Ben Figueroa Interview, Part 1 of 2

  • TRANSCRIPT INTERVIEWEE: Ben Figueroa (BF) INTERVIEWERS: David Todd (DT) and David Weisman (DW) DATE: February 23, 2000 LOCATION: Kingsville, Texas TRANSCRIBERS: Lacy Goldsmith and Robin Johnson REEL: 2079
  • Please see the Real Media video record Please note that videos include roughly 60 seconds of color bars and sound tone for technical settings at the outset of the recordings.
  • DT: My name is David Todd. I am here for the Conservation History Association of Texas. It is February 23, year 2000. We are in Kingsville, Texas. We have the good fortune to be talking to Ben Figueroa about his work trying to confront a uranium mine and radioactive waste disposal site in the Kingsville area. I want to thank you for spending time to explain that whole issue.
  • BF: It's good to be here.
  • DT: I thought we might start by talking a little bit about your background, where you were raised, your schooling and career, and so on. BF: I was raised right here in Kingsville, Texas and in this rural community and went to school here. We have a small college and I got a graduate degree in psychology and history. And spent a little time in the Navy in Vietnam and spent some time in corporate America away from here and I got tired of that and I came back home to make a difference, and I think I have.
  • DT: In what sense? You run a foundation here? BF: I run a foundation, yeah, I spent, actually, I spent twenty years developing a Human Services department for our local county and very few services were available in this rural community. So what I did was, I came back and started developing grant programs and I did. For a small county and per capita, I developed quite a bit of money and with and an annual budget sometimes reaching three million for human services, which is quite a bit, and in some years, it went beyond that. So, I did that for about twenty years.
  • DT: In recent years, I guess some of your community effort has turned towards environmental work? BF: Well, during that time, I stumbled into an environmental problem that occurred here in the county, and that's when the uranium people came to mine uranium in Kleberg County. We didnt know there was uranium here, but they said that there was a very large pocket of uranium.
  • So, in the beginning, I think that we were somewhat concerned just because it was uranium and knowing about radioactivity and knowing what it can do in Japan, and the bombs and all this kind of thing. And, so we got concerned and they came in and they published a public hearing.
  • And, actually, my wife is the environmentalist, and most of what I know about, you know, biology, comes from her. She was a biology teacher and then became a principal, but an environmentalist at heart.
  • And my interest, I guess, is from a humanistic point of view, you know, just human life is precious and important. So, we went to the public hearing that they had, that they were required to hold a public meeting, so to speak, talking about uranium and how harmless it was. So immediately, we saw some problems and the opportunity to ask for a public hearing came up and, as citizens living in this community, we requested a public hearing.
  • And so we started looking into what they were doing, a phenomenon called in situ mining, which is a reverse osmosis type system and we started looking at all the parameters of what they were doing and found many, many flaws. There were no guarantees. We also found that the state agency that managed this entire system let them mine based on models, there's no concrete evidence that anything worked, really. It was just models.
  • So, we requested that they not mine immediately. And, in the beginning, we had community support and, because I had been involved in local government and politics, something happened. In the beginning, everybody was asleep about uranium and then, all of a sudden, they saw us walk up, you know, who is Ben, and who is Edna, just citizens, and we stopped it.
  • BF: So they immediately turned to the powers that existed here and turned it around considerably. And we found out that politics works very well in Texas, all the way up to Austin. And we started losing our rounds in terms of public hearings. The public was not involved because they couldn't understand the technicalities of uranium mining and what it meant, and what it meant to our ground water.
  • In fact, people didn't even know that we had a sole-source ground water supply and that it was many people thought it was endless, you know, we're going to have water until the end of time. And we started explaining that, no, it doesn't last, that we're using it up.
  • We had a cone of depression under Kingsville, and today, the Corp Of Engineers claims that, no no, that the core depression isn't that bad, and but at one time, they did. You know, who's right and who's wrong? But there is a cone of depression under Kingsville because of the water usage.
  • And, of course, now we have something called the South Texas Water Authority that is a supplement, it supplies us about 20 percent of the water that we use in this community. But, still, this cone of depression means that we were using water faster than it was being created, and created through a discharge zone. And, you start learning about the processes of ground water and I did. I started learning about it, more so my wife knew a lot about it. And the formula is very basic. We're using it faster than we than nature can produce it.
  • BF: And then on top of that, we had a uranium mining company that said, "We're going to use this ground water, bring it out, bring the uranium out, develop this yellow cake, and then pump it back in and nothing's going to happen." Just that simple. And we said, "No, thats not what's going to happen." And today is proof if you talked to the, I think it's called the Texas Water Development Board these days, instead of the Texas Water Commission, I think, they'll say that, no, they're on target.
  • The baseline parameters that they set are in place, and I don't think that they are. In fact, the STOP [South Texas Opposes Pollution] Group that is now in place that's fighting uranium, has already proven that those baseline parameters are not the same. In other words, when they came here, they tested the water and there was, there was so much, there were so many elements in it. And if you test the water today, it's different. And they're saying that it's cleaner, and, of course they would say that. And, no, there is proof that it isn't.
