Apr 9 1996
From The Space Library
Rockwell International Corporation pled guilty to charges of violating federal law in disposing of hazardous waste. Federal prosecutors had charged the company with violating the law after a 1994 explosion at a Rockwell rocket-testing facility in Southern California killed scientists Otto K. Heiney and Larry A. Pugh. Rockwell's Chief Executive Officer Donald R. Beall called the incident "a corporate failure for which we accept responsibility." By pleading guilty, Rockwell acknowledged liability and agreed to pay a US$6.5 million fine. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the case was only one aspect of a long-term investigation into Rockwell's compliance with environmental regulations, an investigation that Rockwell's guilty plea did not end. Federal auditors were also looking into the possibility that Rockwell had overcharged NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense for disposal costs.
NASA made its high-altitude research plane available to the disaster-recovery team responsible for containing hazardous leakage at the California Gulch Superfund site in Leadville, Colorado. The ER-2 plane, a U-2 spy plane adapted for civilian use, captured thousands of measurements per second, and its spectrometer mapped hundreds of square miles during each reconnaissance flight. Scientists used NASA's plane to map minerals and other substances, to help them detect the location of acid leaks from mines and heavy-metal contamination. Officials estimated that the ER-2 plane's identification of contaminated areas had saved cleanup agencies about one year and more than US$500,000.
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