Hot Town

Except on the coldest days of the Colorado winter, the doors of the Pomona Elementary School annex, on the outskirts of Grand Junction, are opened during recess. The reason is that the building is radioactive. Unless the rooms are aired, radioactive gases and particles seeping through the floors cause the radiation in the school rooms to rise dangerously above safe levels. In fact, during the summer months when the school is closed up, radiation rises to a level 18 times higher than the guideline established by the U.S. Surgeon General.

Pomona Elementary's problem is shared in less acute form by buildings in at least a dozen other Colorado communities and by Grand Junction itself, an important uranium-producing town until the ore petered out in the mid-1960s. The villain is uranium "tailings" --the gray, sandy debris that piled up in small mountains beside the mills as refuse from the mining operations. The tailings were known to contain some residual radiation, but below levels the AEC then considered to be a health or safety hazard. As the town boomed along with its uranium mines, Grand Junction contractors seized on the tailings as a convenient and cheap source of landfill and concrete mix. Over the years, thousands of tons of tailings went into the construction of schools, homes, commercial buildings, sidewalks, an airfield and a shopping mall.

Cleft Palates. By 1961, says the AEC, "form letters" were mailed to health officials warning that while the agency did not have regulatory jurisdiction over the tailings, their radium content could be hazardous; health officials, however, claim they never received the letters. In 1966 the Colorado state health department attached test film badges to several buildings in downtown Grand Junction; the badges promptly turned black from radioactivity. This led the state to pass legislation requiring contractors to get permits before using tailings in any project.

In 1970 a pediatrician in Grand Junction, Dr. Robert Ross, noticed an increase in the number of cleft palates and other birth defects in the area, and communicated his concern to Dr. C. Henry Kempe, chairman of the pediatrics department at the University of Colorado's Medical Center. Their joint studies, reported last October, indicated that the incidence of cleft lip and palate was almost twice as high in the Grand Junction area as for the rest of Colorado, the birth rate significantly lower, the death rate from congenital anomalies 50% higher.

But the town was slow to take alarm. Paul Hathaway, regional editor of Grand Junction's Daily Sentinel, explains: "Uranium turned this from a sleepy little cow town to a booming city. They accept it as part of their existence. That's why you don't see a lot of immediate concern about the tailings." As Frank Folk, who is principal of a local school, puts it: "I'd just as soon be here in the clear air with the tailings as in some of those cities with their smog."

Radon Daughters. Maybe so, but scientists are now seriously concerned about the long-term effects of such low-level radiation on individuals living and working in buildings in which tailings were used. Of about 5,000 such structures in the Grand Junction area between 1,500 and 2,000 have been found to contain radon gas. This gas is so penetrating that it can seep through foundations and into basements and other closed spaces. Even more ominous is the fact that radon gas breaks down into "radon daughters," highly radioactive substances that physicians believe cause genetic defects and cancer.

TIME Correspondent Ted Hall, who recently visited the town, reports that the mood there now is one of apprehension, confusion over how much radiation is actually dangerous, and anger.

"I'm not trying to become the Ralph Nader of radiation," explains Willis Stubbs, an insurance salesman whose four children attend Pomona Elementary, "but people need to be told to get the hell out from the tailings, or that it's all right." Both he and his wife have come to doubt the Surgeon General's guideline. Says Mrs. Stubbs: "They say chances of damage to the children is one in a million. Well, suppose your child is that one in a million? We happen to be parents and we are concerned about it." So are some local businessmen. A bank has decided not to offer mortgages to home buyers until radiation readings have been made.

What to Do? Remedies are not easy. Of course, entire structures can be torn down, but not many people want to do that. Alternatively, hot structures can be jacked up and the fill replaced with dirt. But all this is expensive, and neither the state nor the AEC has been eager to pick up the tab. The whole problem is confused by the continuing debate about how much radiation is dangerous--an incredibly difficult decision since effects may not show up for several generations.

Last week, AEC Chairman James Schlesinger visited Denver, where he discussed Grand Junction's troubles with Governor John Love and admitted that Grand Junction contractors, the state, and the AEC share a "moral responsibility" for the tailings. He stressed that the radiation poses no "immediate" danger to residents. On the other hand, he said that radiation levels "are higher than we would prefer, so some remedial action is intended." When, he could not say--except to state that "there is presently no plan to provide funds from the Federal Government" for removing the tailings, which could cost as much as $20 million.

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