Category Archives: Rocky Flats Plant

Church Ranch and Rocky Flats Part I

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I recently met with Charles (Charlie) Church McKay to discuss his family’s history and  relationship with Rocky Flats. He was quite candid in discussing some of the past conflicts between his family and the Rocky Flats bureaucrats. He told me that Len Ackand’s book, “Making a Real Killing” is an excellent source of information, and he traded me a copy of that for a copy of my book, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats, Urban Myths Debunked” (free on this web site or at Amazon as either a paperback or Kindle).  He also gave me a compendium titled, “Snapshots of History, Church Ranch and the Church Ranch Family.” That compendium and the summary history of his family on the Church Ranch web site on the heritage link were the sources for this posting. I intend to focus on the family history in this posting, and will detail some of the conflicts with Rocky Flats in Part II.

George Henry Church and Sarah Henderson Miller were married in 1861 in Iowa and departed for Colorado in what they called their honeymoon in a wagon pulled by an ox team. They began this venture despite the fact that most people who had attempted to make the trip with signs such as “Pikes Peak or Bust” had eventually turned around after making a new sign that said something such as “Busted.” Some Indians offered to buy Sarah for nine ponies and $100, and Sarah told George, “You will never have a better offer and better close the sale.” (To give an idea of what $100 was worth in those days, there is mention of buying half a bushel of potatoes and five dozen eggs for fifteen cents.)  A man arrived who told them the Indians weren’t joking, and the discussions ended. The Churches made it to Denver in nine weeks, and Sarah estimated the population at 3,000 to 4,000. They travelled on into the mountains to buy several mining claims. The mining didn’t work out, so they returned to Iowa, bought 50 head of cattle, and made the return trip to homestead. They eventually homesteaded in Jefferson County three and a half miles from the nearest neighbor, and eventually owned land where Rocky Flats was built after the Atomic Energy Commission offered the Church family a low price “under the threat of condemnation.”

The first mention of “Rocky Flat” or “Rocky Flats” I located was in an article titled “Snow Storm of 1913 at Church’s Ranch” by Marcus Church. The storm must have been one of those epic upslope storms where all the moisture is the air is dropped as snow on the Front Range. There was 3 1/2 to 4 feet of snow at the Church ranch, and up to 7 feet in Golden. Snow and wind continued off and on until a “Chinook” warm wind finally began melting some of the drifts on January 3rd. The ranchers battled to keep the horses and cattle dug out of the drifts, watered, and fed.

The Churches were ardent entrepreneurs, and had several firsts in the settlement and development of Colorado. George was the first farmer in to successfully harvest a crop of winter wheat, although he recognized early that farming would be much more successful with irrigation. He constructed a ditch from the mouth of Coal Creek Canyon and built the first irrigation reservoir, Church’s Upper Lake,  in 1870-1871 and Church’s Lower Lake a bit later. A contract was made with Golden and Ralston Creek Ditch Company to acquire rights of way and extend the ditch to cover the Church lands. The ditch takes water from Clear Creek and continues to operate today. Water rights were of premium importance when the system was being built and began to operate. An article in the compendium titled “George Henry Church” describes how his decision to build the first irrigation ditches and lakes “…brought enmity of neighbors on Coal Creek, from which he drew the water supply. So high ran the felling that it resulted in threats on his life and it seemed at times that serious trouble would ensue.”

The innovation and ventures didn’t end there. The Churches were the first to bring Hereford cattle to Colorado, built and operated a stage coach stop, and mined gravel. (The gravel business would eventually create significant conflict with Rocky Flats, but that will be covered in Part II.) As is the case for most families, there were also tragedies and failures. Perry Church, younger brother of Marcus, died at the age of 29. The Great Depression hit the family hard, and they were forced to sell 3,000 acres of Front Range properties, including much of the irrigated land. They were able to hold on to about 4,000 acres, which included part of what would become the site of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. The Churches were hard working and independent people, and they were forced to begin dealing with a bureaucracy that strives to make certain all the rules imposed by the bureaucracy are followed. As a self-described “part time libertarian,” it isn’t difficult to judge which side I would take.

Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge

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There was a recent article in the Denver Post announcing the opening of a new visitor center at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I have mixed feelings about that announcement. I’m pleased that the Arsenal was able to open that facility, but I would be more pleased if I would hear there is staff and money to develop a similar facility at the Rocky Flats site. There is some irony that the Rocky Mountain Arsenal refuge has opened, because Rocky Flats workers often had to listen to stories about the Arsenal when they told someone they worked at Rocky Flats. I recently told a man I had retired from Rocky Flats, and he told me about armed guards showing up when he was a child playing in a field near the Arsenal. For those who are confused, Rocky Flats was west of Denver and made components for nuclear weapons for the Department of Energy and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal was 10 miles east of downtown Denver and was a chemical weapons plant managed by U.S. Army.

There undoubtedly will be similarities between the Rocky Mountain Arsenal refuge and what hopefully becomes available at the Rocky Flats site. I don’t know whether the Aresenal was pressured to put up signs warning that the area had been used for manufacture and storage of various chemical warfare agents, but there was and is controversy about the planned refuge for Rocky Flats. The first link on a July 2007 press release from the Fish and Wildlife Service is “Rocky Flats Signage,” which explains in detail that public use was a controversial issue in preparation of plans for the refuge. The document explains, “…due to the site’s former use as a nuclear weapons production facility and the contamination that resulted from that use, many members of the public expressed concern regarding the cleanup of the site and the safety of future visitors. Based on the best currently available scientific data and unequivocal determinations by the EPA and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), that the extensive cleanup program resulted in a landscape that is safe for refuge workers and visitors, (the plan) provides for future public use of the site…”

The health risk of “low levels” of plutonium is what creates the controversy. The term “low levels” is in quotes because I’ve been taken to task for using the term with the admonition that all levels create health risks. As I explain in Chapter 25 of my book, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats, Urban Myths Debunked,” (available free on this site and at Amazon as a paperback or as a Kindle version)  the entire earth is contaminated with plutonium and every person has many billions to trillions of plutonium atoms in their bodies resulting from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. There are posts in the archives of this site dated January 18 and 25 that discuss the controversy. People worked in the industrial area of Rocky Flats for years, decades in many cases, and generally their health is as good as people who never worked there. (Some would argue with me about that statement, but I’m going to let them make their own arguments.) My belief is that a visit to areas outside the closed former industrial area won’t create a health risk to my family if I’m ever able to invite them to go there with me. I hope to recreate there early and often. Those who disagree can elect to not visit.

 

Now Enjoy “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats” as Kindle e-Book

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RockyFlatsFacts.com is pleased to announce that “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats: Urban Myths Debunked” is now available in an e-book (electronic book) version from the Amazon.com Kindle Store. The e-book version includes dozens of new color and b&w photos to enhance your reading experience, especially for those readers who have never visited the inside of a DOE nuclear facility. Once purchased the e-book can be promptly downloaded and enjoyed on your Kindle Reader. [Please note that Amazon’s hand-held Kindle Reader displays e-book images in black & white (4-bit grayscale), so e-book photos will currently display in grayscale on this device. Free PC and Mac reader apps (see below) will however display color images/photos. There are pictures of gloveboxes, plutonium, burning plutonium, damage from the 1969 fire, decontamination workers, and a couple dozen others.

Don’t have a hand-held Kindle Reader? No problem: a totally free Kindle e-book reader application is available for download here for both Windows PC and Mac platforms. Kindle reader app for your Apple iPad is also available here, as are reader apps for iPhone, Blackberry, and Android phones and mobile devices. With the free app download you also receive a few free e-books: Aesop’s Fables, Pride & Prejudice, and Treasure Island.

I had help with the pictures and e-book. The person who provided the know-how is my friend and colleague, Keith Motyl, and he can be reached at kpmotyl@comcast.net if you are interested in the process of e-book publishing.

Please let us know how you like the newly illustrated e-book.

