Rocky Flats case getting closer to end

Final arguments wrapping up, jury to decide if contractors contaminated area

Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News

Published January 20, 2006 at midnight

Text size

More Local News

A federal district court jury will be asked today to decide whether two former operators of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant should pay half a billion dollars in damages for contaminating the property of some 13,000 neighbors of the facility.

The class-action lawsuit, filed 16 years ago by people who owned land and homes in the area, is wrapping up with closing arguments before U.S. District Judge John Kane.

Rockwell International Corp. and Dow Chemical Co. ran the plant for decades on behalf of the Atomic Energy Commission and its successor, the Department of Energy.

The companies are accused of contaminating neighboring land with tiny but lethal amounts of plutonium.

If the companies lose, the federal government is expected to pay the damages on their behalf.

Plaintiffs include Sally Bartlett, who tried for 11 years to sell her nearby property after the public became aware of the dangers of the atomic weapons factory.

Today, subdivisions are marching closer to the boundaries of the 6,000-acre plant 16 miles northwest of downtown Denver.

The center of the site was so contaminated with plutonium and toxic chemicals that the recently completed demolition and cleanup cost $7 billion.

In closing arguments, plaintiffs' attorney Louise Roselle claimed that Rocky Flats discharged contaminated water for years before monitoring began and that Dow allowed barrels of plutonium-laced waste to leak into the soil for 11 years.

Roselle said Dow could have prevented that contaminated dirt from being blown off-site by the wind by simply placing a tarp over it - but the company chose not to do so.

She also said that documents produced in the case showed that orders had been given to keep secret medical research, radioactive exposures, and known medical or public health hazards if they might compromise or cause embarrassment to the Atomic Energy Commission or its contractors.

But attorney David Bernick, representing Dow and Rockwell, told the jury in his closing argument that the contamination off-site was minuscule and didn't harm property values.

He had on his side years of studies used by the government to argue that little contamination moved off-site and that there is almost no increased risk of cancer in neighboring areas.

Rocky Flats opponents, burned by years of secrecy and false claims about the site's cleanliness during the Cold War, do not believe those studies.

Bernick told the jury that the plaintiffs knew about Rocky Flats when they moved in. He said that any damage to property values was caused by news reports about a 1989 FBI raid on Rocky Flats, rather than any actual contamination to their land.

Bernick also attacked the plaintiffs' scientific studies.

In one case, he said, a report showing higher rates of lung cancer near the plant didn't say how long the patients actually had lived near Rocky Flats.

He denounced the study for checking only the date of diagnosis, not the date the person actually came down with cancer.

"The question is, did they get cancer while living in the area? It's not even addressed. Yet this man's opinion is proffered before you as science," he told the jury.

imsea@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5438

Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News