completely. Room No. 134-West and Room No. 141 in Building 776, the site of a major fire in 1969, together comprising 2,000 square feet, were constructed after a cleanup of the fire and have been used in recent years to cut up and package radioactive wastes from other areas of Rocky Flats. Room No. 141 can be entered only after traveling through four separate airlock chambers that seal off contamination.
2
In 1996 a Boston University epidemiologist:
Richard W. Clapp, report submitted November 13, 1996, for plaintiff’s, counsel in
Cook v. Dow Chemical
and Rockwell International
, United States District Court, District of Colorado.
3
In 1989 a class-action lawsuit by residents:
Tim Bonfield, “Fernald: History Repeats Itself,”
Cincinnati Enquirer
, February 11, 1996,
http://www.enquirer.com/fernald/stories/021196c_fernald.html
.
4
Following Clapp’s study, in 1998:
Colorado Central Cancer Registry, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, “Ratios of Cancer Incidence in Ten Areas Around Rocky Flats, Colorado, Compared to the Remainder of Metropolitan Denver, 1980–89, with Update for Selected Areas, 1990–95,”
http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/pp/cccr.ratio.pdf
, published in 1998.
5
A radiation health specialist:
LeRoy Moore, “Democracy and Public Health at Rocky Flats: The Examples of Edward A. Martell and Carl J. Johnson,” in
Tortured Science: Health Studies, Ethics and Nuclear Weapons
, edited by Dianne Quigley, Amy Lowman, and Steve Wing (Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing, 2011), 117.
6
The year 1999 marked the end of a decade-long study:
“The Rocky Flats Historical Public Exposures Study,” Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment.
7
With respect to water:
“Technical Topics Papers : Historical Public Exposure Studies: Water Contaminants,”
www.cdphe.state.co.us/rf/contamin.htm
.
8
Of the $8.7 million of federal funds:
Richard Fleming, “Glowing Reports: There’s Plenty of Good News About Rocky Flats. And You’re Paying for It,”
Westword
, March 15, 1995.
9
Despite ongoing requests:
“Research on Adverse Health Effects Related to Rocky Flats,” Rocky Flats Historical Public Exposures Studies, Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment.
10
The defendants, represented by the one-thousand-plus-member law firm:
Merrill G. Davidoff, Peter Nordberg, and David F. Sorensen, “Nuclear Win Was Years in Making,”
National Law Journal
, January 29, 2007.
11
They award punitive damages:
The jury recommended that the companies pay $352 million in actual damages. With interest, the judgment ultimately totaled close to $1 billion.
12
Bini herself has had cancer:
Hank Pankratz, “Decision a ‘No-Brainer’: Neighbors of the Now-Defunct Rocky Flats Nuclear Facility Had Long Worried About the Health Situation,”
Denver Post
, February 16, 2006; Bini Abbott, interview by author, February 7, 2005.
13
“It’s a tremendous verdict,” she says:
Miriam Hill, “Contamination-Case
Success: Phila. Law Firm Wins $554 Million Verdict, but 16-Year Battle May Not Be Over,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, February 16, 2006.
14
The bomb test sites:
LeRoy Moore, “Rocky Flats: The Bait-and-Switch Cleanup,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
(January/February 2005): 53.
15
They call for an independent assessment:
These groups included the Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, the Town of Westminster, and the City of Broomfield, as well as Congressman David Skaggs.
16
In response, in 1998 the DOE:
Seth Tuler et al., “Perspectives on Public Participation at a Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Facility. Case Study: Setting Soil Clean-up Standards at the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site,” Social and Environmental Research Institute, October 2003. Stakeholder involvement at Rocky Flats includes the Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board, the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments, and the Rocky Flats Radionuclide Soil Action Levels Oversight Panel, each producing individual studies and reports. Many people believe that these citizen groups have been essential to a broader understanding of Rocky Flats and facilitating the cleanup process; others argue that public involvement and releasing information about risks associated with the plant may have exacerbated conflict between the government, contractors, and the public.
17
A 1996 study of burrowing animals present:
Virginia Gewin, “Nuclear Site Turns Wildlife Refuge,”
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
5, no. 7 (September 2007): 345.
18
Only 7 percent of the total—roughly $473 million:
Moore, “Rocky Flats: The Bait-and-Switch Cleanup,” 56. During cleanup, the majority of weapons-grade plutonium from Rocky Flats was sent to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, with some also sent to the Pantex facility in Texas. Weapons-useful uranium was sent to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Transuranic waste went to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, and additional waste was sent to facilities in Nevada and Utah.
19
In December 2004, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:
Andrew Todd and Mark Sattelberg, “Actinides in Deer Tissues at the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site,” State News Service, Contaminant Study Completed. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Rocky Flats Deer Tissue Study Executive Summary,
http://www.fws.gov/rockyflats/Documents/DeerTissue_ExSummary.pdf
.
20
“Close it, fence it, pave it over”:
“Tread Warily, You Deer-Watchers: Turning Nuclear Sites into Wildlife Refuges Isn’t That Easy,”
The Economist
, February 24, 2005.
21
Dosimeter badges, which employees wore:
Ann Imse, “Review
Exposes Flats Data as Faulty,”
Rocky Mountain News
, February 6, 2006.
22
Sixteen members of the Dobrovolny family:
Ann Imse, “Family Full of Flats Workers Deals with Death and Illness,”
Rocky Mountain News
, April 27, 2007.
