To: Adbusters,

This ad is about to appear in THE Magazine, and the El Dorado Sun, two local papers in Northern New Mexico. It is a commentary on the fires sweeping through 49000 acres and burning 1/3 of the prime US nuclear weapons and testing facility LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory). Furthermore the ad demands that the mission of Los Alamos comes into compliance with the NPT (Non Proliferation Treaty), the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban) and various other international laws, by cessation of all weapons related activity.

The problem here in New Mexico is not only that the fires have happened, but that the Federal Government is so deeply invested in a "Normalcy" Public relationship campaign that that has become public policy, rather than a scientific and ecological assessment of the situation. We believe that the truth about the fires is being hidden in secrecy for fear of loosing all kinds of so-called "assets", including the scientists at the Labs, and not to alarm the world.

The fact of the matter is that this fire raged at temperatures of 2000 F or so, through an environmentally abused region, with more than 2200 known contaminated sites, that include uranium, plutonium, high explosives, PCB’s? you name it. The Cerro Grande fire also consumed de-commissioned contaminated buildings, going all the way back to the Manhattan Project, the machine shop for the main research and development facility (DARTH), various storage areas, contaminated canyons, houses, etc.

Whereas there already was a serious problem with contaminated water running into our watershed, this problem will now be magnified. Once the monsoon arrives in July, rain will run in relentless arroyos, through the town of Los Alamos, through the tech areas, into contaminated canyons, rushing down into the Rio Grande. Estimates have indicated that we should expect flows of 5000CFS during an average rainfall. The contaminated sediments will end up a little downstream on Indian land and in a water reservoir called Cochiti Lake the de-facto laboratory waste containment area of last resort. There the deposits of radio nuclides heavy metals, high explosives and PCB’s will end up mixed with vast amounts of mud and soil making ‘clean-up’ impractical. From there it will concentrate in the biological chain, and seep out through Cochiti Dam into the Rio Grande water source of millions of people downstream—to end up contaminating the Gulf of Mexico, changing all life in its wake.

This is not all: the ‘airshed’ will also be contaminated, now that the green mantle of vegetation has been reduced to ashes up to a foot deep. All the toxins, even the uranium and plutonium dust, will easily become airborne in the fierce dry winds of spring. The Lab already ordered acres of nets to quickly, but inadequately, cover up the damage done, because of fears of re-suspended toxins into the air.

This region has been the de-facto Nuclear Colony of the USA. A National "sacrifice Zone’ to hide America’s dirty secret behind a romanticized façade of the Wild West. Accurate information is hard to come by; information about the true nature of the damage done by the fire is scarce. For example: alpha radiation is on average running at ten times the normal amount and beta radiation two times. Spot measurements have been taken that are way higher than that (up to 36 times). Yet the Labs refuse to do the isotope analyses to figure out which elements are responsible for these increases. Instead they released the story that these readings are completely commensurate with the normal expectations of releases of natural radon in a fire.

The power structure behind the LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratories) is deliberately obscured and withdrawn completely from regulation and public oversight. The University of California under a contract with the DOE (Dept. of Energy) runs the Labs. The DOE gets its orders from the DOD (Defense) and the presidency, but more and more the Laboratory has been functioning as if it is its own semi autonomous entity with its own army, its own political objectives complete with tax paid lobbyists, commercial advertising and its corrupting hand-outs to the local Pueblos and other disadvantaged minority and farming communities throughout Northern New Mexico.

The local media also feed off the labs, and have shown no interest in sustained investigative reporting. Thus the state of denial has reached unbearable proportions, to be compared with the worst days from the Soviet Empire.

Estimates for immediate re-mediation of the forest in order to prevent the worst expected flooding run into the hundreds of millions of dollars and yet the Federal government , the University of California, the Doe or LANL itself have yet to step up to the plate and release the necessary funds immediately. Whereas the coordination between all the different state and federal agencies during the fire was already chaotic and strained , the monumental task of immediate re-mediation casts an even darker shadow: Will the different bureaucracies be up for acting out an intricate engineering plan within four to six weeks involving many millions of dollars and a large army of workers?

I am appealing to your demonstrated sense of responsibility to break the real story of America’s dirty secret ?Los Alamos—to the world: its mission, its weapon programs (including biological warfare), its legacy of callous pollution and help assess the real dangers that this ‘fountainhead of proliferation’ poses to its immediate neighbors and the rest of the world.

Sincerely,

Willem Malten