Plutonium in Soil near Rocky Flats

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There has been recent controversy about whether cities and counties will contribute to construction of a bridge and underpass for hiker and animal access to the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge as described in a recent commentary. Some cities and counties are planning to collect soil samples of the area “to determine whether the trail would be safe.” Those cities and counties might want to save their money and take a look at the information included in the most recent Rocky Flats Museum Newsletter. “The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) years ago determined that additional sampling at the former Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant is not required because vast amounts of data regarding plutonium contamination at and near Rocky Flats had already been gathered.” “During characterization and remediation projects at the former Plant Site, about 1.3 million analyses were compiled from approximately 7,230 surface soil sample locations and from about 15,890 subsurface soil samples.”

Perhaps the massive characterization of plutonium in soil around the plant is less important than the assessment of health risk. The same State report concluded that there was “…an excess cancer risk below one in a million for any exposure scenario. There was essentially no plutonium in the subsurface soils of the Refuge. Because of these very low concentrations, no remediation was required in the Refuge portion of the former Plant Site.”

Another Colorado Department of Health and Environment report describes the extensive off-site sampling conducted over many years by many different agencies. One off-site study collected 144 surface soil samples from a 38-square mile area to the north, east, and south of Rocky Flats. Only 19 of the samples found plutonium concentrations above background levels. Perhaps the people who continue to try to frighten people about plutonium around Rocky Flats should move on to spend their energies on something that might have some value.

Lion’s Share

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Dictionary.com explains the expression means to receive the largest part of a share and especially a disproportionate portion. It has its origin in Aesop fables in which the lion claimed most if not all the spoils of a hunt with other animals needing to defer to the powerful lion.

Doing Something That Doesn’t Work For Five Hundred Years

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Drunkenness of Noah - a problem that's been with us a long time

Drunkenness of Noah – a problem that’s been with us a long time

Author Susan Cheever sets out to fill a gap in American History with Drinking in America, Our Secret History, and her personal life doubtlessly influences her writing. A third of the way through the book, Cheever writes of her own family’s battle with alcohol and notes that “alcoholic families are nightmarish places, heartbreak machines in which the innocent fare worse than the guilty.” She herself stopped drinking when “brought to my knees by alcoholism.” Authors of straight history “texts” don’t get personal in the body of their work.

Despite her family, Cheever acknowledges that alcohol, and the “unstoppable” “crazy courage,” “both brilliance and incompetence” of drunks, has contributed to America. Drinking has led to American disasters and triumphs. “Rum could make you brave, confident, and scornful of conventional obstacles.”

She offers excellent retellings of many familiar pieces of history: the Pilgrims and Puritans (not the same people at all!), the Revolution, Civil War, woman’s suffrage and Prohibition, Kennedy’s assassination – with vivid details I had never read. The idea that some of the Pilgrims’ difficulties were due to most of them being drunk (by modern standards) almost all the time is intriguing. And you’ll find some famous names revealed as heavy drinkers, along with others who hated alcohol and drunkenness, beginning with the Pilgrims. Reviewers on Amazon point out Cheever’s speculation and factual errors (“riddled” says one), and her book isn’t footnoted like a text would be, but it’s worth your reading time.

But I’d like to note her comments on history. While there have been historians seeking to push an agenda or prove a point, “modern history, for the most part, claims to be objective… observant neutrality occasionally punctuated with some wise commentary. There are many advantages – no ax to grind, no idea to sell, no political point to make. But there are disadvantages… Historians miss a lot.”

This view of history limits our perspective. She notes that, after reading “hundreds of indexes and tables of contents, and dozens of books… [she finds that] few historians even mention drinking and its effects.”

I assume historians skip across drinking in history, in part, because ascribing any positive outcome to drunkenness is embarrassing – or at least, counterintuitive. The idea that inebriation was part of daily life for men, women, and children (!) as well as founding fathers and Nobel winning authors simply doesn’t click.

Yet it seems to me that the truth is worth knowing, and Cheever’s book offers something to add to my view of history. It does reinforce my basic feeling that The War on Drugs is a mistake, and I try to be skeptical of books that confirm my pre-existing biases. But even punishments from the 1600s that would be considered torture today didn’t stop drunkenness, which pretty much agrees with the effects of modern punishments on drug addicts. Perhaps, by ignoring an element of history, we are repeating it.

