Full Body Burden

by Kristen Iversen

  But the DOE is finding itself in deeper and deeper trouble. Shortly thereafter, a comprehensive DOE study of 160 contaminated sites at sixteen nuclear weapons facilities around the country is released to the public. Rocky Flats is ranked number one—the most dangerous site in the United States—primarily due to hazardous waste in the groundwater and the large population directly downwind and downstream. Ground-water is of particular concern; in addition to plutonium contamination of soils and sediments, the solar evaporation ponds have contributed to nitrate contamination in water supplies. Two buildings at Rocky Flats make the list of the ten most contaminated buildings in America. Number one is Building 771.

  Other DOE sites are in trouble, too. At the 570-square-mile Hanford site near Richland, Washington, liquid radioactive and toxic wastes, dumped into trenches for four decades, have contaminated large underground reservoirs used for drinking water and irrigation. Large amounts of radioactive materials have been released into the Columbia River and into the air, including approximately 740,000 curies of iodine-131, and the result is a high occurrence of thyroid cancer and other thyroid conditions. The Nevada Test Site, the Pantex facility, the Feed Materials Production Center, and the Savannah River Plant are all deeply contaminated and have affected surrounding areas.

  Six weeks later, Building 771 reopens for business, with limited use of the incinerator. The DOE says it has commissioned exhaustive studies to support its contention that Rocky Flats poses no threat to residents. But even some government officials are beginning to disagree. “I don’t believe that it’s possible to reverse the harm that has been done at Rocky Flats,” says Bob Alvarez, an investigator for the U.S. Senate’s Governmental Affairs Committee, which is responsible for monitoring nuclear weapons complexes. The groundwater and soil at Rocky Flats are so full of radioactive materials and toxic chemicals that Alvarez and other experts expect Rocky Flats to likely become a “national sacrifice zone,” an area that will remain toxic for so long that no living creature will be able to enter without endangering its health.

  NUNS AND hippies, housewives and physicists, attorneys and Buddhist monks. History makes for odd alliances.

  In 1987 two men from separate government agencies form an unlikely team. Jon Lipsky of the FBI’s new Environmental Crimes Division and William Smith of the EPA’s National Environmental Investigation Unit quietly begin to look into alleged abuses at Rocky Flats. They seem straight out of a Rocky Flats version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—but with a happier ending.

  Progress is slow. Lipsky, a former Las Vegas street cop who’s not afraid of plutonium, the government, or hard work, has a casual demeanor, but he’s been the lead investigator in thirteen environmental cases. He’s persistent. Years of secrecy and threats have made workers and activists alike very nervous around government types. No one wants to talk. Finally, after months of trying to build trust and convince people of his sincerity, Lipsky gets lucky. An activist gives him the name of Jim Stone.

  Stone has been waiting months—no, decades—for a call like this. He loads up all his boxes and takes them down to the FBI’s Denver office. A polite, slightly stout man wearing a fedora, Stone doesn’t look much like a rabble-rouser to Lipsky and Smith. But he has a story and he can’t wait to tell it.

  Lipsky has few confirmed facts about contamination at Rocky Flats, but one thing he knows for sure is that the incinerator in Building 771 is supposed to be shut down. Yet he’s heard numerous rumors that it’s being operated illegally. “Are they still burning plutonium out there?” he asks Stone.

  “Oh yeah,” Stone replies. “They have so much waste out there that they have to fire up that incinerator. I told them there are better ways, that you don’t have to do it that way. That incinerator is not protected with suitable filters. It’s not even designed to burn common trash properly without causing air pollution. But they said no, this is the most expedient, we’re going to do it this way.”

  Rockwell and the DOE have always contended that the 771 incinerator is exempt from RCRA regulation because Rocky Flats is a “plutonium recovery” facility and thus granted an exclusion.

  “How do you know these things?” Lipsky asks. Both Lipsky and Smith are having a hard time keeping up with Stone. Stone has waited a long time to talk.

