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Politics : Al Gore vs George Bush: the moderate's perspective -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: puborectalis who wrote (1034)	10/2/2000 7:50:36 AM
From: long-gone	Respond to of 10042

Newsmax.com Cover-Up Documented in Nuke Pollution NewsMax.com October 2, 2000 The Clinton-Gore administration knew for years its Kentucky uranium-processing plant was polluting drinking water and withheld the information from the American people. According to a story Sunday in the Washington Post: In August 1999, the Post reported the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in southwest Kentucky – built in 1952 to produce enriched uranium for nuclear bombs – was having serious problems with toxic waste. In that report last year, the Post said that soon after the plant opened, the Atomic Energy Commission (a predecessor agency to the Energy Department) began surreptitiously supplying it with "dirty" uranium containing plutonium and other radioactive metals far more hazardous than ordinary uranium. Even though those secretive tainted shipments continued for more than two decades, the Post said, they were not revealed to those working in and living around the plant. When the Post published that, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson ordered an investigation, which produced two reports last fall highly critical of safety and environmental practices of the plant's former contractors, including Union Carbide and Lockheed Martin. Those reports said plutonium had polluted the plant's grounds and that pockets of contamination were discovered in ditches and stream banks hundreds of yards outside the fenced security perimeter. Not satisfied that the whole story had been made public, the Post then filed a Freedom of Information Act demand, the results of which it published Sunday. It turned up the fact that Richardson had withheld more damaging information than he had revealed. The new information confirmed that plant officials, who were searching for plutonium for years, had found it nearly everywhere they looked. Maps drawn last summer, but not disclosed by Richardson last fall, revealed that the government's plant managers had conducted hundreds of measurements over 10 years that showed plutonium in soil and water more than a mile outside the fence. "Most disturbing," the Post reported Sunday, "was the discovery of the highly toxic metal in dozens of groundwater tests, which has potentially ominous implications for local drinking-water supplies. "The results of these tests suggest that government contractors knew far more about the extent of the contamination than was previously acknowledged, and the spread of plutonium was much more extensive than Energy Department officials reported after an investigation last fall." What was the Clinton-Gore administration's reaction to the release of this previously withheld information? "We don't see any information on the maps that would have changed our approach during our environmental investigation," said Ray Hardwick, acting deputy assistant secretary for the department's Office of Oversight. "Nor do we see anything that would change our conclusions." Denying they had any knowledge of their own maps, until the Post confronted them with the evidence, department spokesmen said there was nothing in the maps suggesting greater threats to the public or wildlife. They said nearby residents were no longer drinking the water from potentially contaminated private wells. Just the same, the department promised to investigate . . . again. "Obviously, this is the kind of thing that would be of interest," said Don Seaborg, the department's site manager for Paducah. Non-administration observers of what's been going on at the plant "questioned whether the plant and its federal overseers ever intended to tell the community the full truth." Mark Donham, an environmentalist and chairman of the Paducah plant's local citizen advisory board, said: "It's mind-boggling. For years they never wanted to talk to us about what they found in the water. Obviously this is why." Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee, who was vice president for nearly eight years during the Clinton-Gore administration's management of the Paducah plant, has been portraying himself as the environmental candidate, depicting his Republican rival, George W. Bush, as tolerant of toxic wastes polluting the environment. newsmax.com