Colorado Vote on a Proposal to Close Rocky Flats

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 An extensive fire in 1969 at the Rocky Flats Plant attracted significant attention and led to information that a previous fire in 1957 and an outside storage area called the “903 pad” had released plutonium contamination. I discuss in the book “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats” (available on this web site, Amazon, and Createspace) that the reputation of the site never recovered from the negative publicity. However, it is apparently not well remembered that the voters of Colorado had an opportunity to express their opinion about whether the plant should remain in operation. As I wrote at the end of Chapter 11 of the book, there was a ballot issue in 1982 to end operations at the plant. The exact wording was, “Shall the constitution of the State of Colorado be amended in order to bring about cessation of nuclear weapons component production in Colorado…” The vote was defeated 584,356 to 326,550. The source of this information is an article published in the Rocky Mountain News November 4, 1982.

At least one person who followed the history of Rocky Flats closely mentioned they weren’t familiar with the vote on the amendment, and I decided I needed to look for additional verification. I was able to locate a reference on ballotpedia.org, which listed all the ballots issues for 1982. Proposition 6 was the measure that would have made it illegal to produce components for nuclear weapons at Rocky Flats. It did not specify which components were included, so production of stainless and other non-nuclear components would have been just as illegal as those made from plutonium.

The Rocky Mountain News article opens with mention that Denver and Pitkin country voters approved a “freeze on nuclear weapons,” but that was rejected in Mesa County. That vote did not have had any impact on Rocky Flats. Components for nuclear weapons manufactured there were shipped to other locations for assembly of the weapons. The proposal to end manufacturing at Rocky Flats was rejected in a statewide vote. A supporter of the initiative said it was believed confusion between the two proposals was part of the reason for the defeat. The coordinator of the Denver Freeze Campaign speculated that “…jobs, particularly with unemployment at its highest point since the Great Depression, might have influenced the verdict about Rocky Flats, which employees 4,700 in its production of triggers for the United States arsenal.” Another proponent suggested that the proposal might have lost votes because it “…may have suggested to voters a unilateral decision by the United States to cease nuclear production.”

Regardless of why the proposal was defeated, I suggested in my book that the proposal might have had a different fate if the vote had been held in the late 1980s. Negative stories about Rocky Flats in 1988 won the site the dubious honor of being the top news story for that year. Of course the raid in 1989 might also have swung a few (or many) votes.

Suspicions Confirmed

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I mentioned in the Rocky Flats Book, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats, Urban Myths Debunked,” that I could find no evidence to support the continuing belief by some that Rocky Flats was conducting illegal “midnight burning” in the Building 771 incinerator as had been alleged in the search warrant authorizing the FBI and EPA raid in 1989. I agreed with the expert who informed the Justice Department he expected that the heat trace detected by the spy plane flyovers in 1988 was caused by the building heating system and not the incinerator.

I continue to search the archives of the Rocky Flats Museum, and found two documents that support what I wrote. The first is the Emission Permit issued by the Colorado Department of Health on August 28, 1985 that allowed the incinerator to operate legally. The permit describes the, “Multiple chamber retort type incinerator designed to burn radioactive contaminated plastics, paper, rubber, cloth, etc. at a charge rate of 49 lbs./hour (with) emissions…controlled by potassium hydroxide scrubber and HEPA filtration.”

Another document from the archives was an Envision article dated October 9, 2002, titled “Disposing of glovebox tied to FBI raid.” The article doesn’t explain that steam cleaning was used to clean gloveboxes for the December inventory of nuclear material, but it does refer to the operation. “The 1988 image of the heat plume depicted B771’s exhaust, which was probably warmed by steam-cleaning operations, but on a December night was significantly warmer than ambient air regardless of building operations. Up to 250,000 cubic feet of air is exhausted through B771’s stack as part of a system to maintain negative differential pressure…” “Incineration does not increase the temperature of stack exhaust significantly, if at all. Processing the incinerator off-gases through two heat exchangers was very effective at cooling them.” Another part of the article said in addition to the two heat exchangers, “The gases entered a spray chamber and were sprayed with potassium hydroxide to neutralize them and knock out fly ash. The gases then passed through a series of high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters in the incinerator filter plenum before being released through the stack.” In summary, what the spy plane saw had nothing to do with incineration.