  “Well, I worked in that building all the time,” Stone says. “The new incinerator, the fluidized bed incinerator, never did work. They’ve tried it a few times but could never get it certified. There’s a limit on how much hazardous and radioactive waste they can store, and they have no room for it. So they burn it. They burn waste contaminated with plutonium, low-level and medium-level waste.”

  “What else do you know?” Smith asks.

  “I can tell you about a lot of things,” Stone replies. “Standley Lake, for example. Not only is there plutonium and americium and uranium and you-name-it, but I know by the stratus in the lake sediment when that contamination occurred.”

  Lipsky looks over at Smith. They have their first source.

  “A lot of contamination goes up the stack [the Building 771 incinerator smokestack] and into the environment,” Stone continues, “because the filters leak like a sieve. The wind prevails from the west. It’s the same thing with the groundwater, with Great Western and Standley Lake just downhill, right on down to the Platte River. Denver is sitting at the gravity base of all this pollution coming down from Rocky Flats. And it has to be stopped at the source.” He pauses. “That’s always an engineer’s primary objective: determine the cause of the problem, get at the source, and correct it there.”

  Stone tells Lipsky and Smith about his long history at Rocky Flats, about how he helped build the plant and knows the facility inside and out. Workers have inadequate protection, he says. But he also talks about how workers mess with or remove the filters, because filters slow down production. He talks about how productivity trumps safety or environmental laws. There’s a lot of plutonium missing, Stone adds, some in the ventilation ducts and piping, some blowing around outside.

  “They blackballed me. The industry is spooky about whistle-blowers,” he says. “But I don’t see myself as a whistle-blower. I see myself as a good engineer.”

  With this ammunition in hand, Lipsky and Smith contact Ken Fimberg, assistant U.S. attorney for the state of Colorado and a Harvard-trained lawyer with a strong track record in environmental issues. If Rocky Flats is burning contaminated waste in that incinerator, the men say, the technology exists to detect it. Lipsky explains that he wants to do a flyover of the plant and do infrared photography. Contaminated waste gives off heat. Forward-looking infrared (FLIR) will reveal whether there’s anything thermally hot.

  There’s a hitch, though. Rocky Flats has guards under orders to shoot if necessary. “I want a letter of immunity for me to take pictures of Rocky Flats,” Lipsky says. “Your office prosecutes activists all the time for trespassing over there. And it’s under the exact Atomic Energy Act section of trespass that you’re not allowed to take pictures. So I’ll be violating the law, and I want a letter of immunity.”

  At first, Fimberg looks at Lipsky and Smith as if they’re out of their minds. But he knows something about Rocky Flats: the fires, the leaking barrels, the lawsuits. Fimberg served on the board of the Colorado Wildlife Federation and clerked for the Environmental Defense Fund. He decides to support their investigation. Lipsky gets the letter.

  Lipsky, Smith, and Fimberg then bring their case before U.S. attorney Mike Norton. They’re not sure how he’ll respond. Norton has run twice as Colorado’s Republican candidate for Congress. Both times were unsuccessful. He’s thinking about running for governor. Despite a lack of criminal experience, Norton’s just been appointed by President George H. W. Bush as U.S. attorney for Colorado, with the Department of Justice. He’s still waiting for his Senate confirmation when the three men visit his office to discuss Rocky Flats.

  The meeting seems to go well. If they’re burning plutonium out there, Smith emphasizes, we
can catch them.

  Somewhat to the men’s surprise, Norton gives them a green light. But he cautions that the investigation must proceed carefully. He has to seek approval from the Justice Department in Washington. The EPA is an independent agency, but the FBI falls under the Department of Justice.

  The Justice Department approves.

  The first flyover occurs in October when Building 771 is supposed to be closed. Then, on the cold nights of December 9, 10, and 15, 1988, an FBI plane armed with an infrared heat-sensing camera flies directly over the plant. Jon Lipsky, Ken Fimberg, and another EPA agent are on board. Lipsky hates to fly—especially in puddle-jumpers—as he gets motion sickness. But he’s not thinking about his stomach. They take photos of the Building 771 incinerator—shut down by court order until February 28—and other areas in and around the plant. “Look at that,” the EPA agent says, pointing to the monitor. The men can see white plumes rising from a smokestack and long white ribbons spreading out from the plant in lines, shapes, and swirls, as well as occasional white spots. White indicates thermal activity.