  • So, you know, you start, you start fighting this tough of war, who's right and who's wrong. Testimony after testimony, we showed other sites that have, that were ruined. Panna Maria was ruined to no end, and other sites in Texas, and in other places in the United States. And still they said, "No, in situ uranium mining reverse osmosis works, it works." And, to this day, I don't think that I can believe that, and I think it's more important that we don't fool around with uranium when we dont know what we're doing. And then the question comes up economics and nuclear power. All right, we need to utilize some of this material. But if we don't know how to utilize it perfectly, then we shouldn't mess with it. You know, find a way, and then mess with it. But, if you dont know and you're using models, and these models have failed in the past, and we knew that, then why are we continuing, why is the state allowing this? And, that's what we found out.
  • BF: And the politics that played a part in this were very, very strong. We have a large ranch in our backyard. That ranch supported the uranium mining, the second round, not the first round. And many times I've heard the descendents of Captain King say that they were concerned with the environment. Well, you can't be very concerned because uranium mining was the ultimate slap in the face to our environment here. We've been--they've been drilling for oil here for years and we're surely not going to stop that, I mean, you know, you're trying to stop oil, you're going to stop, you know, transportation.
  • And we already knew to some degree that the oil drilling and the fact that the rules were not in place in the early days to protect the environment, that that did a lot of damage to the water, to the environment in general. I'm not going to talk about the daughter products that float through the air, that cling to organic matter and those that cling to non-organic matter, but the ranch took a stand in favor of the uranium mining company. And I think thats what really did us in, because we were just, my wife Edna and I, were just two people trying to educate the public about this phenomenon.
  • And I'm not going to go into the demographics of Kleberg County, but it's a rural community, even though we have a college and there's probably a higher average of college graduates in this community. The college community, the ones that were involved in geography, were hired by the uranium company to do the consulting work for them.
  • So, we had a contingency of some professors that said, "No, it's great." So, we had the college community. And then the other ones, I suppose, the historians, and the English professors, they just kind of sat back and watched it. And that's the intelligent part of the community.
  • BF: The remainder of the community is...the...well, there's two communities, an Anglo community, we're bi-cultural, and segregated, in fact. There's an Anglo community and a Mexican community. And, both communities were unaware of what was happening with the uranium and we were asked many, many questions, "How do you know?" And we brought up a lot of questions.
  • So, I feel that, historically, we educated some people about uranium and the consequence of that is the STOP Group. At some point after we fought for, oh beginning in about 1985, even earlier than 1985, 1982, and then some at some point around 1992, 1993, some other people got involved, some local ranchers, farmers, that became very concerned and formed the STOP Group. And I think thats the consequence.
  • And now were facing restoration, water restoration. And there are questions being asked. The state is saying, "Well, there's nothing wrong with the uranium company. They put up enough money in case we have to restore the water, in case the water is contaminated. But they're still in operation so we cannot say, well, we cannot discount them and say we'rethey're out, we're going to start resrestoring, because they still have permits in place." I'm going to refer back to the Panna Maria site. We waited too long and I've seen some documentaries regarding the effects of what happened there.
  • And then if you go up to George West, I think he was U.S. Steel, that could not clean up a uranium mine in George West. I'm not sure if it was U.S. Steel or Union Carbide, one of those companies, that mined up there. If you go up to Kennedy, now that is Cancer, USA. And that's thethe uranium capital of Texas and cancer rates, according to Department of Health, are higher up, way above the average. And, is that what we want to look forward to in Kleberg County because we didn't take a stand?
  • BF: I think that, what we did was, we cleaned up the process considerably. The parameters were tightened up because of the consistent inquiry that we had as citizens. And, in spite of the politics, and I can remember going up there and there was a Commissioner Loomis and Commissioner Hubert, not the current commissioner, but his father, and ourselves went up, and we were sitting before the Texas Water Commission, and there was, like, my wife and myself, and these two commissioners on one side of the room, and you looked across, and half of the King Ranch was there. And the uranium company was there. And, you know, they had, like 25 people, and there's three members on the Water Commission.
  • And, we're looking. We had one advocate, her name was Savanna Robinson, an environmentalist attorney that was on staff, and she fought hard, she fought hard. She said, "This permit has holes in it." And, I'm not going to explain the politics of who the Governor was, but that plays a part, who was in power, and it was two to one. They were at two to one to allow the permit because the politics reached all the way to Austin from here.
  • DT: Can you explain a little bit more about the politics, it seems like a lot of times these decisions are more political than technical.
  • BF: Right. What happened was that, like I mentioned before, the first round, it was too new. The uranium company came in here, they had not joined the Chamber. Our local Chamber, you know, just jumped, took the dive, you know, like the lemmings going towards thethe cliff, you know, and falling out, you know. And they took that dive, said, "Look, we need the jobs, we need the economics of it."
  • And, I don't know that over the past few years, they claim so many jobs they did produce some jobs. They didn't produce what they claimed to have produced in terms of taxation, mineral taxation, although they claim that they were going to do wonders in terms of, you know, producing taxes for the county.
