This story originally ran Nov. 15, 1995
The U.S. Department of Energy has been held in contempt of court for failing to release millions of pages of records about missing plutonium and health trends at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.
U.S. District Court Judge John Kane on Monday ordered the Energy Department to pay opponents’ attorney fees – likely to be tens of thousands of dollars – for disregarding a court order last year requiring Rocky Flats to produce the government documents.
It’s highly unusual for a federal judge to find a federal agency in violation of federal court orders.
“I think their conduct has been reprehensible,” said Bruce DeBoskey, the Denver attorney seeking the records for a private lawsuit against the plant’s former operators. “They don’t want us to know what’s in the documents. They’re not acting in good faith.”
The court order came from a 1990 class-action lawsuit, filed by DeBoskey on behalf of 50,000 Coloradans, alleging that Rocky Flats has hurt suburban property values and created health risks. The lawsuit seeks millions in damages from Rockwell International and Dow Chemical Co., which formerly operated the plutonium trigger factory for the Energy Department.
Rocky Flats spokesman Pat Etchart said, “The Department of Energy is extremely disappointed with Monday’s ruling citing the department for contempt of court. … The DOE will fully comply with the court’s order.”
He said the Energy Department already has released 21 million pages of records for the lawsuit and intends to release millions more. But the department had trouble reviewing so many documents so quickly, he said, because many had been considered top-secret for years. Although the Energy Department claimed that proper classification reviews for the documents would require $100,000 and 4,000 hours of work, the agency failed for more than seven months to even begin the work, the judge ruled.
One of the biggest conflicts is over plutonium missing from Rocky Flats. Plant managers say the Jefferson County complex is home to 14.2 tons of plutonium, but they also have noted that some plutonium hasn’t been accounted for, probably because of bookkeeping errors.
Attorneys requested records about the missing plutonium in December 1994 but still have received none – a violation of the court order. The attorneys also sought but did not receive a medical study of 5,400 Rocky Flats workers exposed to plutonium.
The judge ordered all sides in the lawsuit to report on the status of the document disclosures within 45 days. He then will consider penalties against the Energy Department for contempt of court.
In the meantime, the judge ordered the Energy Department to pay all attorney fees related to the document fight. DeBoskey, the plaintiff’s attorney, said that likely will cost tens of thousands of dollars.
The whole issue is scheduled to go to trial in January 1997.
