Clean or Close Nuclear Plant--Gov. Romer

Underscoring escalating concern here over health threats from a plutonium processing facility, Gov. Roy Romer flew to Washington Monday and appealed to Department of Energy officials to clean up the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant.

In a meeting with Energy Secretary James D. Watkins, Romer said: “We have to clean it up or close it down, and we have to do it in a way that can be verified independently.”

Romer asked Watkins to start the cleanup immediately and not wait for the FBI and Environmental Protection Agency to conclude a criminal investigation of alleged cover-ups of illegal dumping and storage of toxic waste at Rocky Flats.

Can Examine Site

Watkins assured him that state health and environmental officials would be allowed to examine the Rocky Flats site for potential dangers, the Democratic governor said at a news conference. Energy Department spokeswoman Christina Sankey said the meeting produced “basically a renewal of our commitment to cooperate with the state” in the cleanup.

In an extraordinary move last Tuesday, a team of more than 75 FBI and EPA investigators began inspecting the 6,500-acre facility for evidence of criminal wrongdoing. The search will continue through this week.

A 116-page affidavit filed in federal court here to justify the search described instances of apparently illegal dumping, burning and storage of waste, while plant operators and owners were assuring the public that the plant posed no health threat.

The plant is operated by Rockwell International Corp. and is owned by the Department of Energy, which is responsible for researching, developing and producing nuclear weapons.

“If the public can’t believe that that place is subject to effective oversight and regulation, there’s no reason we should tolerate it,” said Rep. David E. Skaggs (D-Colo.), whose district includes the plant. “. . . The Department of Energy has run out of public confidence.”

Skaggs called on President Bush Monday to immediately appoint an oversight board with authority to shut Rocky Flats and any other nuclear weapons facility if they deemed it to be unsafe.

“Clearly a business-as-usual approach to this problem is not tolerable for a moment longer,” Skaggs said. “It is absolutely disgraceful, I think, when we get into a situation where the FBI is spying on another agency of the federal government to see whether or not they are obeying the law.”

Denver-area environmentalists renewed their call for authorities to shutter the plant. In suburban Broomfield, officials continued working on a ditch to divert polluted water that may be flowing from the upstream facility into their reservoir.

Any effort to shut the plant would be resisted by unions and many local officials who see the plant, with a work force that makes as much as $16 an hour, as an important part of the stagnant Denver-area economy.

“The union’s position is steadfast: They need more oversight,” said James D. Kelly, staff representative of the United Steelworkers of America, which represents 2,600 of the 5,300 workers at Rocky Flats.

“There’s no reason to close this plant. It needs more oversight, and maybe new management,” he said.

Staff writers Tamara Jones in Denver and Don Shannon in Washington contributed to this story.