  • And, some of the, some of the jobs varied. Sometimes they had 16 employees, sometimes they had 5 because the price of uranium governed that. So, it wasn't an industry that was necessarily consistent in terms of a clean industry coming in with 100 jobs and keeping 100 jobs, you know, year one, two, three, four, five, and this is a span of ten years. I don't know that they ever reached over 20, I can't say that, but I didn't see the economic impact that they claimed that they were having in terms of jobs.
  • A couple of people visited us during that time that they were violating the rules because some of those poor individuals that were hired, are not professional individuals, they're not even skilled, they're just lay people that go out there and work. And they didn't have their radiation control badges on. And there's a lot of, there was a lot of hearsay about thethe operation back and forth. Some of the farmers were testing the water and claiming the water's not right. They had drainage during the rainy seasons, and it doesn't rain that much, but when it did, you know, the overflow caused some problems. So, we went through many years of this type of back and forth and the politics of it.
  • BF: Immediately, when they joined the Chamber and they infiltrated the Chamber, the Chamber became an advocate agency for the uranium. And you can imagine, we're not Chamber members, we're just individuals paying our taxes out here, belonging to nobody. No interest group, there was no designation given to us other than, oh, maybe there was.
  • We were called, "radical." We were called--"environmentalist" was a dirty word here. "Trouble makers", "wanting to ruin our economy", things of this nature. We went through a series of public hearings where we fought hard and, in fact, some people just, not knowing what was going on, kind of sympathized with us, I think, because they told us, you know, "We know that you're going through all this stress and we really sympathize with you, but we don't understand it."
  • And I think what they were saying is, "We dont know whether you're telling the truth, or they're telling the truth, or, we just don't understand it, you know, and, but we're glad that you're asking questions." And, the public, in general, was telling us, "We're glad you're there, we're glad you're doing this." We just ran out of steam after about ten years of fighting the issue and we traveled to many places. We went to Washington and did a lot of, tremendous amount of research. And some of that research is documented at the, at the state level because we submitted report, after report, after report that, actually my wife put together.
  • And, what it did, I think, it did cause some, create some awareness in terms of the public, they understand that uranium can cause cancer. And, although the uranium people claim that it doesn't, they said you can, even they even brought an example up.
  • I remember they brought a watch that glowed in the evening, at night. And they said, "Look, this has these ingredients and it doesn't cause cancer. You're wearing it, they use these things, you're wearing around your wrist, and your wearing it, you know, everywhere, you see it everywhere." And exposure, they were talking about exposure. And, we said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. Were not talking about wearing a wrist watch, we're talking about our ground water."
  • But they were good at that, and, politically, coming back to the Texas Water Commission, I think it was the tentacles of the strong King Ranch corporation that we have here that reached all the way to Austin, they are very powerful, and they were able to pull the right strings. I mean, let's face it, that we live in a political world and they had the politics on their side. In spite of that, in spite of knowing that they had the political power, we realized that, after the second hearing that we lost, in spite of that, we had a couple of commissioners that stuck with us and wanted to fight the uranium company.
  • And the county also spent a lot of money on consultants and they took an active role. And right now, one commissioner that is gone now, he lost, he retired, that was with the ranch, is no longer there. When that changed, the county took a little more aggressive role. And right now, they've helped the STOP Group considerably.
  • I kind of feel like we started all that. It was a battle, a continuous battle, and it hasn't ended. On occasion, we go to a meeting, we were invited, and I know when STOP first got together, we got together with them to give them the background of what had occurred since, like 1982 up until about 1992 when they started picking up the pieces there. And right now, they're right on top of it. They're right on top of restoration. So I kind of feel that that was an outgrowth of all that we did in terms of public hearings and trying to educate the public and fight this process that it's so easy to get this licensing process that's available to the state based on models, not based on some actual information, you know.
  • DT: Can you talk a little bit about that process?
  • BF: These models--what they do is, they experiment with a model. They take, it's like an extraction, you know, from the field and set up a small model. And in many cases, the model is on paper, or it's done in small quantities and they say, "Look, here's what we can do with thiswith this amount of water."
  • And then they take this model and say: "This is what we're going to do with it in the environment in a large scale." Well, sometimes that model is just on paper and it hasn't been proven. So they go through a process ofof mining and saying, "Okay, we're going to monitor these water wells and make sure that the levels, the water levels are still the same."
  • We had a hard time getting that kind of material, that feedback, from the state. First of all, they don't have a very good system of policing mining sites. They would come out, they would test the water, and back and forth with different types of information in terms of what they obtained and what the company obtained, and what a farmer obtained, and there was just, none of it correlated. And I don't know that there was ever, I've never read any proof that, yes, that our water is as clean as it was before they got here.
  • And they've asked for that material. And, maybe the STOP Group has received some of that material, but, we do know that they are not the same baseline levels when they started. The water isn't. So, you know, it's like anything else, if you start messing, if you start pulling uranium out of the water, once it hits oxygen, it's going to do all kinds of different things. They cannot tell you all the different things that it's going to do, it's just, it's too much.
