TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEWEE: Betty Brink (BB)
INTERVIEWERS: David Todd (DT) and David Weisman (DW)
DATE: October 14, 2000
LOCATION: Fort Worth, Texas
TRANSCRIBERS: Lacy Goldsmith and Robin Johnson
SOURCE MEDIA: Mini-DV
REELS: 2103 and 2104

Please note that the corresponding videos include roughly 60 seconds of color bars and sound tone for technical settings at the outset of the recordings. Numbers correlate with the time codes on the VHS tape copy of the interview. “Misc.” refers to background noise or off-camera conversation that is unrelated to the interview.

DT: My name’s David Todd. I‘m here for the Conservation History Association of Texas. And we’re in Fort Worth, Texas, at Betty Brink’s home and we have the good chance to visit with her about her work on a variety of issues, especially about Comanche Peak and some of her work on that issue. So I wanted to take this chance to thank you for spending some time.
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BB: Surely, I’m glad to be here.
DT: Thank you. I wanted to begin with talking about your childhood and if there might have been parents, teachers, friends who might have first introduced you to environmental issues.
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BB: Well, I grew up in this house that we’re filming in and this is my home. And it was quite rural when I was a—a young girl. My grandfather was a fisherman. My father was a fisherman. They were very close to the land and I grew up in that kind of an environment. The—early in the years when I was in school, I had a very good teacher—an English teacher—who taught me to read critically. That was one of my first introductions to good literature and to critical thinking and it was a very small high school and I was quite lucky, I think, to have such a—a forward thinking teacher at that period of time. She encouraged me to go into journalism, which was my desired field at the time but I did what a lot of women of my generation did and got married and began to raise a family. So I put off my journalism career a bit, however, I did finally get back to it. But I think growing up in the—in a rural community where we had gardens—we always had a very large garden—my father, and grandfather, and grandmother, and mother were—did a lot of preservation of this particular area. They were—they were interested in making sure that the creek always had fish and that—they fought some battles to keep encroachment of industry and landfills and that sort of thing away from this area. So, yes, I think you might say I had—I had a good introduction to environmental issues early on.
DT: And how did you first get introduced to the nuclear campaigns and particularly Comanche Peak?
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BB: Well, the nuclear issue—prior to being involved in the—in the Com—Comanche Peak or the nuclear issue as it—as it related to domestic power, we were—my husband and I were living in East Texas. We lived in East Texas for maybe about 20 years. And we were deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and the peace movement, and in the environmental movement there in the—at that time, the environmental movement in East Texas was focused on trying to save the Big Thicket. And the Big Thicket, as—as you know and anyone in Texas knows, is a very priceless jewel of environmental—sort of an environmental and biological crossroads. And there were—there were quite a few people all over the state—Austin lead the battle quite a bit—to save and preserve the Big Thicket. Well, it—it—what we saved there was not the real Big Thicket but there was enough of it preserved that we s—we still have some of that for our kids. That more or less got some of us who were involved, I think, in the peace movement looking at environmental issues a little more closely in our—in our state, at least, it did my husband and my myself when we were in—in East Texas. Later on we moved to Fort Worth and, having been involved in the anti-war movement, which ultimately lead, I think, all of us to become involved in—at—in the nuclear weapons protest and that was sort of a transition to get us to look at nuclear power. We moved to Fort Worth and we were involved—we became involved with some of the folks here who were fighting Comanche Peak.
DT: Can you talk a little bit about the connections you see between the peace movement and the environmental movement as they’ve played out in your life?
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BB: Well, the peace movement, I think, was a—was a defining moment. It—it—and—I will say that—that Civil Rights Movement, of course, was—was a larger defining moment for many of us in the south and for Blacks in particular. But I think that—that when—especially when Martin Luther King took the stand that he did in opposing the war in Vietnam, it—it moved many of us to look at the larger picture of what was happening and what Vietnam really represented as far as justice and—and peace and—and all of the larger issues. And I think that when—when that occurred, many of us who were involved rather narrowly in the Civil Rights Movement looking at local issues in particular, you know, just had a—had a larger vision where he—he opened for many of us a vision that was much broader. So, yes, I think that the—the peace movement was connected and linked not only from the Civil Rights Movement but then on into the anti-nuclear movement that fully developed following, I think, the—the Vietnam War.
DT: And the link between the Civil Rights Movement and the environmental movement, is it about environmental justice?
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BB: Well, yes. See, I—I think all of these issues are about justice. And I think they’re all so intertwined that you really can’t—well—whilst—while they were compartmentalized for a long number of years in this country, I think that—that you’ll loo—if you look at the history of all of these movements, that the same people show up in all of them, you know. Eventually, many of us, whatever—wherever we started in whichever—whichever forum we started, that we became connected in those ways. And I think that’s an interesting kind of analogy because it—it—to me, the beautiful thing about our environment and—and—and our—and the earth is how we are all interconnected, how everything is interconnected. And so, you know, everything has an impact on something else. So I think that that made us all linked, you know, to—to—to a common purpose and—and often that purpose was developed, you know, I mean, finalized in looking at not just environmental justice, but justice.
DT: Thanks for introducing us to how you may have come to the environmental movement. Maybe you can go to the next step and talk about you became involved in the fight against Comanche Peak once you moved…
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BB: Well we moved…
DT: …back to Fort Worth.
