And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 07:42:46 -0700 To: :@tdi.net From: Adrienne Anderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: PLUTONIUM IN YOUR PANCAKES? <http://www.denverpost.com/news/news0315c.htm>http://www.denverpost.com/new s/news0315c.htm FARMERS FEAR SLUDGE IS RADIOACTIVE March 15, 1999 By J. Sebastian Sinisi Denver Post Staff Writer March 15 - DEER TRAIL - Farmers and environmental activists gathered at a public meeting Sunday to oppose an Environmental Protection Agency plan to transport sludge from the Lowry Landfill for use as fertilizer near this Eastern Plains community, claiming the sludge is radioactive. More than 75 people attended the meeting to hear charges that the EPA and the Denver Metro Wastewater Reclamation Board had been fraudulent in devising the plan to pump Lowry waste through residential sewer lines to Denver sewage treatment plants. The plant would remove water from the waste, leaving the resulting sludge that then would be trucked to the MWRB's 40,000 acres of farmland north of Deer Trail, 60 miles east of Denver, to be used as crop fertilizer. But Marc Herman, EPA project manager for the Lowry Landfill cleanup site, said in a telephone interview Sunday evening that opposition to the plan is groundless because the alleged radioactivity doesn't exist, and that the sludge would pose no danger to public health. High levels of radioactivity, Herman said, were indicated by a September 1991, study of the Lowry site in eastern Arapahoe County - that operated as a landfill for toxic wastes from 1965 to 1980 - by Harding Lawson Associates, a national consulting firm. The firm's first study, Herman said, was done hastily and not in accordance with accepted practices in the cleanup industry in anticipation of a de minimus or quick settlement that would have allowed polluters of the Lowry site to settle their liability with the EPA quickly and cheaply. But a subsequent study done six months later by the same firm - this time adhering to standard practices - showed no dangerous levels of radioactivity at the Lowry site, Herman added. But opponents of the plan Sunday charged the EPA with using a "shell game," by first denying radioactivity, and then claiming that radioactivity that did show up was part of the normal "background" radioactivity that exists in Colorado. "Their benchmark for 'normal' radioactivity was the Rocky Flats site," charged Adrienne Anderson, a professor of environmental ethics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a key critic of the sludge plan. Anderson said Freedom-of-Information Act investigations by her and her students had uncovered a 1991 document to the U.S. Department of Energy from the biggest corporate polluters at the Lowry Landfill site. The seven-page letter, Anderson claimed, had Lowry users expressing shock at the high levels of radioactivity at the Lowry site. That, she said, put pressure on officials to alter the report. Herman denied that charge and said the crux of the matter come down to evaluating the available data. "We all look at the same data," he said. "Her evaluation is that there's dangerous radioactivity from Rocky Flats at the Lowry site. Our evaluation is that there isn't, with none from Rocky Flats." Don Holmstrom, president of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, expressed concern over union workers who would be exposed to radioactivity before the sludge is shipped to Deer Trail. While area farmers Sunday voiced fears of contamination of their lands through groundwater and wind-blown radioactive material, other opponents said the plan would set a bad precedent by opening the gates for dumping all sorts of toxic wastes on Colorado's Eastern plains. Copyright 1999 The Denver Post. All rights reserved. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