  • DT: Did you get any technical help understanding these problems?
  • BF: We obtained technical help from some people, people in Austin that, the county hired some technical people, people that Jeff Sibley had contact with in Austin, so we did get some help. And the help that we got pointed towards the fact that they were going to pollute our water, so we kept fighting, trying to stop, we wanted to stop the permitting process. We didn't want to let them mine uranium, go mine it somewhere else, basically.
  • And, you know, there's an argument, well, you have to mine uranium to...because of nuclear energy in the future and this and that, so well thats fine, we can do that, but let's get it nailed down first, and it's not nailed down. Reverse osmosis is, I mentioned that it was labor intensive, you have to have people out there if the systems break down. Yellow cake is not contained, thats the powdery stuff that uranium id formed into. That gets into the air, there's no controls for that.
  • If some of this stuff travels through the air, I need to mention something called daughter products, bi-products. And some of these elements have half-lives of 50,000 years, you know, things of that nature. And we have a south-easterly here and all that material is floating in the air towards us, and we can, we've sat at many public hearings saying, "We're breathing this stuff, and you cannot contain it absolutely and you're telling us that it's not going to affect us 20 years from now? How can you tell us that? You can't tell us that." You cannot, actually they could not tell us, "You're not going to cause cancer in our community 20 years from now." They cannot tell us that, but they tried. And they got permitted.
  • DT: What were the responses from the proponets, the company when you'd say you have these concerns.
  • BF: They came back and they said that there are certain levels that the Texas Water Commission had set up that were, you know, this amount of uranium floating through the air was not dangerous. And they have, you know, to have a whole permitting process that says, "If you dont go above these levels, your okay." In other words, you start with water at a certain level, and it does have these elements, and they're saying, they give you this much of a gap and say, "You can pollute it this much and you're okay. It's when you pollute it this much that you're in trouble."
  • Come on, you can pollute it so much and you're not in trouble? They can't convince me of that. We've had too many people die of cancer, young people, in Kleberg County. We have a high rate of cancer, according to the Department of Health, in this region. And, probably, some of it comes from the oil business, not just uranium, you know. And the company has been here since the 1980's, you know, we're going to be hitting that mark where the uranium will start having an effect. But, probably, the oil industry had an effect on the environment already because our cancer levels are above the above. So we know that it's having an effect because of oil. And, some people say well, "Why don't we fight the oil?" Well, that's another, that's another story, that's another battle, and I guess we would have to spend the rest of our lives fighting those permits, you know, because they're continuous, they're always mining for oil.
  • DT: Speaking of permits, did you have much dealing with the agency that issues these permits, I guess this is now called Texas Natural Resources.
  • BF: Yeah, TNRCC. It is called TNRCC. We had a poor experience and I'm not going to blame staff up there. They were under-staffed. The Bureau of Radiation Control, that was another bureau, Department of Health. The Senator was successful in affecting the person that ran the Bureau of Radiation Control at one point in our history, because I think he was just terrible, just the most terrible person that you can begin to imagine.
  • But, I think that he had an effect on that and some changes had to be made and he made them. He was chairman of the subcommittee on the radiation control. But, I think that you get people in place and, I walked into Vic Hines' [Senator Truan's aide] office once, [State] Senator Truan's offices in Austin, and I walked in like I normally walked in, you know, even today, and there was about, you know, eight guys and they were from an uranium company and they were lobbying the Senator, you know.
  • And, you know, and this must be great because the company's got all this money to send lobbyists up there. But I dont, I only make it up there once or twice a year, you know, and I go knocking, and said, "Vic, can we talk a little bit about the environment, the canaries are dying, you know, I think we need to do something." And these guys are up there, you know, during the session, they live there. I can't compete with that. As a person wanting to help the environment, I cannot compete with the amount of money that they're putting into the system and all that they did to lobby for these permits. It's just impossible.
  • The system is not set up for citizens really to access it. We accessed it, but to a degree only. We did not have the political pull, we did not have a political interest group, we did not have a group that could infiltrate the Chamber or infiltrate the Economic Development Council or City Hall. What we did have, was a couple of sensitive commissioners that were on our side. One was a farmer, one was a barber, and they didn't really care about corporate America, they cared about people.
  • DT: These were county commissioners?
  • BF: County commissioners. And the county judge W.C. McDaniel was also helpful during those times. He was more of a mediator, but he was very much of an environmentalist himself, but he mediated much more than these two other commissioners did and they were gung ho. They said, "We're not going to let this happen if we can help it." But thats two out of five. Again, I mentioned that the judge was a mediator, so sometimes, he voted one way and sometimes he voted another way.
  • But the county did spend a lot of money in hiring a consultant. We went through public hearings and through a lot of money trying to help the citizens. And today, I think that there's a couple of commissioners that probably are on the uranium side. And maybe there's three votes in favor of the citizens. So you have to have that in place and that wasn't in place when we got started. And they didn't really know whatwhat to do because, you know, you take county commissioners, and all of a sudden you bombard them with reverse osmosis issues and ground water issues, what's this about, you know.
