Word: silverman
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Last July, for example, when Silverman set about dismantling five old guard shacks, he ran into a federal requirement that the buildings first be offered up as housing for the homeless. When he tried to streamline a rule requiring nine separate signatures before visitors could enter the old production facilities, he was blocked by red tape. After a mishap occurred during the draining of three small plutonium storage tanks in 1994, he found that the job couldn't resume until the entire building had been scoured and 150 workers had been retrained--a process that would have taken five years...
...Silverman arrived in 1993, aiming to make short work of his Herculean task: draining liquid plutonium from leaking containers, venting drums of hydrogen to prevent explosions, baking plutonium metal for storage in sealed vaults. But he and cleanup contractor Kaiser-Hill ran into a brick, or rather a paper, wall. Of the 250 cleanup "milestones" set by the EPA and Colorado's Department of Health and Environment, only two dozen spelled out concrete action. The rest mostly involved producing one report after another, generating much paper but no progress. Scores of internal policy directives, set in place...
...SILVERMAN'S RESPONSE TO MANY OF these hurdles has been to ignore them. After the draining mishap, he went ahead and emptied the three problem plutonium tanks without upgrading the entire building, and he retrained just 12 workers instead of all 150. He slashed the number of signatures needed to get visitors into high-security areas from nine to three. Ignoring bureaucratic protocol, he and Kaiser-Hill excavated toxic soils from an area known as Ryan's Pit without preparing exhaustive studies. Silverman bristles at the seemingly arbitrary personnel rules he's supposed to follow. "Why does it take...
...Silverman's behavior is bizarre for a bureaucrat, the reaction of his bosses is even more surprising: they're going along with it. Regulators have met with the Rocky Flats management team to rewrite and simplify the cumbersome rules, and the DOE has approved Silverman's plan to further cut the facility's 4,878-person work force. Admits Assistant Energy Secretary Thomas Grumbly: "We have created a paperwork jungle over the past 50 years...
...agency is considering a proposal by Silverman and Kaiser-Hill to seal up Rocky Flats once and for all. By the year 2010 or so, most of the major buildings would be demolished, the plutonium consolidated and sealed behind thick layers of concrete. All but 300 acres of the 6,500-acre site would be decontaminated and released for other uses, including recreation and commerce. The ambitious plans face opposition from local activists. But even Silverman's critics pay him grudging homage. Says Ken Korkia of the Rocky Flats Citizens Advisory Board, a watchdog group: "He has taken charge...