I also mentioned in the book that one of the people who informed the investigators about suspicions of illegal activities that were listed in the search warrant was the EPA enforcement person assigned to Rocky Flats. (I wonder whether the information was in the form of an affidavit.) I mentioned that person was no fan of Rocky Flats. I located an award given to that person in the archives. It is titled, “ROCKY FLATS RADICAL, Protestor Award.” The certificate explains that the award was given “In appreciation for generous commitment, environmental spirit, and outspoken talent in fighting Rocky Flats contamination and challenging bureaucratic rhetoric in order to shut down this immoral facility that irradiates our community with carcinogenic radionuclides.” It then adds the “Rocky Flats Radical Protestor (was) Dedicated to protect citizens who are tired of being a nuclear-guinea-pig living in a radioactive fallout zone, forced by bureaucrats to drink and breathe nuclear waste. It doesn’t take much interpretation to see how fairly Rocky Flats was treated by this government employee.

DOE Comments on What Caused Rocky Flats Closure–Part II

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Part I of this blog discussed comments from a senior DOE official who read the book, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats” (which you can order at either CreateSpace.com or Amazon.com) about Soviet-funded international anti-nuclear organizations and changing public opinion about acceptable risk. I need to first address a response to the first post from the person who made the original comments. I skipped lightly over the issue of the lawsuits about hazardous waste laws, and thank goodness for people willing to set me straight! Here is a new comment about that issue. “DOE was not just being obstinate in fighting against coverage by these laws. The laws themselves specifically exempted DOE nuclear facilities…facilities like Rocky flats were directed to not comply…The wrinkle in the court case was in applying RCRA for the hazardous components of otherwise radioactive nuclear wastes, even if the hazardous component was very small compared to the radioactive component.”

Putting that issue aside, this posting is primarily about how Congress was influenced by the growing and vocal anti-nuclear movement to pass a new law that created massive impact on the ability of sites such as Rocky Flats to perform the duties assigned by Congress. As an occasional Libertarian I feel compelled to mention this is a classic example of how the government can create difficult and expensive problems by passing laws to satisfy a vocal part of their constituency. The information to follow is taken from the detailed comments of the DOE official who observed the problems first hand.

Congress passed the Price Anderson Reauthorization Act (PAAA) in 1988 in response to pressure from anti-nuclear protestors and concerns created by nuclear and industrial accidents. The reauthorization took away the blanket indemnification of contractors operating DOE facilities, and imposed legal conditions based on Nuclear Regulatory Commission practices for licensing commercial nuclear facilities. Contractors could only be indemnified only as long as they operated within a narrow “risk envelope.” The outcome was that the “expert based” approach to operations that had been employed successfully had to be replaced by strict procedural controls (as described in part in Chapter 11 of the book).

DOE oversight people were required to become adversarial policemen as contractors were being forced by the new law to replace knowledge-based operations with procedural controls. DOE headquarters reacted by bringing in large numbers of former Navy nuclear personnel, because it was seen that the Navy nuclear program was a successful model. “Sadly, many of these people did not understand nearly as much about operating facilities as those that hired them thought. Nuclear facilities with diverse operations are very different from naval reactors with very specific and limited operations. The cultural challenge (new oversight requirements, new managers that did not understand operations, and new oversight organizations that did not have a mission objective) was a perfect storm to affect the future of Rocky Flats operations.”

“It didn’t help Rocky Flats that Rockwell did not have a nuclear operations background, and was not corporately well equipped to deal with the new world” “The DOE staff likewise were not prepared for the new world. At Rocky Flats, the local DOE office had about 50 people; most involved in contract administration. To meet the new expectations, it suddenly had the workload of an organization several times larger. In addition, Washington HQ staff were not inclined to help the local office, and an adversarial relationship soon developed.”

The Soviets continued to be our enemy, court rulings put DOE sites out of compliance with waste management laws, and Congress passed a law that ended successful knowledge-based operations. Perhaps that explains why Rocky Flats was a difficult place to work.