October 3, 2000
Patton wants state to analyze maps of plutonium levels near plant
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2000/0010/03/001003uran.html
By JAMES MALONE, The Courier-Journal

PADUCAH, Ky. -- Gov. Paul Patton directed his administration yesterday to obtain maps from the U.S. Department of Energy that show the widespread dispersal of highly radioactive plutonium from the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

Patton was concerned after reading about the documents in The Courier-Journal Sunday, said Jack Conway, the governor's deputy cabinet secretary. Patton asked Natural Resources Secretary James Bickford to get immediate access to the federal government's information and then conduct an independent analysis, Conway said.

"We did not know about the maps," said Heather Fredrick, a spokeswoman for the state Cabinet for Natural Resources and Environmental Protection. "We have asked for them along with any other (supporting) information they have."

Meanwhile, an Energy Department spokesman said yesterday that it plans to hold a public meeting near the plant later this week to answer questions about the plutonium maps from the plant's neighbors. No time or place has been set.

The agency also disclosed yesterday that it had found other maps plotting levels of other radioactive elements near the former nuclear weapons plant. As with the plutonium documents, those maps also apparently were not provided to an Energy Department oversight team that investigated the Paducah plant last fall or to current Energy Department officials in Paducah or Washington.

Kentucky officials want to determine whether the state already has the plutonium data in some other form or if it is new information, said Mark York, the environmental agency's chief spokesman. York declined to speculate on what the state would do if it determined it had not previously seen the data.

Natural Resources Cabinet officials involved in the Paducah cleanup will consult the state's top radiation protection official, John Volpe, to decide if any action is needed, Fredrick said. Volpe said yesterday that he had not had time to talk to Energy Department officials about the plutonium maps and had not seen them.

The maps show plutonium at levels hundreds of times above what would be expected to be in the soil, sediment and water from decades-old fallout from atomic bomb tests.

Energy Department officials have said that the levels were not a threat to public health and that not having the maps delayed their investigation last year but did not change the final outcome.

The 10 years of raw plutonium sampling data used to make the maps have been included in an annual federal waste cleanup report filed in a public document room near the plant, though the public might not have been aware of it, said Steven Wyatt, a spokesman for the Energy Department in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

But the plutonium results have not been included in the site's annual environmental report, which the Energy Department's primary cleanup contractor, Bechtel Jacobs Co., last year promoted to the public as an example of how the site is slowly getting cleaner. That report also is filed in the document room, in Kevil, Ky.

The Energy Department is looking into why the plutonium map and others showing different radioactive contaminants such as uranium and neptunium were not disclosed to Energy Department administrators, who prepared them and why, Wyatt said. Wyatt said the maps were prepared by Bechtel Jacobs.

A Bechtel Jacobs spokesman, Greg Cook, said the company was reviewing the matter.

The plutonium maps were produced last week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request The Courier-Journal filed in September 1999.

Records accompanying the release of the documents show the government located them in December but a security officer recommended a "legal review" and "removal" of information in a table on one map that showed the nearby residents' names and addresses and well-identification numbers. The released map contains that information.

James Owens, a Paducah lawyer representing dozens of area residents in a property damage lawsuit against former plant operators, said the maps had not been turned over to him, either.

Owens said a federal judge ordered the Energy Department to start turning over documents to the plaintiffs about 18 months ago and his staff has examined hundreds of thousands of paper and electronic documents and had not previously seen the maps.

"This ought to help landowners, and I think it helps our suit," said Owens, who said he believed the Energy Department had an obligation to have released the maps much sooner.

Owens said he embarked on the suit never thinking that documents would be withheld.

"I didn't believe they would be this brazen about it," Owens said. "But plutonium is the big, bad word. It makes people stand up and take notice."

      The Pu is just more DOE smoke screening off a much larger DOE emissions problem involving HF emissions.      Let no-one be fooled by this latest media blitz controlling the public's attention off the much larger problem.

J.P.