Rockwell’s $18.5-Million Fine Stands

A federal court, upholding a massive penalty against Rockwell International Corp., on Monday let stand a penalty of $18.5 million for 10 crimes committed during operation of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver.

In March, Rockwell pleaded guilty to five felonies and five misdemeanors involving federal hazardous-waste laws and the federal Clean Water Act, but U.S. District Judge Sherman Finesilver postponed accepting the settlement. He said he wanted to consult environmental and corporate finance experts before making his decision.

In accepting the plea, Finesilver called the agreement “just and fair and in the public interest.” The judge noted that, even if the company had been tried and found guilty of all charges, it might avoid paying any fine because of indemnity clauses in its contract with the Department of Energy. In that event, court fees and fines could have come from taxpayers, not the company.

The Justice Department spent almost four years and an estimated $2 million investigating the charges against Rockwell. The penalty is second in size to the $125 million in fines and restitution levied against the Exxon Corp. for the 1989 oil spill off Valdez, Alaska.

Crimes admitted in the plea bargain included allowing toxic waste to leak from cardboard boxes stored outside. The plastic-lined boxes were filled with sludge that contained radioactive elements, toxic heavy metals and hazardous chemicals. Attempts were made to bind the sludge into hard blocks by adding cement to it, but a substantial number of the 19,000 blocks “leaked fluids,” according to court documents.

Rockwell also admitted that it regularly and illegally sent toxic and hazardous substances to the plant’s sewage treatment facility. The treatment plant, built in 1951, could not adequately process such materials.

Another practice was spraying toxic and hazardous waste water over fields--not in itself illegal. On occasion, however, the spraying continued at night and while the ground was frozen or flooded. As a result, the contaminated water could not evaporate, but instead ran off and, in some cases entered streams that supply water to nearby Denver suburbs. There has been no evidence yet that this drainage was hazardous to to public health, however.

Environmental groups were critical of the plea bargain. They said it concealed the identities of Rockwell and DOE officials involved in the crimes, and failed to account for potential future pollution of downstream communities.

“The impact of polluted water won’t be felt until it reaches the surrounding communities, in the next 10 to 20 years,” said Eugene DeMayo, chairman of the Sierra Club Rocky Flats Committee.

In Seal Beach, Calif., a Rockwell spokesman said the company was pleased that the court accepted the agreement. He called it an “appropriate disposition” of the case.

In March, Rockwell Chairman Don Beall had said the violations were “technical” in nature and posed no risk to residents of communities near the plant. Beall said the original charges--that Rockwell burned hazardous materials in secret and that toxic waste was dumped into creeks--proved to be unfounded. He also said the company’s hands were tied because the Department of Energy had required it to continue the waste-generating activities without allowing it to build a storage facility for some of the waste.

Beall said in March that the company still maintained that it behaved responsibly, but it agreed to pay the fine and plead guilty to avoid a costly and lengthy trial.

Times staff writer Dean Takahashi, in Seal Beach, contributed to this story.