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BB: …we moved back to Fort Worth and—and I—I had met some of the people at state rallies and at different—in different—different forums when we were involved in the Civil Rights Movement and the peace movement in—in east Texas. So I knew some of the people. When we moved to Fort Worth, we—we became involved again in the liberal Democratic group here, which is still quite small. It was small then but quite small, but vocal, and we heard that TU [Texas Utilities] Electric was building a—a nuclear power plant. And—and we were just beginning to question, you know, the peaceful use of nuclear power, which, I think, for most people of my generation, we were really lead down the garden path on that issue because the early leaders—Eisenhower in particular—were really touting the use of nuclear power as a—as an energy efficient source that, in effect, gave them the opportunity, I think, to continue to develop the bomb. And—and what—what was happening, it was a—it was just pure par—propaganda as far as I’m concerned, and it was—it was politically motivated because what they wanted the American people to do, of course, was accept the nuclear weapons industry. They wanted us to accept nuclear as—as something that—not to be afraid of. So, by introducing it into the—into the communities as a source of safe energy, it—it defused, you know, the fear of—of nuclear for a lot of people. And I bought into that a long time, you know, I don’t deny that. But when we were—when we got to—when we came back to Fort Worth we became involved with some people who were fighting the plant.
DT: And what year was this?
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BB: This was 1971.
DT: Okay.
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BB: The plant had been—had just been proposed and it was—they—whether they had even broken ground yet or not, I can’t recall. I think that they finally broke ground sometime in the early ‘70’s. But, at any rate, it was called Armadillo Coalition and that—that was a—a—a very scrappy group of people. There weren’t very many of us and—but, they were holding rallies, and they were trying to hold meetings, and they were trying to educate people about nuclear power. And they were using many of the methods of the ‘60’s to do so.
DT: Can you talk about some of the events, and campaigns, and demonstrations and so on?
(misc.)
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BB: Well one of the thing—course, some of the—some of the things that—that—that were successful during the anti-war movement were the—the—the demonstrations, the marches, you know, the calling together of the troops and—if—if you will, and—and I think you could get—you could get many people out for an afternoon of camaraderie and, you know, picketing, where you couldn’t get them into a auditorium to hear a long lecture from, you know, some professor on the dangers of nuclear power. So, basically, the—the leaders of the coalition here and I think throughout the country at that time, were using those same tactics that worked well for the—for the anti-war movement to rally people. And some of the things that we did I thought were kind of creative. We had—my granddaughter may not go along with this but we had a—we had a—one demonstration in front of Comanche Peak and the—the—we had a pickup truck with two empty barrels, of course, but these two big barrels had—had the nuclear sign on them and they represented nuclear waste. And we had people there with their children and grandchildren, and my grandkids were sitting on the bed of the truck with the big barrels and—to demonstrate, you know, the dangers to children. And they tell me now that that was—that the bed of that pickup was very hot and their little feet were—and their little were being—they weren’t real happy with that. So—but they showed up—they—they—they were photographed by the Star Telegram and so they—that offset their discomfort, I guess, to some degree. But those were the kinds of things that—that they—that we were doing then. It did get publicity. They were good—what, you know, photo shoots for—for the Star Telegram so that sort of thing began to make the papers. And—and, of course, it pulled more people in.
DT: Did you have any slogans or chants that you can recall that were hokey?
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BB: Well, I’ll have to think about that a little bit because it was at—during the—during the—the war, of course, the—the chants that—that became the most famous were, you know, dealt with LBJ and the war and that sort of thing. But Comanche Peak—the—the issue of Comanche Peak—the big domes, the—the nuclear symbols, those were the kinds of things that were used on the—on the pickets and on the signs and so forth.
DT: What sort of media coverage did you typically get?
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BB: Well, the—the media coverage was pretty good in the beginning because, I think, it was—the media was—was a little hungry for something like that, you know, there’s—there—the—the Vietnam War had—was—had wi—wound down and was about to end. The—the—there had never been a large, I think, well strong movement in Fort Worth against the war. There had been a few anti-war protestors but there had never been a—a lot of big demonstrations. The Comanche Peak fight drew out a lot more people. It was, perhaps, a little bit more acceptable in Fort Worth. TU Electric was not the friendly neighborhood utility that they liked to present themselves to be. TU Electric was not an easy target but it was a target that people were not very sympathetic to, the monopoly electric company. So I think, in that sense, there was a—a lot more sympathetic—a lot more people who were sympathetic to the—the movement and to the protest. Right—money was a big issue.
DT: Could you talk a little bit about some of the different camps of people that were involved in this opposition? I understood that some came from a rate-payer’s background, and some from an environmental, or some from an anti-war background.
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BB: Right—right.
DT: Can you discuss some of that?
00:17:10 – 2103
BB: Yeah, I think the rate-payers were probably one of the strongest groups that became involved in—in opposition to Comanche Peak. Certainly, Juanita Ellis’ group in Dallas, which we were—were companion group to for a long number of years—her group grew strictly out of a rate-payer opposition group. And the…
DT: CASE, is that right?
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BB: CASE, yes—yes. Citizens Associated for Sound Energy, I think—or Safe Energy. It’s been a long time to remember all the acronyms and what they stood for. But the—I think the rate-payers were one of the strongest groups. The rate-payers, of course, were not real comfortable, I think, with the tactics of those who had been in the anti-war movement and who—and the peace movement and their tactics to—to these demonstrations as a—as a method of calling attention to the dangers of nuclear power. But, ultimately, the groups began to meld in a—in a real, I think, effective way. Armadillo Coalition more or less evolved into a group called Citizens for Fair Utility Regulation, which none of us were real happy with that moniker but we somehow got stuck with it and I’m not sure the history of that at this—now. But it became CFUR—is what it was called. The Armadillo Coalition s—maintained a presence for a long time but, eventually, the—the—the folks in the Armadillo Coalition became very active in CFUR. The—the—both groups, CASE and CFUR, used a—a tactic that was effective then and that was that they challenged the licensing of the plan. And that was a—that was an—that was a right that was open to rate-payers that is being closed off in, you know, in many—many ways now be—because of NRC regulations that are trying to close off citizen participation. Because citizen participation challenging the—the licensing of a nuclear plant could—did and could extend its opening date for years. And this is basically what happened here. Because of the two groups, CASE and CFUR, both asking for intervention status in the licensing of the plan and—and we were granted intervention status by the NRC. Then that gave us access to documents. It—it’s like—it was like a lawsuit where we—we were able to get documents and the plans for the plant and we were able to ask hard questions because it was—it was—we were—we were—we—we had the access to—to all of their records through discovery. So it was—it’s a type of lawsuit that—that allowed us then to get into the inner—inner workings of the plant and also to ask hard questions of TU Electric.