Why are Detectives “Hard-Boiled?”

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Isn’t it nice when someone does all the work for you?

The Straight Dope looked into the origin of “hard-boiled” as used in crime novels. The phrase began as “hard-boiled egg,” referring to someone who didn’t readily part with money, perhaps because of an older joke that a hard-boiled egg is something that’s “hard to beat.” The phrase may have first appeared in print thanks to Mark Twain. There’s some debate about that, but Twain being an American icon, I like his reference. It continued to mean cheap or petty through 1917 usage.

What I find interesting is the meaning then seemed to change rapidly:

By 1919, hard-boiled meant tough, and often violent. In that year U.S. army lieutenant Frank “Hardboiled” Smith was among several men court-martialed for their brutality in running a stockade outside Paris …

By this point the connection between well-done eggs and no-nonsense personalities was cemented: a 1924 movie comedy about a would-be tough guy was called A Ten-Minute Egg, and author P.G. Wodehouse was fond of describing a particularly forbidding character as a “twenty-minute egg.”

Rocky Flats Cook v. Rockwell Case

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I posted a commentary two weeks ago about the tentative $375 million settlement of a lawsuit filed about 26 years ago by landowners near the plant (it requires approval by a judge). I was unaware that the settlement had been in the works for almost a year. A June 24, 2015 article by Alison Frankel gives details of the history of what has come to known as the Cook V Rockwell Case and what led to the recent announcement. A quick summary is that:

  • In 2005 a jury decided a class of property owners near Rocky Flats deserved multi-million dollar compensation for damage the plant had done to their property
  • In 2011 the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the verdict, ruling the “…trial judge was too expansive in instructing the jury about what constitutes a nuclear incident” and that there was no proof of actual damage
  • In June 2015 a different 10th Circuit panel ruled two to one to “…gave back what the appeals court took away in 2011”

I’ll provide my simplistic (with help from people closer to the case) explanation. The jury verdict was based on the fact that the original lawsuit was filed under the Price-Anderson federal law involving claims against nuclear facilities for “nuclear incidents.” The jury verdict in favor of the homeowners was overturned because Price-Anderson requires proof of actual damage, and not just a “perception of damage.” The ruling by the new panel determined that the restrictions on determining damages should be based on Colorado “nuisance laws,” which have a much lower burden of proof. The plaintiff lawyers told the panel “…they didn’t need to retry the nuisance claims because the jury had already reached a nuisance verdict…” (I’ll argue with that, since the reason the jury’s verdict was vacated was that the judge had given incorrect instructions.)

Regardless of what happened previously, apparently Dow, Rockwell, and the Department of Energy determined that new determination by the 10th Circuit panel forced them to settle a case that had no real legal basis or actual damages. My warning to them, made with no actual knowledge of legal things, is that they have opened up new liabilities that are already being worked. A group calling themselves “Rocky Flats Downwinders” have initiated “…a community survey designed to compile health impacts of those living in the area.” They say they are “…hoping to hear from anyone who lived here during the time of 1952 through 1992,” They think publicity from the settlement between Rocky Flats and homeowners will spark more interest, “We think we can piggy back on that in terms of using the information that is going to be learned through the claimant process.” Metro State University of Denver, University of Colorado and Colorado State University professors will study the surveys and compile the data from the former residents, who must have lived in the area from the plant east to Interstate 25 during the years the plant was in operation.

My prediction is that trial attorneys all over Colorado are studying the nuisance laws and licking their chops over the idea court awards can be made against companies and individuals who can be sued for perceived or maybe even real nuisances. I’m curious about the amount of my eventual award regardless of the fact I was well informed about the lack of any risk from Rocky Flats when I bought our current home downwind of the plant and moved in with my family. I doubt this is the last of the story.

Lick Your Chops

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I used a version of this expression in the commentary this week describing trial attorneys anticipating a flood of income from new nuisance lawsuits in Colorado instigated by a $375 million settlement against the operators of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapon plant. A three judge panel ruled 2 to 1 in favor of approving a settlement in a case where a previous ruling had found against the plaintiffs because there was perceived damage and not actual damage. The meaning of the expression is of course based on the literal meaning of licking your chops when thinking of something good to eat. That has evolved to “…be eager to do something you think will be satisfying or pleasant. That develops a mental image for me of a crowd of lawyers literally licking their chops.