  • You know, you're going to have to tell me in a nutshell, and you tell them in a nutshell. And they say, well, I need more information, you know. And that's difficult to do. And so it took years and years and I think today, the public is still in the dark about these types of issues. And, you know, we watch a lot of The Learning Channel and Discovery and, thank God for those things, because I think they're bringing more of these issues to the forefront but where before, you know, this information was not available.
  • DT: Could you talk about how the public would respond if you went up to Joe Blow on the street and tried to describe what the problem was, what the reaction would be?
  • BF: Way back then, I think that they were just astounded at what we were saying in terms of the cancer issue, the health issues. I think people are health conscious, but they weren't necessarily knowledgeable about what uranium could do, in the open environment. What happened, the process of, you know, you're sucking it up out of the ground and then it's coming and hitting oxygen and daughter products and things of this nature. It was too much for them. These are people that are lay people, that are out here, you know, trying to live a life, and they were very glad, I think, that many times people said, "We're glad that you're concerned, we're concerned about our environment." They just didn't understand it.
  • I think if you went out today, the same thing would happen. It's kind of like asking somebody, you know, "Do you remember who the 16th President was?" You know, somebody's going to say, "Oh, Tom Horner, you know, I don't know." You know, they'll name you several people because people are just not concerned about those things.
  • And the environment is one of those issues. I think it's more important now than it was ten years ago and twenty years ago and we keep going further back. But people are not knowledgeable about what happens to our water.
  • They do not know about the water cycle, for instance. You know, how we do have water and how do we have drinking water. You know, how does it rain, go through a discharge zone and filters through the sands and, you know, how many ground water sources do we have? And ours is called the Goliad's Sands, for instance, and how far does it reach. And people just dont have that kind of knowledge. Most people will tell you that it's rather boring to even sit through a seminar about the ground water cycle and what this ground water means to us.
  • BF: Yet, it has become an economic issue in the costal bend because we're Corpus Christi is a major water user. And they're having to pipe water from Choke Canyon and so then it becomes a public issue in terms of, we need water. But even in Corpus Christi where they have so many refineries, it never became an environmental issue that I know of that was fought at any degree because I'm sure that those people and those refineries over the years have penetrated our ground water and the Nueces River.
  • I mean, there is no question in my mind. How do we change it? Gosh. I think that once you burn the wood, you know, you have to plant another tree. But, water? We have to have a lot of rains and a lot of discharge zones. I dont think we can replace water. Kind of like the rainforest, you know. If we cut it down, we're hurting ourselves. That's the basics.
  • DW: When you were talking about the research on the issues, did you ever find or use as a precedent that prevailed of the Navajo uranium miners in northern New Mexico and look of any of their research studies done there? What did you find there?
  • BF: Yes we did. Basically what we found in some of those mines up there, was that they polluted. You mentioned a couple of Indian tribes. They have higher rates of cancer up there. My wife did most of that research, but we found the same thing that we found in Panna Maria, the same thing that we found in Kennedy County, same thing that we found in George West, the same thing that we found in Bruni.
  • In fact, we discovered in Harpersville, that there were babies having problems. And I think that they were all of that research paralleled what happened to the Indian tribes. I forget what other sites she researched, but they were all researched. And we made those arguments, lengthy arguments, I'm talking about hours and hours and hours of testimony of written materials that was submitted to the Texas Water Commission at the time.
  • It almost seemed like we'd get to a public hearing after submitting all this material. And you have to consider, you know, we have graduate degrees, but, you know, they brought a few PhD's with them, you know, and geology and hydrology, you know, and oh, here we are, you know, John Q. Public fighting corporate America, that's what it was about.
  • And it is very difficult to fight corporate America. The only thing is, the only thing that we found, and when they were looking, you know, you get a hydrologist, we can all read. You know, if you can read then you can interpret. And we were reading the same materials, they just made different interpretations, and we saw that. So, it was who could sell what to whom.
  • DT: What would happen when you have a lot of complicated technical information and one interpretation says, "Go slow." The other interpretation says, "Go ahead with the mining." Why do you think the public or the authorities would be more inclined to say, "Let's go ahead."
  • BF: Well, I think that, basically, they had good arguments in terms of the models, and they had good arguments in terms of the processes, and they had good arguments in terms of, not everything is unsafe, you know. There's a nuclear plant here and a nuclear plant there and the environment is pristine and they brought examples. And I imagine that you can find that, you can show examples.
  • And we brought up examples where that didn't happen. So then we had the pros and cons and then you present it to the Board and they're sitting there, so what's the difference? How are you going to decide when you've got good arguments on both sides? We had good arguments? So what causes them to lean to one side? In my opinion, it's economics. Who's got more money? Who's got the most power? Thats what it's all about. It's about Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. It's about who's in office, it's about who you want to help.