DT: Before you get too much into the permit process, I’m still intrigued that there were a couple of other groups that I think were involved. I wonder if you could briefly describe them. I think they’d been active in the fight against Comanche Peak. One was called the Comanche Peak Life Force…
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BB: Right.
DT: …and another was, I think a group that’s still around, called Texas Citizen Action.
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BB: Right, Texas Citizen Action actually came on the scene a little later but the Comanche Peak Life Force was a—a—grew out of the Armadillo Coalition. They were, as I told—as I said earlier, a lot of the same—a lot of the people involved in different movements will show up again, you know, under a new name for specific purposes. The Comanche Peak Life Force was a group—Mavis Belisle and Jim Schermbeck were, I think, the two crucial leaders of that group who had very good methods of—and had been—had been trained well in their—in their earlier life as anti-war protestors. But they were very dedicated and are still. Both of them are still involved in—in some form of environmental justice issues. But what the—what the Comanche Peak Life Force did, and which created quite a bit of publicity—and bad publicity at that for the plant—they ac—they participated in acts of civil disobedience. And that was a—that’s a very new thing for Texas. I mean, acts of civil disobedience were very—at least, for Texas and it’s nuclear protest movement—because acts of civil disobedience had been occurring quite frequently in the east at plants that were being built in Vermont and New York but here that was an unheard of kind of tactic.
DT: What sort of acts of disobedience would they have?
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BB: They trespassed. They went over the fence. They—they did this on several occasions and they were arrested and they were put into jail in Glen Rose, and they had a—they had a—a—a—it was an—it was a fascinating period with our involvement with the folks of Glen Rose. I was there. I didn’t—I didn’t participate in—in the—in civil disobedience. I didn’t go over the fence but I was there in the role of a sport—support person. And that is basically how we more or less supported each other. CFUR acted in the support role for those who decided to become—to go over the fence and be arrested. So when Schermbeck and—and Mavis and, oh, I think about ten or fifteen others—I’m not sure of the exact number—but there were quite a large number. They filled the jail to overflowing in—in Glen Rose. When they—when they did that then we backed them up by trying to—and—find attorneys and expert witnesses to come in and speak at their trial because they demanded a jury trial. And so that was quite a—an exciting period, if you’d like for me to talk about that a little bit.
DT: Oh, yeah, please do.
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BB: The jury trial itself was in the old Glen Rose court house and—let me back up just a bit—the Sheriff who arrested these folks, of course, knew in advance that—what they were going to do. It was—it was well planned so that no one was—would get hurt. The Sheriff allowed them to go ahead and step over the line and then he went in and arrested them. And—and it was sort of pro forma as a matter of fact, and took them to jail. And that got a lot of publicity, of course, in the press. So, within about six weeks, I guess, I c—they made bail and were released. But, within about six weeks they were back in Glen Rose in the old Glen Rose courthouse for a jury trial. And basically their defense was pretty unique and what their defense was—it was self-defense. And what they said was that—what they—what their lawyers argued was that they could break the law in order to save their laws. And they thought that—they saw the threat of nuclear power to be so great that it was a threat to their lives. So therefore, the law didn’t apply if they were acting in defense of their lives, which was, I—I thought was an interesting defense. Well, of course, they also were able to bring in some expert witnesses, Dr. Schermbeck—no, I’m sorry, Schermbeck was Jim—I’m sorry—Sternglass, who was a—who was a kind of a maverick scientist from the University of Philadelphia. And he had for—he has for a long number of years been studying the effects of radiation on people living near nuclear plants. And so he was one of the expert witnesses. There were—there was several others, scientists who are outside the mainstream but who have long studied the effects of—of radiation on humans. Well, their testimony—the argument swayed three of the six locals on that—on that jury and we got a hung jury. Which was—it was—was really quite spectacular because Glen
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Rose had been one of the poorest—it was, I believe, the poorest county—Somervell County, where Glen Rose sits, was the poorest county in the state when Comanche Peak was built. TU Electric sold the residents on the benefits of—of the nuclear plant there strictly on the money that it would bring in in tax revenue. It’s now one of the richest, by the way. But, at that point in time, of course, the plant was under construction and when this hung jury came back it was a body blow to TU Electric because, obviously, you know, they hadn’t done their PR really well.
(misc.)
DW: Given that you had rather vocal, outspoken opposition to this, do you feel you were ever in this type of role as a journalist at all? Were you targeted or harassed in any way by the people from inside the nuclear area, or did they have any kind of smear campaign to try and discredit those of you on the outside?
