Horse Sense about Jeff Gipe’s Cold War Horse

Sunday, October 18, 2015, was a ceremony commemorating artist Jeff Gipe’s “Cold War Horse.” He prepared the horse for the 25th anniversary of the FBI raid on Rocky Flats event at the Arvada Center in June 2014. The large horse sculpture wears a red hazmat suit, goggles and a gas mask — to protect it from plutonium blowing on the breeze at Rocky Flats. He wanted to place the horse on a permanent location near the Rocky Flats site. Earlier this year he finally found a very good location on a high point along Highway 72, a short distance west of Indiana St., not far south of the Rocky Flats site, just across the road from the Candelas development. In the summer someone vandalized the horse, pulled it down and hammered on it, badly damaging it. Jeff Gipe rebuilt it, remounted it, put a fence around it with motion-sensitive cameras and lights. And Sunday, October 18, he held a commemoration ceremony. Speakers were author Kristen Iversen, Jon Lipsky who  led the FBI raid in 1989, Wes McKinley who was foreman of the Rocky Flats Grand Jury, Randy Sullivan a former fireman at Rocky Flats and myself. Presiding was Eric Fretz of Regis University.  Here is a copy of the poem I read.

Horse Sense about Jeff Gipe’s Horse

Jeff Gipe’s Cold War Horse

signifies a problem,

the problem of Rocky Flats,

more specifically the problem

of plutonium at Rocky Flats.

This problem is denied

by government personnel who favor

opening the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge

to the public, with some on horseback.

These government personnel do not honor

the truth about plutonium,

though they know that some quantity

remains in the environment

after the purported cleanup of the site.

They know too that the incomplete cleanup was done

against the will and wisdom of concerned people.

Of course it was impossible to remove

all the plutonium buried in soil on the site,

but the responsible parties made no effort to remove

as much as possible with existing technology.

Instead, they chose a quicker, cheaper cleanup.

One more point about the so-called cleanup.

When the EPA and the Colorado Department

of Public Health and the Environment

regulated the cleanup, the U.S. attorney

gave them the opportunity to examine

63 cartons of evidence of environmental crime

committed at Rocky Flats, documents collected

by the FBI, reviewed by a special grand jury

and sealed by the federal court.

Instead of reviewing this data the agencies declined,

preferring a cover-up to a real cleanup.

And now they expect us to forget

and to let the site be opened to the public.

No one can say

what beings will be harmed

by plutonium particles left behind –

particles too small to see

but available to be inhaled.

It is well known that once taken into the body

plutonium lodges in a specific location,

such as lung, liver, bone, brain, the gonads.

Thus lodged it will steadily bombard

with radiation the cells of nearby tissue,

typically for the rest of one’s life.

Tom K. Hei and colleagues at Columbia University

reported 18 years ago (in 1997) in the Proceedings

of the National Academy of Sciences

that inhaling a single particle of plutonium

can damage a cluster of cells

and that replication of these cells

constitutes genetic damage

that may not only wreck the individual’s health

but also harm future generations.

Instead of serving a harmful industry

and fostering an economy of urban sprawl,

why don’t government officials

act on the basis of such studies?

They are not ignorant,

but they do ignore the reality of such studies

and gamble with the health and well-being

of all creatures near Rocky Flats.

This is not a temporary problem,

since the plutonium-239 in the environment

remains radioactive for more than

a quarter-million years.

It will still be radioactive long after

the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge

ceases to exist.

According to some random schedule

animals, plants and water will bring

buried plutonium to the surface

where the wind common at Rocky Flats

can distribute it near and far,

ready to be inhaled

by some unsuspecting person

who decades later may have cancer

or some other ailment.

The government’s gambles

with the permanent problem of plutonium

at Rocky Flats are careless.

Jeff Gipe’s horse reminds us

of the necessity of being careful.

This is the essence of Nuclear Guardianship.

Thanks be to Jeff Gipe.