Re: [CPEO-MEF] Lockheed may face tighter pollution limit

[CPEO Moderator <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

The following correction to the Denver Post article sent out earlier
today ("Lockheed may face tighter pollution limit")  was submitted by
Adrienne Anderson <Andersa@colorado.edu> both to the CPEO-MEF and to the
Denver Post.
_________________________________________________________________
Corrections requested Sunday, September 14, 2003 to Greg Moore, Editor,
Denver Post

Regarding today’s story “Lockheed may face tighter pollution limit” by
Jennifer Beauprez,
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E23827%257E1630637,00.html,

please publish immediate corrections for significant factual errors, in
both the printed and on-line versions of the story.

ERROR :  “Anderson unsuccessfully sued Lockheed over water contamination
that she blames for cancers, birth defects and the deaths of 37 children
in the nearby Friendly Hills neighborhood. A federal judge threw out the
1987 lawsuit.”

FACTS:  As documents and federal court filings I provided Ms. Beauprez
detailed, I was not a litigant in the case Beauprez describes.  The case
was filed by a dozen families in the Friendly Hills neighborhood  filed
suit against Martin Marietta and the Denver Water Board (not Lockheed
Martin, the successor company) for the loss of their children or defects
and diseases in surviving children in one area confirmed to have
received polluted water from below the Martin rocket plant.  I was a
witness in the case, and as the Western Regional Director of the
National Toxics Campaign, assisted and supported residents (both those
who opted to file suit and others who did not) in investigating the
cause of the tragic health problems plaguing the community and
mobilizing the residents for corrective action and government
accountability.  Our citizens’ investigation led to the discovery of
Martin’s thirty-year history of contamination of the Denver Water Board
supply at Kassler and subsequent closure of the contaminated drinking
water well in 1984 and the entire surrounding water plant in 1985
(reported in the Denver Post Dan Jones).  Based on documentary evidence
of decades of illegal dumping obtained, the residents’ suit for their
tragic losses was clearly warranted, while we also worked together
successfully toward corrective action to close the contaminated water
source as a continuing public health threat, and get the massively
contaminated Martin/USAF site listed for Superfund clean-up action.
Some of the nation’s most prominent environmental medicine experts,
including the Chief of Environmental Medicine at the Boston School of
Public Health, rendered professional medical opinions that the children
whose families brought suit had died or suffered cancer, birth defects,
seizure disorders or other major medical problems as a result of their
exposures to contaminated drinking water, and documented altered immune
systems and/or other medical problems in their parents, as well.  My
affidavit in the case provided a count of 37 children I myself had
documented with cancer, birth defects, or major seizure disorders in one
of the toxic-exposed neighborhoods on the contaminated pipeline water
routes, of which 16 had died (not all 37, as Beauprez incorrectly
reported) at the time the affidavit was submitted in 1987.  At no time
have I ever stated that 37 children died in Friendly Hills, as this is
not the case.  When Ms. Beauprez contacted me by phone after reviewing
these documents for clarification of the numbers on deaths and
illnesses, I stated that of the 37 children with major medical problems
I myself was aware of at the time I was asked by plaintiffs’ lead
counsel (a former U.S. Justice Department hazardous waste enforcement
attorney) to submit an affidavit to the court, more than a dozen had
died.

ERROR:  The current CDPHE permit for Lockheed Martin (which I provided
to Ms. Beauprez) – as well as what LM seeks in continued toxic releases
- allows up to 10.0 parts per billion NDMA in discharges to downstream
water sources, not 0.7 ppb, as Ms. Beauprez incorrectly reported.
Therefore, Lockheed Martin is allowed to discharge at levels thousands
of times higher than what the State of California has shut wells down
over (not just 35 times higher, as was reported).

On other points in the story, statements were made by the Denver Water
Board and LM that the Denver Post and its readers should know are false,
including LM’s claim that it “ships any hazardous waste to
incinerators”.  Records obtained show that LM in recent years has sent
hazardous wastes to a sanitary landfill in Denver illegally, and to a
dump in rural eastern Colorado, and is currently planning to pipe its
hazardous wastes to a publicly owned sewage plant, where its toxic
wastes would be commingled with sewage and industrial wastes turned into
“fertilizer” for spreading on Colorado farmland.  Further more, Charles
Johnson’s statement on behalf of CDPHE claiming that Lockheed Martin’s
pollution at this site “predate environmental laws” is also blatantly
false. Records show Martin’s discharges of then well-known carcinogens
as far back as 1956 – when the Glenn L. Martin company first began its
top secret rocket tests and manufacturing operations at that location –
were in violation of existing federal and municipal laws of that time,
as well as with the passage of subsequent laws, though illegal dumping
continued, even long after deaths of down-the-pipe infants and toddlers
became a national news scandal.

Such misrepresentations warrant follow-up reporting by the Denver Post .

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