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BB: Yes, and—and—and th—and they—primarily, the—the smear campaigns were—were—at that point, were targeted at Schermbeck and—and Belisle and the—and the groups that were going over the plant—I mean, going over the fence at that plant. There were other—the—they—they—the discredit that they tried to bring against us was to paint these people as, you know, the radical—radical—and people who had—had broken the law and that sort of thing and had a past history of doing this sort of thing in the—in the anti-war movement. And the anti-war movement didn’t click in—in Fort Worth early on or very strongly because Fort Worth was a—was a—had Carswell Air Force Base here. Fort Worth was a huge depender on the military for its economy because of—of the bomber plant as we called it for many, many years. But that—that—where—where planes were built and—and so Fort Worth was so dependent on the military that—that people in the anti-war movement were already painted with, you know, a tar brush. And so things were brought up from the—their past and publicized about them. Some of us—and—who were—who were working in the—as—as—on—what I would call on the mainstream side, which was trying to fight the plant by challenging the licensing, were simply discredited as—I remember they used terms like, “These are just emotional housewives and, you know, they know nothing about nuclear power. And they’re—they—they’re well meaning but they’re silly little women,” and, you know, it was—there were—there were much—there was much political incorrectness, let me put it that way. They used our—our—the fact that we were females, many of us—myself and Juanita Ellis—as—to discredit us. So they—there were not death threats, that sort of thing didn’t happen. They came later, there were some—some of the whistle blowers received death threats. So there were some—there were some—some violent acts committed against some of the whistle blowers later on.
DT: Can you talk a little bit about the whistle blowers that were involved in bringing some of the first criticisms of the plant to light?
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BB: Yes, when we—when we first started, we—all we really had were the documents from the—the TU Electric and—and background history on—from other plants and what had happened at other plants, and some guidelines from some of the other groups that had fought. And one of the things that we knew from their history was that we had to have workers who were willing to talk about what was happening inside the plant. We could talk until we were blue in the face about the dangers of nuclear power but we had to prove that some of those dangers were—were going to occur at Comanche Peak because of sloppy construction. We suspected sloppy construction just from—from what we were seeing from their documents but, until we had workers who could actually testify to that, we couldn’t—we didn’t have really much proof to present to the public. But within I would say, just a—a—a few months of some—some serious publicity about the hearings and about the fact that there were people in the community who were fighting the plant, and both CASE and CFUR and—one of the things we did was we ran ads in the newspaper in the personals. And we said, you know, if there’s anyone who wants to talk to us, here’s our number. And I didn’t know whether we’d get any phone num—phone calls or not but we did. And we got phone calls from at least three whistle blowers early on. And these were folks that—one of them in particular, it was an ex-Navy man who had worked in the—in the Nuclear Submarines Division of the—of the Navy. He had been—he had been in—he’d been on nuclear subs so he understood nuclear power. And he was hired as a project manager by TU Electric for Comanche Peak. Well he had only been out there, I think, he’d been out there about six months when he called us. We talked to him—he was one of the early—early ones to—to call us. He was not opposed to nuclear power. He had no problems with nuclear power. He believed nuclear power could be a safe form of energy but he said this plant was being built—it was—it was a disaster waiting to happen because it was—this construction was so sloppy. So he was one of our first ones. And then about three or four others began to trickle in and then CASE got some and so I think by the time the hearings were in full swing, there must have been at least ten or more whistle blowers.
DT: And had the whistle blowers gotten so much pressure from TU to try and prevent them from speaking out?
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BB: They got a lot of pressure from TU to prevent them from speaking out. Several of the whistle blowers were women and they were making really good money. Brown & Root, course, had the contract—Brown & Root Construction Company out of Houston had the contract to build Comanche Peak. They were also building the South Texas Project at the same time. And Brown & Root had no history in—in nuclear construction so that was a—that was a negative going in. But they were paying well and Brown & Root, you know, pays pretty well to maintain a—a—a work force and keep the unions at bay. So they go ahead and pay well but they’re not—they’re not—they’re not the best employer. But what happened was that Brown & Root began to put pressure on—because these whistle blowers worked for Brown & Root, not for TU Electric, so that—Brown & Root was the big bad guy who—whose goons put pressure on some of these people. And the pressure at first was subtle. One woman who had been a—a supervisor and she was—she was an inspector and she had—she was a young woman from a little town near Glen Rose and she’d never made that kind of money in her life. It was—it was a great job. She was making eleven or twelve bucks an hour and that, you know, at that time that was really good money too. But, at any rate, she had the job of supervising some of the other workers and she was also an inspector. So she was looking at the plant through a very critical eye and she was reporting what she saw. And—and what she saw was bad. So—and—but they would not—they would not listen to her, and they discredited her, and they dismissed her—her calls for rebuilding or re—re-piping and so forth. She contacted us and immediately she was—she lost her job as supervisor. She lost her job as inspector and she was put in a small—a little temporary building away from the plant site and given some unimportant paperwork to do. So that was her first—that was the first thing that happened to her. Later on, because she didn’t back off—she continued to talk to us—she also continued to find documents to get to us—later on she was beaten up badly in her backyard one night. I mean, very badly, hos—she had to be hospitalized. She never knew who did it and she—but she was very sure that it was a—Brown & Root thugs who—who beat her up. No one ever found the people did it, even though she had a license plate—her husband got a license plate number and so forth. So that—that was the things that happened. They were—there were others who were beaten.
DT: And some of them also got death threats? Is that right?
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BB: Yes they did. They got death threats. They got—they—there—there—they were threatened that their children would be taken, that they would lose—it—it was the usual kinds of threats that would—that were designed to be—to terrorize people. It w—they were terrorist tactics used against the whistle blowers. And many of them, while they had job protection under—under the government Whistle Blower Act—excuse me—they had job protection and they couldn’t be fired for blowing the whistle, their lives were made so uncomfortable out there and so miserable, and working in a big construction place like that, with so many places where they could have been killed easily, you know, without anyone questioning how or why, many of them finally had to quit.
DW: At any time during this battle a lot of time we go places and some times you’ll hear that the local folks have a—there’s always a legislator or some local representative who can be a hero in that particular area. I’m wondering if there was a state representative or someone who was an ally in this region, any one representing them at the level of government? It seems to be more about acronyms for citizens groups and stuff like that, any one from the political spectrum step in to champion this?
