Rockwell Agrees to $18.5-Million Fine : Environment: The firm will plead guilty to illegal disposal of radioactive waste that shut down Rocky Flats nuclear weapons site, sources say.
Rockwell International Corp. has agreed to plead guilty to illegal disposal of radioactive wastes and to pay an $18.5-million fine for environmental contamination that forced the 1989 shutdown of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons site outside Denver, sources said Wednesday.
Details of the agreement worked out with officials of the Department of Justice are expected to be revealed in federal court in Denver today. If accepted by the judge, the fine would be the second-largest assessed against a company for environmental damage. The Exxon Corp. paid $125 million for damage caused by the massive oil spill from the Exxon Valdez tanker in Alaska’s Prince William Sound in March, 1989.
Congressional, governmental and company sources said that the agreement, coming after a grand jury investigation lasting nearly three years, calls for the company, which is based in Seal Beach, Calif., to plead guilty to five misdemeanors and five felonies for violating laws governing the disposal of toxic and radioactive wastes.
William Mellon, spokesman for the diversified technology conglomerate in Seal Beach, declined to comment Wednesday on reports about the plea bargain, saying only: “We anticipate making an announcement tomorrow.”
The Rocky Flats plant, in the heavily populated outskirts of Denver, manufactured plutonium triggers for the nation’s thermonuclear warheads until it was closed after disclosures that its facilities were dangerously polluted by both toxic and radioactive wastes.
As the prime contractor at the site, Rockwell had denied charges by employees and environmentalists that it had been egregiously lax with environmental safety precautions.
After allegations in the late 1980s that dangerous wastes had been illegally dumped into streams and that radioactive materials had been incinerated in the dark of night, FBI agents raided the plant and confiscated thousands of company documents.
By that time, an investigation had been under way for nearly a year and reports had spread that the plant was not only lax in safety precautions but beset with debilitating morale problems.
A grand jury was convened in the case, and hundreds of witnesses were summoned. The information gathering continued until late last year.
Affidavits made public after the raid included allegations that Rockwell employees had dumped toxic and radioactive wastes into streams flowing through the 6,500-acre complex and falsified records submitted to state and federal health officials. As the grand jury neared the end of its investigation, employees filed a class-action suit seeking as much as $50 million in back pay and benefits.
While declining to confirm details of the proposed settlement Wednesday night, Energy Department officials said that Secretary James D. Watkins was not surprised by the company’s agreement to pay the huge fine. Sources who declined to be identified said that the agreement will cover only company acts that took place between 1987 and 1989.
Rockwell, which had served as Rocky Flat’s prime contractor for 14 years, was replaced in the aftermath of the FBI raid and the plant was shut down. It has remained closed ever since.
And, with no weapons programs under way, its chief mission is cleaning up the pollution. Several days ago, Watkins approved the reopening of one laboratory that will play a key role in the cleanup.
The Rocky Flats debacle was at the center of a long series of revelations concerning the country’s nuclear weapons complex in the late 1980s.
Because plutonium is one of the most toxic substances in the world, the Rocky Flats’ machining of triggers generated enormous amounts of wastes, mixing radioactive contaminants with highly toxic solvents and chemicals.
Although the Energy Department steadfastly maintained that it would reopen the plant for weapons work, some critics in industry and the environmental community had long since concluded that the site could never be safely reopened.
Ultimately, though, Rocky Flats’ demise as a weapons laboratory probably came not so much because of the environmental crisis, but because the breakup of the Soviet Union made its last major assignment--production of triggers for Trident 2 submarine-launched missiles--unnecessary.
Abramson reported from Washington and Takahashi from Orange County.