  • And, many times, I think that we, in America...I remember some people in South America from Honduras came up and I was running a store out of Houston. And they were coming up to buy rugs and they said, you know, "We just cannot understand why you Americans waste so much electricity." They said, "It's neon city here and lights are on forever." He said, "We cannot do that where we come from."
  • Electricity was something very precious and very expensive, and he couldn't have it. I guess, it's the difference between an underdeveloped country and a developed country. In essence, what they were saying, we're wasting energy. And we were, and we are, and we do. They also commented on how many car washes we had because they don't have any in Honduras and we just blew water left and right. And they had a point because I kept thinking about, "That's true, water resources are not endless." You know, so.
  • DT: You said that some of these corporations sponsoring this proposal seemed to have the benefit of the doubt in a lot of the decisions at the agencies because of economics. But the economics of the mine seemed marginal, what did you say 5 people sometimes might work there and 16 at other times. Where was the money flowing?
  • BF: Well, if the price of uranium was right, they made a lot of money, and, of course, we even researched that. They weren't even selling it in America. That uranium that they were mining in Kleberg County was going somewhere else. Yeah.
  • DT: Was the money going into the political process rather than into the local economy? BF: You mean, the money developed from the mining? Or how do you mean?
  • DT: To my way of thinking, it seems like a lot of money and effort was going into the lobbying and the political efforts.
  • BF: Right, right. Well, yeah, I think so. But I think that the amount of profit that they were making, the price was right. What they were paying consultants is nothing to them. To us, it was an effort to fly to Washington D.C. to talk to some people and to research the Federal Acts that affected ground water.
  • And, we ran across some things at the Federal level where we wanted to declare our groundwater our sole-source system. Well, that's like rewriting the constitution. You know, they say, "Okay you have a sole source, we want to protect it, and here's how you protect it." Well, my God, you know, you're going to need three PhD's before you even get to writing your thesis, you know. That's how complicated that system was.
  • They made it very hard. And then, the Dallas District, the environmental people, the EPA people in Dallas, extremely reluctant to get involved with declaring a ground water source. Why? We went through the public hearing, we had citizens. The only thing that was left was initiative and referendum, let's take a vote. And I remember we stood up and said, you know, "Why dont we put this up for a vote. Can we vote on this?" And they said, "Can't do that. This is a company, they're mining. What are you going to vote for?" Well, we want to vote whether we want the uranium company here or not. And we knew we could win that.
  • If we went to initiative referendum, the people would vote it down. That's why it's not part of that system. We could not have that privilege to vote whether we wanted someone to pollute our ground water or not. It was left to the bureaucrats in Austin, in Washington, and the Dallas district office was terrible, just terrible, just terrible about following up on our request to declare a ground water, a sole ground water source. If we could do that, then we would have more power in terms of what the uranium company could do. And, basically, we would have had the power to say, "You're not going to mine here." Well, thats never going to happen, okay.
  • DT: So, when you approached the EPA, they just didn't act very responsive? BF: They responded, but they didn't answer our questions. They never, and they gave us a process to declare this a ground water, sole ground water source, and, that process is beyond anybody's reach.
  • DT: Do you think there is an environmental justice issue, that the community doesn't have a lot of political power? BF: Absolutely, absolutely. There is a process, thats a public hearing process, and we can complain and we can ask, but if the powers that be are not on your side, you know, you're not going to do it, and you can't go to referendum on issues like this. You know, it would be a good issue for a legislator to put forth and say, you know, "From now on, any environmental issue, we're going to put it up for referendum. Do we want to cut the trees or not, let's vote on it." Thats the democratic process, isn't it? But we dont do it that way in America. Not that. We vote on everything else. We vote on other things, but we don't vote on the environment.
  • DT: Why do you think that is? BF: Kind of like the tobacco industry and the lobbyists and a legislator probably wouldn't touch it, maybe even because they fear for their lives. I mean, we've had a lot of cases of people involved in the environment that fear for their lives, but I think there's a strong lobby out there. I don't know that we have a legislator that would even propose a bill, or maybe they have, I just dont know about it. And a legislator says, "Look, from now on, instead of cutting down the forest, and building homes, we're going to have the people who live there if we can cut down the forest and see what they say."
  • DT: Did you every feel personally at risk making these arguments against the mine? BF: I never felt personally at risk because this is my home base, this is my territory, and it is not theirs. I was in my home base and I wasn't in an environment that I did not know. I knew it better than they did. And they were from the outside, in fact, these people that brought the uranium company in, I never felt, I never feared anything. Leary of them, yes, but it was not a fear of my life, you know. I've always felt very comfortable in my own back yard.
  • DT: Any sense of being isolated, where you were proposing something that the community didn't go with?
  • BF: No, I didn't feel isolated. I felt, I felt like we were dealing with an issue that was hard to deal with because the public input is limited. You know, you have public hearings, the pros and cons, you go through the whole process, you're trying to prove something to a court, the court being the Texas Water Commission or TNRCC [Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission], and then whatever they say is what happens, that's it, that's the end of...you can appeal, and we went through appeals processes, but we never went through referendums or anything like that.