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BB: Yeah. No, not at that time. We now have—one of our—one of the—one of the persons who was a protestor at that time is now state legislator, who is Lon Burnam. But, of course, he was not—he was not near that position at that time. There is—there was no—there—there were no real supporters from the legislative branch or the government branch at that—at that time to—to give us any—any support. Occasionally, there were city c—ac—commissioners in Somervell County who would listen to—to some of the things that the protestors were saying and that we were saying. But we never really got anyone to come over and say, “I’m going to stand with these people.” Now, there—there was one judge in Somervell County—the—the County Judge, who finally began to question the safety of Comanche Peak and he was defeated and a new judge was—took his place. And that was—that was the only person who really ever stood up in—in opposition to the plant. But the—the county was so solidly behind the construction of the plant that politicians there were reluctant to say anything negative about it because they could lose their position. The Sheriff had some re—developed some respect for the protestors. He never changed his mind about the need for the plant but there—there became a kind of a—it was an interesting kind of dynamics that developed between the Sheriff and the protestors when this—during the time that they were being—engaging in civil disobedience. And the Sheriff himself became very close to some of those people and they became, you know, friends actually. It was—it was kind of interesting to see the dynamics that developed almost like between the captors and their captives sometimes, you might say, you know.
DT: Speaking of the government, could you talk a little about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its role in the permit hearings and the process of trying to review the plant?
00:41:32 – 2103
BB: Well, the Nuc—the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, of course, is—I don’t think there’s any—any one with any sense at all, and any—an—an eye to see because they—the NRC is not a promoter of nuclear power. It—it—it—its—its role is not to regulate, although it says it is and it—it makes an effort to regulate, to en—enforce the regulations, but its—its role also is to promote nuclear power, which it does really well. So I think the—the role of the NRC in the early days, when we were initially involved, was a very difficult one for us to break through because they NRC was very much on the side of the plant. Their reasoning is that we don’t—that—they will deny that they promote nuclear power. What they will say is that, we make them build the plant safely, we make them follow the regulations, we—that’s our job, to make them follow the regulations. But, in fact, we saw that that was a fraud when Comanche Peak was being built because the NRC was allowing—even though they had the evidence from inspections—their own inspectors were bringing them solid evidence that that the plant was being constructed poorly but the NRC was—was—was not stop—they—they—they had the power to either stop it, make them—make them correct all those mistakes, to fine them heavy, hit—hit them with heavy fines so that they would, you know, straighten up, or to bring in—force them to bring in new—new project managers to—to make sure it was built correctly. The NRC, in fact, has a tremendous amount of enforcement power. They just don’t use it in the—in the way that—that we saw on the outside that should have been used.
DT: And when you would have appealed to the NRC, were your criticisms about the basic design of the plant, or the way it was built, or sort of a combination?
00:43:45 – 2103
BB: Well, the basic design and the way it was—and the way that design was being built. There were a l—there were so many things wrong with the design of the plant, that this interview could go on for about two days as I, you know, would—would go into it. But—but the things that were wrong—the big things that were wrong had to do with piping, it had to do with fire insulation. They had fire insulation inside the plant that actually caught fire. And—and s—and they had—they had pipes that were—they had pipe hangers that were so—the welds were so poorly cons—so poorly done that the—the engineering—the engineers themselves—the plant engineers themselves had written that in—in the case of—of any kind of an accident or any kind of a—not—and even a small rumble of an earthquake, that—that these pipes would—would break loose from—from their connections. These were pipes—these were huge pipes—some of them were, you know, eight feet in—in diameter. These pipes were carrying—were carrying nuclear water—hot water and heated water and water with radiation in it. So if those pipes had ever broken loose, of course, it would have flooded the plant and it would have breached the—the integrity of the plant. It would have gotten into the environment. So there were things like that that were huge and that were—were visible. Now when—when that—when those things finally were resolved and—I won’t say they—they were resolved—when those things were finally recognized as—as problems, they were recognized by a—that the—that the licensing process itself, when we had whistle blowers who were willing to come forward and testify that these things were wrong with the plant and they testified in front of—in front of judges from the NRC, and there was one judge who heard them. And this—this was when every thing changed down there. There was this one judge on the NRC panel who said something’s wrong here, you know. So this was the one time that we had a breakthrough with the NRC. And that—at that point, that was when the plant was—basically, the NRC ordered TU Electric—based on this one judge’s refusal to accept the plant as it currently had been constructed. He ordered the NRC to tell them to go back and redesign it. So about fifteen years into construction—maybe ten years into construction I would say—TU Electric had to go back and redesign that whole plant.
DT: This was in the mid ‘80’s I think.
00:46:50 – 2103
BB: Yeah—yeah.
DT: Do you think that the final plant reflected some of the trial and error and other experiences of other plants? From what I can tell, Comanche Peak came on line in ’93, long after most other plants had been…
00:47:05 – 2103
BB: Yeah, it came on line in, I think, ’90, ’91 and ’93. It came on line—it was—we thought it was going to be the last plant licensed. It—it wasn’t. There was one prior to that who had been—ha—that had been under construction longer that finally got its license but Comanche Peak was next to the last plant licensed, I believe, in the st—in the country. It—I think it was the last—it was the first—or the last, I’m sorry—double unit plant licensed in the country. It was probably well over fifteen years in construction when it finally got its license. And they did have to go back and redes—redo all of it, they had to rip all those—all those pipes down and they had to rewet—you know, redo all of that. They had to—they had to redesign some of their waste storage facilities. There—there was tremendous amount of money. I—I know that people think nine billion dollars is the final cost of Comanche Peak but the final cost of Comanche Peak—of course, the final cost we’re still—is—is still ongoing, we’re still paying for that plant. But the—the final cost was over eleven billion dollars, and we have documents from TU that support that. So it was one of the most expensive plants in the country.