23
A DOE-financed study in 1987:
Thomas Graf, “Flats Widows Fighting an Uphill Battle: DOE, Contractors Deny Fault in Workers’ Deaths,”
Denver Post
, November 20, 1989.
24
He was ordered to submit:
Suzanne Ruta, “Fear and Silence in Los Alamos,”
The Nation
, January 4–11, 1993. See also Keith Schneider, “Panel Questions Credibility of Nuclear Health Checks,”
New York Times
, February 28, 1990, and Gregg Wilkinson, “Seven Years in Search of Alpha,”
Epidemiology
10, no. 3 (May 1999). See also Gregg Wilkinson et al., “Study of Mortality Among Plutonium and Other Radiation Workers at a Plutonium Weapons Facility,”
American Journal of Epidemology
125, no. 2 (1987).
25
Wilkinson found that exposure:
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2000. Wilkinson et al., “Study of Mortality Among Plutonium and Other Radiation Workers,” and “Study of Mortality Among Female Nuclear Weapons Workers,” May 19, 2000.
26
In 1990, testing by doctors at the National:
Mark Obmascik and Thomas Graf, “Flats Lung Disease Discovered,”
Denver Post
, January 14, 1990.
27
Rocky Flats workers in general:
Brittany Anas, “CU Professor Drowns in Mexico,”
Boulder Daily Camera
, June 21, 2007,
http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_13082169
.
28
Charlie Wolf is one of the few managers:
Charlie Wolf, interview by author, June 13, 2006.
29
For every single pound:
Obmascik, “Infinity Rooms: Rocky Flats’ Horror Show.”
30
On the way to the event, Lipsky receives a call:
Jim Hughes, “FBI Agent Silenced on Rocky Flats Nuclear Site,”
Denver Post
, August 26, 2004.
31
Based on the compromised cleanup standards:
“Last of Rocky Flats Worst Waste Removed,”
Los Angeles Times
, April 20, 2005.
32
Studies demonstrate that vegetation:
W. J. Arthur III and A. W. Alldredge, “Importance of Plutonium Contamination on Vegetation Surfaces at Rocky Flats, Colorado,”
Environmental and Experimental Botany
22, no. 1 (February 1, 1982): 33–38.
33
Another study shows that:
Shawn Smallwood, “Soil Bioturbation and Wind Affect Fate of Hazardous Materials That Were Released at the
Rocky Flats Plant, Colorado” (November 23, 1996), report submitted for plaintiff’s counsel in
Cook v. Rockwell International Corporation
, United States District Court, District of Colorado, no. 90-CV-00181; see also the transcript of Smallwood’s appearance in court in this case, 3912–4130. See also K. Shawn Smallwood, Michael L. Morrison, and Jan Beyea, “Animal Burrowing Attributes Affecting Hazardous Waste Management,”
Environmental Management
22, no. 6 (November 22, 1998): 831–47. 327
34
“He died with nothing more than the clothes”:
Laura Frank and Ann Imse, “Rocky Flats Whistle-blower Dies at 82,”
Rocky Mountain News
, April 12, 2007; see also Virginia Culver, “Whistle-blower Helped Shut Flats,”
Denver Post
, April 13, 2007.
35
In 2000, however, scientists at Los Alamos:
George L. Voelz, as told to Ileana G. Buican, “Plutonium and Health: How Great Is the Risk?”
Los Alamos Science
, no. 26 (2000): 77–78.
36
And new studies by the DOE:
U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Agenda for HHS Public Health Activities (for Fiscal Years 2005–2010) at U.S. Department of Energy Sites,” U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, January 2005,
www.hss.doe.gov/healthsafety/iipp/hservices/documents/agenda.pdf
.
37
Back in 1981, Dr. Carl Johnson reported:
Carl J. Johnson, “Cancer Incidence in an Area Contaminated with Radionuclides Near a Nuclear Installation,”
Ambio
10, no. 4 (1981): 176–82.
38
Curtis Bunce’s doctor recommends:
Stacy Gardalen, interview by author, December 18, 2011, and e-mails.
39
The indoor sample is taken from a crawl space:
Samples taken on April 14, 2010, analyzed by Marco Kaltofen, PE, of Boston Chemical Data Corp. Report is available at
http://archivesite.rmpjc.org/about+sampling+technical+report
.
40
Much of it is so toxic that:
Linda Rothstein, “Nothing Clean About ‘Cleanup,’ ”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
(May 1995): 34–41.
41
In September 2004, in response to the Draft Environmental:
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, “Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, Appendix H: Comments and Responses on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement,” September 2004.
42
Shirley Garcia worked at Rocky Flats:
Shirley Garcia, interviews by Dorothy Ciarlo, January 19, 2001 (Maria Rogers Oral History Program, OH 1023V), and November 13, 2004 (OH 1204). Interview by author, December 2005.
43
However, current testing of wells:
Agenda for HHS Public Health Activities (for Fiscal Years 2005–2010) at U.S. Department of Energy Sites, January 2005,
http://hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/iipp/hservices/documents/agenda.pdf
, 93.
44
John Rampe, a former Energy Department
: David Kelly, “Dispatch from Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, Colorado: An Idyllic Scene Polluted with Controversy,”
Los Angeles Times
, February 7, 2005.
45
All documentation from the 1989 FBI raid:
The leaked grand jury report was eventually posted on the website of the Denver chapter of the Sierra Club. Judge Finesilver released a redacted grand jury report, with comments added by the Justice Department, on January 26, 1993. None of these partial and edited reports contain evidence or testimony. The full report is still sealed.