Despite a court order, a grand jury’s “secret” report
on the Rocky Flats bomb factory in Colorado is out of the closet.
Anti-nuke activists have had copies for years, and the full report
has been posted on the World Wide Web at
www.downwinders.org/rocky_fl.htm.
Nevertheless,
few have been privy to what the so-called runaway grand jury
learned about the bomb factory before the FBI raided and closed the
plant in 1989.
Looking back as far as 1980, the
grand jury unearthed a reckless decade at the Department of Energy
weapons plant six miles southeast of Boulder.
Included in the grand jury’s report:
* defense contractor Rockwell International
illegally incinerated hazardous waste during a nine-year period,
even though Rockwell and the DOE reported in 1985 that the
incinerator was mothballed;
* Rockwell and the
DOE allowed 4,500 poorly labeled barrels containing 40 years of
hazardous waste to pile up;
* and in 1989,
employees discovered a green, slightly fluorescent fluid flowing
from the plant.
The U.S. Attorney’s 125-page
response to the grand jury report says incinerating hazardous waste
was not illegal because the rules regarding the incinerator were in
dispute. As for contaminated groundwater, the attorney’s office
admits Rocky Flats has left a plume of toxics, but it doesn’t yet
“pose a near-term serious threat” to reservoirs three miles
downstream.
– R.E.
Baird
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The secret’s out.
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