DT: What do you think the long-term role of the plant is going to be? I understand with deregulation, the future of some of these nuclear plants which did go so heavily over budget and cost a great deal more to create a kilowatt than a natural gas plant, for example, do you think it’s going to survive and live out it’s useful or be shut down?
00:48:55 – 2103
BB: Well it is surviving. That—that much we know because, of course, the opponents finally lost. I mean, we finally had to accept the fact that—that the plant was licensed and that it was going to be a part of our environment here. CASE, the—the group in Dallas that fought it for a long, long time, had a five year contract with c—with the owners—with TU Electric—to oversee the first five years of the plant. They did do—they did do some good oversight down there and they raised red flags about a number of things that were going wrong. And the first five years of the plant, I think, they had some serious problems and they—they corrected them. Nothing got out into the environment that we know of although, the last time we did—I, myself, did any monitoring of the plant, they had—they—their outside monitors, where they were monitoring radra—radiation, about half of them were broken. I think—I think the monitoring of ra—radiation monitoring around these plants is a joke because, I think, most of the time the monitors don’t work and plus nothing’s ever told to the people who live around there. If there is, you know, an—an—there are ra—are—are—are increases in background radiation around the plants, then that—that means that the people should be told. But no one is ever told anything. The—the folks in Glen Rose have no idea how much radiation they’re being exposed to. But since—your question, the future of it, I think it’s going to be there and I think that TU is going to keep it as a baseload plant for as long as it can. It has about—I guess it has at least thirty more years on its license. Now, what they’re going to do with the waste and what they’re going to do with the site once they decommission is a very big question. No one has come up with any s—solid plans for that. It’s going to be a highly polluted, radiated site once they ha—do close it down when that happens.
DT: You mentioned the waste, can you talk a little bit about Sierra Blanca and Yucca Mountain and some of the final repositories for the waste?
00:51:26 – 2103
BB: Well, of course, Sierra Blanca was the sight designated in west Texas to become a low level repository for waste from—from Texas nuclear plants, as well as nuclear plants in Vermont and, possibly, Massachusetts and New Hampshire—and maybe Connecticut. Anyway, several of the eastern states had—had contracts with Texas to send their low level waste here to Sierra Blanca. And, again, most of the folks who ha—had fought Comanche Peak took up the banner to fight bringing that waste in s—to Sierra Blanca. Sierra Blanca is—is such a—one of those—this is where environmental justice, I think, raised its ugliest head in Texas, was at Sierra Blanca, because it’s tr—primarily a Hispanic community. It’s a poor community like Glen Rose was, a very small community with very, very little political clout in the state. And so it was a great target, I think, for a nuclear waste dump. However, there was a—there was a—another hero in the movement who lived in Sierra Blanca, and you’ll have to help me remember his name, because I’m drawing a blank right here…
DT: I guess there’s the Lynch family…
00:52:50 – 2103
BB: Yes—yes. And—and they were, initially, the ones who began to raise bloody hell about the—the people coming in there to put nuclear waste in that—in that barren stretch of Texas. But, at any rate, that fight went on for a long time. They began to get allies from all over the state and especially Austin. But—and it was finally stopped and—and—and, course, Bush, to his credit we’ll have to say, although he was a proponent of it for a long time, finally vetoed the bill. So Sierra Blanca was not t—w—was no longer the target. A lot of money and a lot of time, a lot of energy went into fighting Sierra Blanca. I find I—I see that as a victory for environmentalists. Yucca Mountain—yeah, I think Yucca Mountain is—is going to be a disaster if that—if that is finally used as a—if—if—if that is finally used as a—as a repository for all of the nuclear waste in the—in the country. Because I think that—I—I think all the government wants to do, at this point, is quickly get all the stuff put somewhere, because it is a—it’s—it’s a growing disaster and it’s a growing embarrassment for the government. But it truly is, I think, a—a—a disaster waiting to happen. I don’t know what we’re going to do with the stuff. But I think Yucca Mountain—Mountain is a—is the wrong place to put it. And I think the Shoshones and I think the people of Nevada—I think that they’re going to ultimately win their fight to stop it.
(misc.)
DW: There’s a fellow with the Nevada State Government Department that opposes Yucca Mountain. I think it’s, like, Steve Frishmeer(?) or something like that?
00:54:57 – 2103
BB: Yeah, I believe you’re right.
DW: But, you don’t happen to know him.
00:55:00 – 2103
BB: No, I—I have—I have talked to him and I have talked to people in Nevada. The DOE has had—at—at one time had an—a series of hearings throughout the country and I testified at some of those hearings when they were here. And people from the Nevada Task Force and from the Nevada opponents and—and representatives from the Shoshone tribe were here testifying and I met several of those people. And—and they were very convincing, and that mountain is not stable enough to—to—to—to take on what the burden of nuclear—of radiation that it’s going to have to take on for the centuries and centuries that this stuff is going to be active and alive.
DT: Betty, we talked about the opposition to Comanche Peak and to a number of these nuclear facilities, and the campaign has brought together a really diverse group of people and a large number of organizations. And I was wondering if you could talk about how sometimes these groups work together and sometimes they can’t manage to agree on the right route and strategy to take, and maybe talk a little bit about the tensions that grew up between CASE and CFUR and some of the Comanche people and the other groups, and how those fault lines appeared and how they were eventually resolved.
