Two companies – Dow Chemical and Rockland International – have been ordered to pay 925 million dollars in damages to residents of the area around the now defunct Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. The plant was closed in 1989 because of safety violations.
The lawsuit affects nearly 13,000 residents who lived near the plant when it closed down and it claims that the companies intentionally mishandled the radioactive waste.
Dow denies any wrongdoing and will appeal. Rockland was purchased in part by Boeing Company and Boeing denies any liability for the site.
A federal judge capped the compensatory damages at 725 million. Dow and Rockland were also ordered to pay exemplary damages of 111 million and 89 million respectively.
According to Judge John Kane’s order, Boeing is responsible for Rockland’s portion but Judge Kane has stayed his order pending appeals.
Dow Chemical operated Rocky Flats for the Department of Energy from the 1950s until 1975. Rockwell ran it from 1975 until 1989, when the plant closed. The plant made plutonium triggers for nuclear warheads.
Violations documented by state and federal officials included the outdoor storing of barrels of waste oil and solvents contaminated with plutonium. State health officials have said some of those barrels leaked and contaminated the surrounding soil, which later blew downwind.
The federal government has since spent $7 billion to clean up the site and turn it into a wildlife refuge.
Jim
Dave
August 3, 2008 at 1:03 am |
Hello, My brother and I worked at Jeffco Airport from 1974 to 1982, as the owners of a company we named “Rocky Mountain Piper”. Beginning in 1996 we began developing symptoms of what just recently our doctors concluded was “radiation poisoning” including pituitary gland death, systemic endocrine failure, Rabdomyolysis (High CPK muscle death), Diabetes, on, and on. If you can point us in a direction for compensation, it would be much appreciated.