  • Recently, we just had an issue of an overpass here in this community. And, because it was a city issue, they said, "Let's put it for referendum, let's put it up for referendum." And the city council said, "We want this overpass because we're going to save lives, for the ambulance to go over." And some people said, "No, you're not going to save nothing, you're going to ruin our highway, you're going to do this." And we put it up for referendum and it failed.
  • It really failed because the public had that process built in because of city ordinances, self-government it's a home rule government. Well, that doesn't quite hit for county government because it's an extension of the state and the environment, and then you've got the Feds involved.
  • But I wished that we had home rule power. And, of course, this uranium company was not in the city of Kingsville, it was outside, it was in the county jurisdiction, so there was no home rule power to bring referendum up in any form or fashion. Maybe, if it had been inside the city limits, we could have pulled referendum, but not outside. And that goes for anything. If you're out in an unincorporated part of the country, what can you do? What can we do? But argue in public hearings the pros and cons and plead with boards that stand as judges in terms of what's good for our environment.
  • DW: Did you have any civil disobedience? Did you go to meetings with placards and signs, "No nukes?" Did you do anything along those lines?
  • BF: No, no, it was very orderly. Everything we did was very orderly. The public hearings were conducted by state agencies. There was a process, you know, we presented our case, we were given a certain amount of time. We presented our research, that is documented, that was documented. And then these people, the attorneys that work for these agencies, assessed the materials and the vote was two to one. It was not unanimous.
  • The first round, it was three to zero, we won, you know. You know, we didn't come and celebrate, we just didn't do that kind of thing, we just, you know, we saved our water. Then the second round, is when it started deteriorating, the vote was two to one in favor of the uranium permit. So what happened between round one and round two, what happened? Well what happened was politics, that's what happened.
  • DT: Have you heard any details of how the vote changed and why? BF: At the time?
  • DT: Or since, yes. BF: Ah, you know at the time we approached it, the King Ranch was on our side, all the commissioners were on our side, the uranium people had not infiltrated the community. They didn't know anything about it, we were, you know, from here, we said, "This is wrong," it went through. We stopped them.
  • Well, they came back and joined the Chamber, they went through the political process, starting meeting people and holding their own, not public hearings, but holding their own town meetings and inviting the public and doing this educational process, and we went and we were allowed to ask questions.
  • But in time, they won out, they won the Chamber, they won the Economic Development CounterCouncil. And, as I remember, I walked into the Economic Development Council's director's office, he had a little pyramid sitting on his office. And it said "URI" and it had a little piece of yellow cake inside, you know. And I said, you know, "I know that it can't harm you because it's sealed, but I bet you if you crack it open and eat it, you'll die, guaranteed." And he said, "Well, but that's not what it's for." He said, "That's not what it's for." "What's it for?" I said. "What is this thing for?"
  • We argued back and forth what it was for. And, I even walked into a strong politician's state politician's office in Austin, and there was that same little pyramid. I said "Oh, God. I need to leave here." I didn't even waste my time anymore.
  • Anywhere I saw a little pyramid, I knew that they had infiltrated. But I never saw it in Senator Truan's office, okay, I never saw it there. He's been a staunch supporter of the environment. And he did help us. And I think that we would have, we would have probably faired better if we had had the economics to back us up, number one, and even the politics, you know. We didn't have either one.
  • DT: Did you get any help from the media? The newspapers?
  • BF: The media is owned by the King Ranch in this community. So Round one was supported, you know. And then as soon as soon as everything shifted, in the Kingsville Record, they, of course, gave the side to the uranium company. And they even made the general engineer of the uranium company President of the Chamber at one time, and I know him. I know him well. I say "Hello" to him, and you know, and in thein the back of my mind I say, "You haven't died yet, you know, you've been up near the yellow cake for the last 20 years, you know." And that's mean, I shouldn't say that. He's a nice guy, he has a family, he has a background in mining, and, you know, that's his livelihood.
  • We just didn't agree in coming to this is my community. I was born and raised here, he wasn't. And maybe I shouldn't think that way, because we're all Americans, you know, type of thing. But, he can go anywhere he wants, I suppose, and this is home for family and generations of family, there's three or four generations of my family here. And maybe that's an important factor in terms of how we look at it.
  • We didn't want to stop progress, that's not what we're about, but we wanted to save our ground water. And maybe we saved it, to a degree, I don't know what that degree is, we're going to find that out once we get into the restoration phase, and that's close at hand. The uranium company hasn't busted yet, but it's close.
  • DT: To bankruptcy? BF: Yes.
  • DT: What has driven it into bankruptcy?
  • BF: The price of uranium...went down. And it's gone down many times. Ah, you know, we're Catholics, we light candles, you know. And every time the price went down, we'd light a few candles and try to maintain it. You know we've lost political support, we've lost, you know, we've used all our minds that we could, you know, let's just do a little prayer, you know. And we did that because we felt strongly about this issue. I think that if, not just uranium, if somebody had come in here, and I remember an issue at the county.