00:56:31 – 2103
BB: Right—right. Well, at—at—some—sometimes they got almost to be a critical mass. You know, we were wondering if we were going to have our own nuclear explosion within these two—these groups. I think that part of the problem had to do with the backgrounds that all of us brought to—to our positions and—and when we all came together to—to fight a common foe, as we saw it, which was TU Electric and—and Comanche Peak. With CASE, the—the group in Dallas lead by Juanita Ellis, who did a stellar job in the beginning and I can’t—you—you can never fault them for the work they did as far as providing documents and—and getting documents and the—the grueling paperwork that goes with this kind of—of effort and—and knocks a lot of people out early on because it’s very expensive and it’s also just deadly dull. But Juanita had that ability to do that. She had the dedication. And—and she was just one of—she was an ordinary housewife. It was an interesting dynamics of how she became involved because she got angry about the cost of—of the rates in Dallas. And when she found out that they w—that they were planning to build a nuclear plant—they had a—a hearing before the Dallas City Council. At that time, rates were set and approval of any new construction for the electric company, which was Dallas Power and Light at that time, and we had TU Electric, we had Texas Electric Utilities over here. They had a common—they—they had a common father in TU—Texas Utilities—but they were still separate utilities. And they—they had to each go to their own city council to get approval for either raising rates or building a new plant. Well, the—the Tyler Power and Light, which was also owned by TU, Dallas Power and Light, and T—and Texas Electric Service Company were the three owners of Comanche Peak. They went into partnership to own—to build this one nuclear plant that would service all of their—all of their rate payers. So, in Dallas, there was a hearing to get approval. TU went down to get approval. Juanita Ellis went down with a group that she had become involved with, lead by a—a pilot for Continental Airlines. This pilot was really the leading foe of Comanche Peak at that time in Dallas, and Juanita Ellis was a member of the group. They spoke against—against the licensing
00:59:23– 2103
of Comanche Peak. And a lot of it was based on the economics of it. They—the—not enough was known about the economics. It was a vague proposal, which TU Electric is good at doing and was good at doing in those days, because they would go in with all of their experts and all their suits and they would, you know, present their case with lots of charts and—and lots of gobbledygook to a basically ignorant on these issues City Council. And I don’t say the City Council. I mean, there’ll be some in Dallas who will say that they are but I won’t say that they were ignorant but they were ignorant on this issue. They were not experts on—they were not engineers or experts on—on these. So they could dazzle them. And I won’t say with what because that, you know, it goes un—unsaid but they could dazzle them with all their figures. And—but, at this particular junction, they had some opposition—citizen opposition. The Continental pilot was very vocal and he spoke that day. There was a—there was an old Socialist in Dallas and I can’t remember his name but he was—he spoke against the plant, Juanita Ellis did and several other people. And basically what they were asking Dallas City Council to do was to hold off and look at this more closely and get more information and so forth. Well the Continental pi—pilot—when—when the question was raised earlier about harassment or things that happened to people, this particular guy really was targeted. And they put out—the Department of Public Safety here began to follow him. He was—he was targeted by the—the DPS. They f—they—their—they had a file on him. It was discovered later—they had a file on everybody who spoke that night. One of the funny things that—that came out in the—in the—later investigation when these files were made public was that this Continental pilot was—one of the—one of the sins against him was that he was seen in the presence of a known Socialist. So anyway there—there were those—that knocked him out early on. TU Electric actually—or the Depart—I’m sorry, the Department of P…
End of reel 2103.
(misc.)
DW: So, how does someone who’s the pilot for Continental Airlines takes up an issue like this?
00:01:35 – 2104
BB: Well, I think the Continental Airlines pilot became involved because he had some—he—he also was interested in the cost of the plant but he—so he did a little background history and study himself. And he—he found that there were some questions about nuclear power, in general, and he—that had been raised and were being raised, of course, in—in the east and in California. So his background came from, initially, the concern about the cost, which with each and every person who gets involved, I think, in nuclear power at that level, when they look at the cost then they look further into nuclear power and begin to see and find all the environmental hazards that—that the nuclear industry has and—and has at its—even in that early time, the issue of the waste was a big one as to what we’re going to do with it so they were concerned about that. Now the Continental Airlines pilot—and I—I apologize for not recalling his name—but he was targeted, as I—I said, by the Department of Public Safety, which, at that time, were being used by TU Electric to investigate the people who opposed nuclear power. And—and the connection was with nuclear weapons and what they were trying to do—what TU Electric tried to do was to show that there was some connection with the people who opposed nuclear power because they were really, in fact, subversive to some degree because they wanted to stop our production of nuclear weapons. Some were—now, I know it’s subversive—but some were very much involved in the issue of fighting the nuclear weapons industry. This particular group in Dallas were not. Juanita Ellis was—was non-political in that—in that arena, as was this pilot. The known Socialist, I guess, was certainly the only one there who might have been opposed to nuclear weapons. But, at any rate—at any rate, there was such paranoia at—in that period of time, that they—they began to—to shadow this nucle—this Continental Airlines pilot. And, ultimately, the Department of Public Safety wrote a letter to Continental—to his employer—and the letter said that they feared that he might—that his opposition was so strong to the plant, that he might use his position as a pilot to someday crash his plane—a plane full of passengers—into the—the Comanche Peak. Well it was so bizarre, of course, that
00:04:40 – 2104
