Word: sequoyah
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...years ago Justin Suddeth, then 14, found a deformed, nine-legged frog at a pond near the Sequoyah Fuels plant in Gore, Okla. In 1981 an eyeless baby girl was born to parents living a few miles from the same plant. The National Cancer Institute has reported that the leukemia rate for white men in counties surrounding Sequoyah Fuels is five percentage points higher than the national average. Is there a connection? Local residents think so: Sequoyah Fuels processes uranium concentrate into ingredients for bombs and nuclear-power- plan t fuel. The factory has been cited in the past...
...Kerr-McGee hoped its $1.38 million settlement with Silkwood's heirs had lifted the cloud of controversy from its operations, the furor that erupted last week dashed that hope. A spate of news reports revealed that Sequoyah has for more than a decade, with Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval, been converting radioactive wastewater, called raffinate, into fertilizer and spraying it over company-owned fields. Hay grown on the fields has then been sold as feed to farmers and ranchers. Nearby residents charge that the fertilizer may be contaminating the Arkansas River and the water table near the Oklahoma-Arkansas border...
...Sequoyah has been converting its wastewater into fertilizer since 1973 by chemically removing most of the uranium and heavy metals and adding potash and phosphate during application. The liquid was first tested on small plots of company land. In the early 1980s the NRC, finding "no adverse environmental impacts," authorized more widespread testing. That assessment was circulated to the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and each passed it with no comments...
Even if there are no such dangers, the public relations fallout for Kerr- McGee might be worrisome -- except that the company announced last week an agreement in principle to sell the Sequoyah operation to GA Technologies of San Diego. The agreement's scheduling, says Pereles, is "absolutely coincidental." But for Kerr-McGee, smarting from its earlier run-ins with an angry public, it may have come just in time...