  • I was working for the county and the tree people came in the, was it Arbor Day, and it's a small non-profit, and they came before the county and they told this one commissioner, his name is Commissioner Loomis, they said, "We understand that you all are going to cut down all the mesquites across the street here because you're going to make a little park here, develop a little park, and we're here to tell you that that cutting down of trees is not healthy for the environment."
  • So the commissioner sat there and says, "Well, the other day the King Ranch cleared 40,000 acres of mesquite to take advantage of agricultural tax incentives, have you called them?" And the ladies were said, "I don't want to be mean to you, but I'd like for you to send them a letter and tell them what you think, and then come over here and whatever they do, I'll do, how's that?" And they said, "Thank you very much commissioner." And, that was okay to cut down 40,000 acres of mesquite trees for agricultural purposes, tax incentives, but it was not okay to cut down a few trees across the courthouse, and they didn't, actually. But that's the kind of system we have, you know, it doesnt make sense sometimes.
  • DT: You said earlier that you, and you may have been in jest, but you were saying that you lit some candles to help your cause. I'm wondering if the church or other religious institutions in Kingsville were of any help. Sometimes religious figures speak out on the environment. BF: Not on this issue, we never...we don't use the church, we I say, myself, my wife, and I do not use the church for that purpose. We'll light candles, and we'll do a pilgrimage to a site, but not use the church to advocate for anything.
  • DT: What sort of pilgrimages would you do? BF: Well, Catholics believe in...we have shrines all over the place and relics, so we travel to a place where there's a bone that belonged to one of our saints.
  • DT: Are there any particular saints? I guess St. Francis would be one that's sympathetic? BF: Actually, we prayed to a saint that goes by the name of Judas Thaddeus, not Judas Iscariot, but Judas Thaddeus. And he was a cousin to Christ and he's our saint of hopeless cases. And we've prayed a lot to him.
  • DW: You mentioned that the tree people came in on an unrelated issue. I've found in some of the studies I've done that when you have a human health impact, in this case, the uranium, they often don't pay attention. But if you can link the mining to the X wildlife zone or migratory bird, or sometimes they get more interested in helping if they find out if it hurts animals than people because they don't want to know about humans.
  • BF: Well, you know, that's interesting. We looked at that. See, we have an, we have an estuary here in Kleberg County, and we addressed the estuary. We went to Washington with it and said, "Look, you know, this could harm these wet lands." And one of the few pristine estuaries in the northern continent that is still very viable. And it's a bird sanctuary and there's a few endangered species that are found in Kleberg County and we used that.
  • We used that with Washington more than we did with the state because we were looking for exemptions. And I bring up exemptions because we were looking at different avenues of fighting this uranium company so we went, we went through the Endangered Species Act and ran into another road block, you know. In Washington, you've got these guys that some believe in saving the eagle, and some really don't give a damn about saving the eagle, you know, they just don't care.
  • So we went that route, and we used the fact that we had certain animals in the entire coastal bend that, you know, that could be affected. And I brought up earlier the comment about a commissioner, because when we made our presentation about endangered species and even some botany that was involved, one commissioner said, you know, "I can't really get over it with you guys wanting to save all the toads and all the flies and insects.
  • And I clearly told him, I said, you know, "You haven't heard about the canaries, you know, where have you been? When the canaries go, then we're right behind them." I said, "Dont you know that?" And he said, "Oh, thats a lot of hog wash." He said, "Nobody's going to miss a couple of toads." And I said, "Well, I'm sorry you feel that way."
  • But obviously, he did not understand what that meant. And, I would imagine he falls into the category that can not name who the 16th President is in our history, and we have many people like that. But that's a factor. The Endangered Species Act, we followed that, we followed the wetlands process, trying to save our environment, it didn't work. There's some contradictions in terms of what the legislation says in saving our environment and what they really want to do with it.
  • DT: What do they really want to do with it? BF: Nothing. You know, you get down to EPA in Dallas and you say, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, here's this act, here's this act." They say, "Well, we need to look at it." Well, if the word comes down from where ever their boss is, thats who controls it. Politics. And we ran into brick wall after brick wall in terms of what was at hand and what we could do and what was done, just two different things.
  • We could have all the Endangered Species Acts that we want, there's not too many people working on it. And you start looking at a list, and I have a list somewhere around here of endangered species in this area, in Texas. And you start looking at toads and you start looking at different kinds of fish and different birds. And one was spotted the other, it was in the newspaper, one bird was spotted in Kennedy County and all of the bird watchers came from all over. And we had made that point.
  • We said, "Tourism, you know, if the bird goes, then that's the cleanest dollar you can get." But somehow, they couldn't relate to tourism dollars, you know, they could relate to up front money, and possibly the Chamber could relate to the $1,000 dollar donation that the company gives them every year, you know. But where's the money from the bird? Well, they dont understand economics, you know, they dont understand how the bird watchers that came to Kennedy County to, I think it was somesome kind of robin, that came to view this robin, had to stay somewhere, had to fill up with gas, and they don't understand those type of micro-economics. The Chamber wanted their little $1000 dollar donation, I suppose, from the uranium company. End of Reel 2079