Colorado Charges Nuclear Weapons Plant on Health Counts; U.S. Inquiry Continues

Colorado health officials charged the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant with 25 violations of state regulations Wednesday and expressed concern over the federal government’s secrecy surrounding its criminal investigation of the facility.

The list of violations uncovered during Health Department inspections begun a year ago included leaking drums of hazardous waste, inadequate monitoring of ground water contaminants and unauthorized storage of waste.

The department also complained about shoddy records that make it unclear “whether they know where their wastes are so they can manage them properly.”

Meanwhile, nearly 100 agents from the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency spent a second day seizing documents and taking samples of the air, water and soil at the controversial plant northwest of Denver.

Governor Not Informed

But the Justice Department still refused to tell even Colorado Gov. Roy Romer and the state’s Department of Health exactly what prompted the unprecedented probe or what the agents hope to find.

Without those specific allegations, the Health Department said it cannot declare with full confidence that there is no threat to public health and safety.

Tom Looby, assistant health director, said the Justice Department “is reviewing” a request for details.

He said the Health Department’s preliminary order Wednesday that Rocky Flats comply with state regulations was independent from the federal investigation and that the timing was mere coincidence.

The Health Department violations “raise some serious concerns about the ability of the Department of Energy and Rockwell International Corp. to manage” the facility, Looby said.

The plant, which makes plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs, is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy and is operated by Rockwell.

“No individual instance we discovered is a terribly nasty violation,” said David Shelton, director of the Health Department’s hazardous materials and waste management division. “But in aggregate, the violations show the facility has a great deal of difficulty in managing hazardous waste. . . . “

At Rockwell headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., a statement released Wednesday said the company “is confident the Rocky Flats plant . . . has been and is being run safely and in compliance with applicable laws.”

A videotape message from Henson Moore, assistant secretary of energy, was played over closed-circuit televisions to the Colorado facility’s 6,000 employees Wednesday.

“He gave us a rah-rah speech to do our jobs professionally, that our future at the plant depends on the kind of job we do in the next 10 days,” said a chemical operator at the plant who asked not to be identified for fear of jeopardizing his job.

Authorities said the search of the plant by federal agents would take about 10 days, but the entire investigation could last six months to a year.

The worker, a 10-year employee at Rocky Flats, dismissed the federal investigation as “all for show . . . to finally say to the state: ‘We’ll do something about it, we don’t know what, and we’ll make it real dramatic so the whole state will say Rocky Flats will finally get what they deserve.’ ”

The worker said employees do not routinely report infractions of plant regulations “unless it’s a major nuclear thing” because “you don’t rat on your buddy.”

He insisted Rocky Flats is safe, dismissing the investigation as “unfounded scare tactics . . . to close the plant.”

The Department of Energy said last year that Rocky Flats would be closed within the next 20 years as part of a plan to consolidate the country’s seven nuclear weapons facilities.

But both federal authorities and plant spokesmen say Rocky Flats is expected to operate as usual while the current federal search warrant is being executed, with temporary closures of some sections as needed for safety reasons.

The Justice Department has discussed the investigation only in broad terms, saying it focuses on the storage and disposal of hazardous and mixed hazardous and radioactive waste, unpermitted treatment of waste, falsification of documents and concealing environmental contamination.

Three Federal Laws

The violations would fall under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which governs hazardous waste disposal, and federal water pollution control and false statement laws.

The maximum penalties under hazardous waste and clean water laws are 15 years imprisonment and $250,000 in personal fines plus $1 million in corporate fines for knowingly endangering public welfare. Violating regulations or statutory requirements brings a maximum of two years imprisonment and $50,000 in fines under the waste disposal act and three years in prison and fines of $50,000 per day under the water pollution control law.

Officials said the federal search warrant at Rocky Flats did not name any individuals.

The Health Department complaint gives Rocky Flats 10 days to respond to the alleged violations. Officials said some of the infractions--such as the leaky storage drums--were taken care of immediately when health inspectors spotted them.

The Health Department complaint is a civil, not criminal, action, which could eventually result in fines against Rocky Flats if it fails to comply.

Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) said legislators were told in a briefing Tuesday that the investigation was spawned 10 months ago by “whistle blowers.”

However, Colorado’s FBI agent-in-charge, Bob Pence, said the joint probe by the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency was begun in May, 1987.

Staff writer Paul Houston in Washington also contributed to this story.