James Stone papers

James Stone (1925-2007) was an engineer at Rocky Flats from 1980 to 1986. While there he noticed and raised concerned about environmental hazards such as missing plutonium, broken pressure valves, and issues with beryllium. After he was let go he became an important source of allegation for the FBI warrant, specifically that Rockwell was incinterating waste at night. Stone was the first insider to give details into the sites’ radioactive pollution. With the assistance of the details he gave, the FBI was able to lead a raid and investigation into a number of violations at the Plant. The FBI investigation ultimately led to Plant’s closure in 1989. Stone went on to file a whistle-blower fraud case against the site contractor, Rockwell International, and won over $4 million in damages for the federal government. After nearly 18 years of litigation, in 2007 the Supreme Court ultimately ruled Rockwell owed damages to the federal government but denied Stone a $1 million dollar share of those damages. After the closure of Rocky Flats, Stone assisted on the Rocky Flats Cleanup Commission as an active member of stewarding the site’s environment.

The Rocky Flats plant was built in 1951 and operated by Dow Chemical through a contract with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) which later became the Department of Energy (DOE). The plant processed plutonium and manufactured bombs that were the successors to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. These plutonium bombs are used to detonate or “trigger” much more powerful thermonuclear (hydrogen) bombs. During the plant’s operation, there were two major fires in 1957 and 1969. During the late 1960s and 1970s peace activist and environmental groups protested the plant’s continued operations. Facing concerns over mismanagement, including concerns over the how the plant was disposing of waste, the AEC ended the contract with Dow Chemical and began a contract with Rockwell International. After continuing concerns over waste management on the environment and the effects on a growing Denver population, the FBI began investigating plant activities, resulting in an FBI/Environmental Protection Agency raid on the plant in 1989. With the end of the Cold War and continued environmental concerns, the plant’s weapons manufacturing mission ended in 1992 and a lengthy cleanup began under EG&C and then Kaiser-Hill under contracts with the DOE. About 80 percent of the 10-square-mile site was transferred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2007.