Thursday, November 11, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Whistle-blower claims BLM firing over polluted mine

Federal complaint seeks damages of more than $1 million

The Anaconda mine's pit in Yerington is shown in this July file photo. Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

RENO -- The Bureau of Land Management's former project manager for a contaminated mine site in Nevada said Wednesday he was fired because he refused to stop speaking out about dangers posed there by radioactive and other toxic wastes.

In a federal whistle-blower complaint seeking more than $1 million in damages, Earle Dixon of Carson City said BLM state Director Bob Abbey fired him in October in retaliation for his aggressive research and public comment on the health and safety risks to workers and the community near the former Anaconda copper mine on the edge of Yerington.

A copy of the administrative complaint obtained by The Associated Press said Dixon refused to go along with repeated attempts by BLM management and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection to downplay dangers at the 3,600-acre site and "sweep the issue under a political rug."

BLM spokeswoman Jo Simpson said Wednesday the agency was not surprised the complaint had been filed but had no direct response to the charges.

"We welcome the investigation and we believe the investigation will bear out that our actions were appropriate," she said.

Environmental Protection Division spokeswoman Cindy Petterson said the state agency has made no attempt to downplay the seriousness of the mine's pollution. She said personnel changes BLM made in the management of the project a month ago "has led to an improvement in the process."

The complaint says cleanup costs at the abandoned mine owned by Atlantic Richfield Co. have risen dramatically, from an estimated $10 million or $20 million to potentially more than $200 million, as a result of research Dixon conducted or directed on dangers from uranium and other toxins.

Tests this summer found unusually high levels of radiation in soil samples at the mine. Earlier groundwater tests showed high concentrations of uranium in wells on site, up to 200 times the U.S. drinking water standard.

"The site is an environmental compliance mess. There is nothing in compliance: not groundwater, not air, not soil," Dixon said. "It needs to be addressed. I was trying to move forward and get it addressed and that's not what the BLM or NDEP wanted."

"Every time I would try to put real technical comments in there and cite things relative to Superfund guidelines, they would take out those parts and water it down," he said in an interview Wednesday.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a Washington D.C.-based watchdog group, filed the formal whistle-blower complaint with the Labor Department in San Francisco last week on behalf of Dixon, an environmental protection specialist who earlier taught at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and spent eight years doing research for the U.S. Energy Department at the Nevada Test Site.

The complaint said Dixon was at least partly responsible for documenting radiation readings, contamination of soil and water, and Arco and BLM noncompliance with federal pollution standards, including possible public exposure to radioactive and toxic metals in airborne dust.

Jeff Ruch, PEER's executive director, said federal law makes it clear "you cannot be discriminated against for implementing the Clean Air Act or the Safe Drinking Water Act.

"You can't be fired for doing your job, and Earle Dixon was fired for doing his job," Ruch said from Washington.

The 34-page complaint includes 23 pages of summaries of notes Dixon took of meetings and telephone conversations with his superiors, EPA, state regulators and others over the course of at least 87 days between the time he was hired in November 2003 and fired on Oct. 5.

Among other things, Dixon insisted on personally observing sampling, collecting worker safety-related data, and developing a formal site health and safety plan "that would draw attention to the problem by forcing workers to wear respirators, a visible red flag to the community," the complaint said.

The complaint said BLM responded by criticizing him for his disclosures, ordering him not to speak to the media, and censoring and editing his technical communications and memos.

The complaint said BLM's public affairs director in Reno told Dixon's immediate supervisor on July 23 that Dixon was "not to talk to press at all" following a telephone interview with AP the day before in which Dixon said, "Nobody is used to having this sort of radiation at an old abandoned copper mine."