And, secretly, the polluters at the site, with the government, entered into a deal where they would flush it into public sewer lines. And, in an investigation I have been involved in since 1996 on behalf of sewage plant workers, we have unraveled a troubling tale of the fact that Rocky Flats was taking waste to this dump, Lowry Landfill, which is now a Superfund site. There’s two tons of plutonium missing from the Rocky Flats nuclear power plant - missing and unaccounted for, the government admits. It was actually hauling it out to eastern Colorado in a dump site called the Lowry Landfill, taking tons of waste. Helen Caldicott, who founded the Physicians for Social Responsibility, has said publicly that she believes the entire Denver metropolitan area should not be inhabited because of the disposition of plutonium that occurred from the fires of 19.īut it’s actually worse than that because Rocky Flats was also hauling waste off-site up to thirty miles away from the Rocky Flats plant, here near Boulder. And, in fact, we believe that there is an effort to suppress the extent of information about the extent of the plutonium contamination of that area, the extent of off-site contamination by plutonium. Many of us in this region around the country say no, it has not. And now the concern is what is being done with the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, whether it has been adequately cleaned up. Attorney for this region essentially cut a deal with Rockwell International that would not give them any criminal liability - which is what the grand jury sought - but instead would fine them several million dollars, and then they would be off the hook for any other types of liability. At the end of their term of service, Mike Norton and the U.S.
Justice Department actually sold them down the river.
McKinley and his other cohorts on the grand jury were convened from 1989 to 92 to look at purported criminal activity at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. Copy may not be in its final form.ĪMY GOODMAN: Adrienne Anderson, also joining us, Professor of Environmental and Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder.ĪDRIENNE ANDERSON: Yes. She currently works with farmers and unions to stop practices like this taking place around the country today. In 1997 Anderson filed a federal whistleblower case on a plan to mix plutonium waste with sewer sludge, process it into fertilizer and then use on American farms. * Adrienne Anderson, professor of Environmental & Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The EPA is allowing the contaminated groundwater at the landfill to be discharged into the Denver metro sewage system, after only partial treatment. Citizen groups claim the landfill is widely contaminated with highly radioactive plutonium and other deadly wastes.
We speak with Colorado University Environmental Studies professor Adrienne Anderson about the Lowry Landfill. “ Recycling Plutonium: How the EPA is Disbursing Toxic and Radioactive Waste From the Lowry Landfill to the Sewage System and onto CO Farmlands and Public Parks