RE: AN APPEAL FOR HELP - PLEASE CONTACT YOUR US SENATORS AND CONGRESSMEN
From: Adrienne Anderson
Subject: EPA's RADWASTE TO CONSUMERS SLUDGE POLICY
Dear Sludge Activists, Reporters, Concerned Congressional
Representatives and Other Victims and Future Victims of EPA's "Toxic
Waste as Fertilizer" Policy:
As this week's Augusta Chronicle reports, Congressional pressure is
building against EPA's ruse to foist toxic waste onto the nation's farm
lands and onto our dinner plates. As this article so well discusses,
the EPA National Ombudsman has agreed to take on this Georgia sludge
case, and is currently investigating the case in Denver where EPA
decided to let a mountain of radioactive waste remain entombed in a
central Denver working class neighborhood. Secret EPA documents
recently released after a Senator Allard's intervention show that
instead of pursuing safer remedy options, EPA caved to pressure from
the polluter (Shattuck Chemical, which processed uranium and other
radioactive materials received from DOE's Paducah Gaseous Diffusion
Plant in Kentucky, new evidence reveals) to do the cheapest thing,
despite looming public health risks.
What is not reported in this article is that Shattuck in Denver also
sent waste to the Lowry Landfill southeast of Denver, where EPA
continues in its plan --despite widespread grassroots citizens'
opposition -- to pump the Superfund Site's groundwaters for the next
30-50 years into the public sewer lines to the Metro Wastewater
Reclamation District POTW in Denver (on the South Platte River). From
there, sludge is trucked east on I-70 to a "farm" in the rural community
of Deer Trail, where it is to join wastes from other "recycled"
Denver-area Superfund sites, in mixture with other industrial and
domestic wastes as "fertilizer". Wheat crops grown on this have been
sold to the Cargill food conglomerate in the past, and Metro Wastewater
board of directors' minutes suggest that they seek to market their wheat
for commercial sale with an end-use as "specialty baked goods".
An investigation of EPA records in the Denver office shockingly revealed
that the Lowry Landfill Superfund Site also contains PLUTONIUM, RADIUM,
URANIUM, STRONTIUM-90, AMERICIUM, RADIOACTIVE LEAD and TWENTY OTHER
RADIONUCLIDES. Yet instead of this being a DOE Mixed radwaste and
hazardous waste clean-up site, EPA is quickly trying to pump it all down
the drain (and ultimately into our food supply and into our bodies). In
what we believe to be criminal acts on the part of EPA here, they simply
deleted all the radionuclides off the list of known contaminants at the
site.
We have sent petitions bearing 7,000 signatures to EPA Ombudsman Bob
Martin seeking his office's involvement in this outrageous, and clearly
nationally and internationally precedent-setting case. Yet the same
Colorado Senators and Congressional Representatives (Senator Wayne
Allard and Congresswoman Diana DeGette)that have asked for the
Ombudsman's Office's intervention in the Shattuck case in central Denver
are looking the other way, to date, regarding the Lowry "PLUTONIUM TO
YOUR DINNER PLATE" plan by the same EPA officials who caved to the
polluters in the Shattuck case.
We demanded an investigation of suspected criminal actions by EPA by its
Office of Inspector General. The Criminal IG division deferred the
evidence we presented to the OIG's Audit division for review. A report
was expected by last month, but has not surfaced, to date. Furthermore,
an EPA whistleblower from this same Region VIII EPA Office (Brian
Rimar), presented evidence in his proceedings regarding the OIG's office
making false allegations against him, and investigating HIM while he
sought justice against EPA for trying to muzzle his scientific findings
in the Summitville Superfund Site case in Colorado. So it remains
unclear whether this review will be credible, especially under these
circumstances.
As many of you know, I was on the Metro Wastewater Board of Directors
and attempted to block and unravel this outrageous plan while on the
board, and wound up having to file a federal whistleblower suit against
the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District, on behalf of the sewage
plant's workers I was appointed to represent. While successful at the
first level - with the Department of Labor ordering Metro Wastewater to
rescind threir threatening and discriminatory letters undermining our
rights, Metro Wastewater appealed, I appealed again (represented by the
Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers' Union's local president, which
represents Metro Wastewater's lab workers), and the case has since sat
idle on the shelf in Washington, D.C. of the Clinton Administration's
Department of Labor Administrative Review Board for over a year and a
half (Anderson v. MWRD).
Concerned citizens may assist:
* Ask any supportive Congressional representatives to urge that the EPA
Ombudsman's Office's present inquiry into the Shattuck Superfund Site in
Denver be extended to review EPA's Lowry Landfill plan, which would
fertilize crops for national distribution with Atomic Energy Commission
and DOE wastes, including wastes from AEC contractors and/or licensees
Shattuck, the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. Martin Marietta (now
Lockheed Martin) and others, as well as DOD wastes from the Army's
notorious Rocky Mountain Arsenal, and other DOD Superfund Sites in the
region. While we officially reiterated this request to Martin and
Kaufman during a September hearing in Denver on the Shattuck case, our
own Colorado Congressional delegation is stonewalling us. Could their
silence and failure to act be due to hefty campaign contributions from
Coors and other Lowry Landfill responsible parties and CH2MHill, a major
contractor at both Rocky Flats and Lowry Landfill, despite a clear
conflict of interest?
*Re-distribute this e-mail to all interested people for their
information and action.
More to follow.
Thank you.
Adrienne Anderson
Environmental Studies
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, Colorado 80309-0339
phone: (303)492-2952; fax (303)329-0217
e-mail: andersa@spot.colorado.edu
[Information received from biotech_activists@iatp.org Fri Oct 8 1999 listserve]
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(10 October 1999)