  The photos are sent to an EPA laboratory for analysis. The results are dramatic. The photographs indicate that, contrary to statements by Rockwell and the DOE, the 771 incinerator is thermally active and likely in operation, burning radioactive waste. Further, the plant appears to be illegally discharging radioactive liquid waste into Woman Creek. Streaks of light splay out from the “spray fields” where contaminated waste is sprayed. Narrow white rays that stretch across Indiana Street and toward Great Western Reservoir seem to indicate the movement of radioactive material beyond plant boundaries.

  Lipsky is shocked by the results. The heat signatures show the runoff fanning out just like a spiderweb. Capillaries spread down to Woman Creek and then to Standley Lake, which provides drinking water for nearby cities. Even on the coldest night of their flights, when it was just 7 degrees Fahrenheit, Rocky Flats was still spray-irrigating with radioactive waste.

  Never before have two government agencies—the FBI and the EPA—planned to raid a third government agency, particularly one as powerful as the DOE.

  Based on the videotape and other evidence they’ve accumulated, Lipsky and Smith begin to prepare a 116-page affidavit that will lead to a search warrant. The affidavit states that the DOE and Rockwell tried to prevent the public from learning “just how bad the site really is.… There is probable cause to believe that Rockwell and the Energy Department officials have knowingly and falsely stated Rocky Flats’ compliance with environmental laws and regulations and concealed Rocky Flats’ serious contamination.”

  Lipsky and Smith decide to call the raid Operation Desert Glow.

  Fimberg flies to Washington to brief supervisors at the Justice Department and gain their approval. On January 10, the head of the Environment and Natural Resources Divisions approves. In March, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh signs off, and in June, James Watkins, the secretary of the DOE, who has brought a new spirit of openness to the agency, signs a memo of understanding about what is to happen.

  CARL JOHNSON doesn’t live to see the raid on Rocky Flats. In Colorado politics he was a pariah, but beyond state boundaries he became an internationally renowned expert on the effects of radiation. His work included a significant study of people in Utah, the “downwinders,” who were subject to the fallout from nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s and 1960s.

  Five months after he was terminated from his job as Jefferson County Health Director in May 1981, Johnson’s “Rocky Flats Area Cancer Incidence Study” was published in the highly respected journal Ambio. In 1983 his case against the county board of health and the county commissioners—who, according to the press, had appointed a new member to the board for the express purpose of firing Johnson—was appealed to the state supreme court. One week after the Church lawsuit—initiated by owners of the land on which Johnson had tried to prevent residential development—was settled for about $9 million, Jefferson County commissioners offered to settle with Johnson for $150,000. He accepted. It was less than ideal—what he really wanted was to have his job back—but at least he felt somewhat vindicated.

  On December 18, 1988, less than two weeks before his unexpected death and six months before the still-secret raid, Johnson published an article in the New York Times titled “Rocky Flats: Death, Inc.” “The actual number of people who have been injured or died because of the operations of Rocky Flats and other such plants can never be fully known,” he wrote. “Thus, communities near nuclear weapons and nuclear power facilities must insist on detailed investigations of all activities and emissions. I was a whistle-blower.… I was forced out of office. If the nation is to be properly protected, all studies of nuclear contamination and associated health effects should be conducted primarily by independent scientists who are insulated from cynical retaliation from the nuclear establishment as well as advocates of urban development.”

  Eleven days later, the man who overcame tuberculosis as a child died of complications from heart surgery at the age of fifty-nine. He was buried with military honors at Fort Logan National Cemetery. “It was probably the most respect Carl J. Johnson ever got from the government,” wrote a reporter from the Boston Globe.

  In An Enemy of the People, Henrik Ibsen—the Norwegian playwright whom my mother insisted we read when we were young—tells the story of a doctor who discovers that the baths at a popular vacation spot are contaminated by toxins from a local tannery, and citizens are becoming ill. He expects to be commended for saving the townspeople from disease, as well as the many tourists who visit the town. Instead, he is denounced, driven away, and declared an “enemy of the people.”

