Lawyers representing property owners in the Rocky Flats class-action lawsuit said Wednesday that it’s time someone forced the former plant operators to clean up the radioactive waste that drifted off the site of the Cold War-era weapons plant.
During closing arguments in the landmark environmental trial, they asked jurors to do just that and order Dow Chemical and Rockwell International to pay $500 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
“One of the golden rules we learned in kindergarten is that if you make a mess, you clean it up,” said Louise Roselle, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. “Dow and Rockwell messed up big time with one of the most dangerous substances on Earth.”
Roselle said the plutonium released from the plant, which has since been razed, caused a 10 percent devaluation of property around the plant. She said it also resulted in significant increases in lung-cancer risk.
The trial, which began in October, is set to continue today with closing arguments from lawyers for the defendants. They have contended that the plaintiffs have exaggerated the dangers and are telling half-truths.
Jurors are expected to begin deliberations Friday.
Lawyers for the property owners said the lawsuit, which was filed 16 years ago, has been a David and Goliath battle.
The federal government, which indemnified the contractors, has been picking up the costs of fighting the property owners. Any monetary judgment in favor of the property owners would be paid by taxpayers, who already have paid more than $10 million to experts who are defending the contractors.
In 1989, when the FBI raided the plant during an investigation of environmental crimes, there were 160 to 180 waste sites on the property, Roselle said. The plaintiffs have repeatedly emphasized during the trial that 2,600 pounds of plutonium – enough to make 400 nuclear weapons – has gone missing.
Roselle criticized the cleanup, which was finished early and announced with fanfare just as the Rocky Flats trial got underway. She said the standards set for the cleanup mean significant contamination remains just several feet under the surface. It is, she said, still a danger.
Burrowing ants, gophers and other creatures could disturb the plutonium that oozed from leaky barrels that were left outside corroding for 11 years. Two bodies of water that had been intended to supply drinking water were contaminated by the contractors, Roselle said.
Those contractors, who ran the nuclear trigger plant for 37 years, engaged in corporate wrongdoing and made excuses as their negligence caused deadly plutonium to be released over the surrounding neighborhood, she said.
Staff writer Alicia Caldwell can be reached at 303-820-1930 or acaldwell@ denverpost.com.