  The strongest man in the world, Ibsen wrote, is the man who stands most alone.

  ON THE morning of June 6, 1989, at 8:00 a.m. sharp, a U.S. magistrate in Denver issues the search warrant. More than seventy-five FBI and EPA investigators are waiting outside the gates of the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant as FBI agent Jon Lipsky, search warrant in hand, drives from the Denver courthouse to the foothills, green with spring, to meet them.

  Marriage is like a boat; I hope to find steadiness on a rocky sea. Instead the boat seems less stable than the waters, and I find myself constantly peering over the bow. I try to follow my mother’s advice—you have made your bed, now you must lie in it—although I sometimes worry that my hasty marriage is playing out unhappy patterns from my parents’ situation. I work as a secretary to help my husband, Andrew, through his last year of college, and a year after he graduates we move to Germany for his engineering job. I begin writing again and find work as a freelance journalist. The money is slim, but I relish the chance to travel.

  On April 26, 1986, a large radioactive cloud travels across the sky near our home in Germany and continues its rounds across Europe. No one seems to know exactly what happened with Reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, but my neighbor is afraid to eat the blueberries in her garden and everyone stays inside for a few days. It probably doesn’t matter, I joke with my friends. Whatever there is to get, I probably already got from Rocky Flats.

  Our son Sean is born in June 1989 in a hospital in Frankfurt. The birth is traumatic but swift; an emergency C-section saves Sean’s life and he greets the world with round pink cheeks and indigo eyes. I lie awake all night and hold him, watching as the full moon travels across the black sky.

  As I lie in a hospital bed in Germany with a newborn in my arms, the raid at Rocky Flats unfolds.

  JUST BEFORE 9:00 a.m., on June 6, 1989, FBI agent Jon Lipsky drives through the gate of the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant with a search warrant in his pocket, a .357 by his side, and the knowledge that just outside the gate stands a line of vans and vehicles filled with more than seventy FBI and EPA agents waiting for the signal to enter. Rockwell has no advance warning of what’s about to happen, but in a memorandum of understanding between the Department of Justice, the DOE, and the EPA, the DOE has agreed that security guards at Rocky Flats wil
l not prevent the raiding officials from entering the plant. Lipsky pulls into the parking lot, aware that he’s being watched.

  The administration is housed in a plain gray two-story building with a no-frills factory feel. Some doors have coded locks, others don’t. Secretaries look up as Lipsky walks past. He raps on the door of the conference room once, then again, and enters.

  The conference table is ringed with men: FBI agents in dark suits on one side and Rocky Flats officials on the other. A badge hangs from every neck. Plates of coffee cake and mugs of coffee are half submerged under documents, flow charts, and maps of the facility. The room is calm and cheerful. The FBI has told Rocky Flats officials that this meeting is to be a briefing on a potential “ecoterrorist” threat from Earth First!, the radical environmental advocacy group.

  Lipsky takes a seat at the table. He nods briefly to the special agent in charge, Tom Coyle, to let him know that the search warrant is signed. The men wait, sipping coffee, until the Rockwell manager of Rocky Flats, Dominick Sanchini, arrives. Sanchini seems rushed. He’s eager to get the meeting started.

  But the FBI is calling the shots. Suddenly an agent standing near the door nods to Coyle. That’s the sign. All is ready.

  Coyle informs the men at the table that ninety FBI and EPA agents are invading the plant to begin an official investigation of Rockwell and the DOE for environmental crimes at Rocky Flats. Everyone is to remain seated. Guards, managers, and workers will be instructed to be cooperative.

  “You can’t be serious,” sputters Sanchini.

  “We are serious,” says Coyle.

  Dominic Sanchini, or “Dom,” has been manager at Rocky Flats for three years. He has an impressive background. He has a degree in mechanical engineering from Lehigh University and a law degree from the University of Southern California. In the past, his work with Rockwell included helping to develop the main engines for the Space Shuttle orbiters. At sixty-two, he’s beginning to think about retirement.