Continental even did not accept that premise. They let him know, though, that he—they had received the letter, and he quickly backed down. I—I mean, the—TU Electric was successful in that—in what they wanted to do, they got rid of him. He left Dallas, moved to Arkansas and was never heard from again. So they—they can do that, you know, if—if people are—don’t have—if people don’t have perhaps the stamina for the fight or have never been targeted by the government before for exercising their right to speak in a public forum and to be, you know, to have a—a—a voice and to peacefully assemble—exercise, in fact, their First Amendment rights then they sometimes—the—those kind of tactics are effective, and it certainly was in this sense. Well when—that left a void in the group and Juanita Ellis stepped in to fill it. It did not frighten her away. So she began to—she was very dogged in her pursuit of TU Electric and its—its paper trail on this plant. And, eventually, her group then formed and she had maybe a core group of ten or twelve people who were working with her. And so, from there, ours was—the same things were happening over here and we—we were forming the—CFUR was growing out of the Armadillo Coalition. The Armadillo Coalition was—was the group that was a scrappier group. They were—they were involved in demonstrations and they were involved in—in the tactics of the—of the ‘60’s, of the Civil—of the Civil Rights and the—and the peace movement. Citizens for Fair Utility Regulation grew out of a group of people who knew that that type of tactic would not ever stop TU from building Comanche Peak. It might be a, you know, sort of a mosquito attacking them here and
00:06:54 – 2104
there on their hide but it was never going to actually stop them. It was going to be an irritant but little else. And, if we were going to stop the plant, we had to get into the licensing process. We had to try to find, you know, the paperwork to show that what—what we felt was actually happening out there was happening and to—to do it through the licensing process. So CFUR was formed over here and also petitioned to become an intervener and we were granted intervener status, as was CASE in Dallas. ACORN was a sh—an intervener for a short time. The—the—the anti-poverty group here but they dropped out because of money as much as anything else. But the dynamics then that grew out of these—these groups began to—to show themselves because while CFUR was—was a group that was pursuing the licensing through the normal pr—process and through the licensing process, it was also filled with people who were—whose backgrounds were in the anti-war and Civil Rights and the marches, demonstrations and tha—that sort of thing. We were very comfortable with that kind of—of a tactic and we continued to support that kind of tactic. In Dallas it was a different matter. CASE was not comfortable with that because they were not—they had—they had none of that in their background. They were not people who had been involved in—in that kind of political activity. So, early on, there were—there were barriers between the two groups. They saw CFUR as using the licensing process more as a tactic rather than as a serious effort to stop the plant and to legitimize, perhaps, some of our more bizarre brothers and sisters who were going over the fence and that sort of thing.
DT: Did both factions want to actually stop the plant? Or did they want to make it safe? Or did they want to make it more cost effective?
00:09:08 – 2104
BB: Well CASE always maintained that they wanted to make it safe and cost effective. CFUR never wavered from the—their eff—their stated purpose was to stop the plant from being licensed. And—and—and in that sense, we were in complete agreement with the Armadillo Coalition. The Armadillo Coalition maintained itself for quite a while but then it—most of its members began to help CFUR and they just sort of—I think they wore out. You know, I—these were also people who were—had been long years involved in the Civil Rights and—and peace movement. And so I think a lot of burnout was occurring as far as continuing that—the dynamics of—of getting people together and, you know, and making signs in your kitchen and, you know, getting on the street, and that sort of thing. So, eventually, the Armadillo Coalition just kind of fizzled out and those folks who were still active joined CFUR in licensing—anti-licensing effort. Now the—the t—the Comanche Peak Life Force—is that what we’re talking about? Yeah. A—a—any—the ones who went over the fence, the—the civil demonstrators, the ones who—who went to jail for trespassing—that group was—was limited to begin with because it was formed for a specific purpose and that was to—to make their statement in—in the age old way of civil disobedience. And their hero, of course, was Thoreau. And so they were—they were very much limited to begin with because once they had their—once they had gone over the fence, they had made their statement. They had had their—their trial that resulted in a hung jury. They felt like—that they had done exactly what they had set out to do.
DT: Can you tell us a little bit about the place where the real divorce happened? Where CASE settled their opposition…
00:11:30 – 2104
BB: Yeah.
DT: …to the permit and the plant was allowed for its construction to go ahead, and for it ultimately to be completed and go on line? Two questions: one would be why did they settle? And, secondly, how were the TU and the other sponsors of the plant allowed to connect that settlement with the permit?
00:12:07 – 2104
BB: Right. Well, what—what it—by the time they settled and—and—I’ll—I’ll have to g—give you a little history on that, too, but, by the time they settled, basically CFUR had—had dropped out. We were—we had run out of money to continue the fight. It’s a very expensive process and if you don’t have, you know, if you don’t have a very—a really dedicated s—bunch of lawyers who are willing to work pro bono in these fights, citizens eventually do—they can wear you down. They can, you know, they can literally attrition—they can—they can—TU Electric has deep pockets, a bank of lawyers, and they can outlast any citizens group. Juanita Ellis—sometime in the—in the—after the judge—the NRC judge ruled that there were serious construction problems at Comanche Peak that had to be addressed and that TU had to go back and start rebuilding the plant, we—we met pretty regularly, by the way, with the—with members of CASE during those years because we were all trying to accomplish the same goal, ultimately and well we
00:13:25 – 2104
wanted to shut the plant down, she wanted to make it safer. But we could see our goal—we could see our tactics, you know, aiming in the right—in the same direction. We met pretty regularly together and so we kept up with each other and we knew what, you know—and we—we shared whistle blowers. You know, whistle blowers who testified for them were also testifying for us and were giving us information if—for example, if I got a whistle blower who called me, I would immediately let Juanita Ellis know so that she could also interview him so that we could, you know, both use him or her however we—we needed to and however that whistle blower was willing to—to—to work for us. But, at any rate, CFUR eventually ran out of money and there were only three of us that—then who were actually doing the—carrying the load for CFUR. There was a gentleman named Dick Falk and he was in Dallas and he—he’s now dead. He died of cancer—and Nancy Jacobson was a—a woman here in Fort Worth who was working—opposing it—and she also died of cancer, which is kind of ironic, very young, she was only 40. And so she was a great loss because she had a very—she had a tremendously good mind. She was not trained as I—and neither was I in—in—with any background that would, you know, would deal with this type of industry. But she was also—she was a very smart woman and knew her stuff. So we were—we were—pretty—pretty—decimated by death and as for—and having lost—and not having any access to a big pot of money. So basically what we did was CFUR decided to w—withdraw from the process and we would draw our support to Juanita in the licensing hearings, which we did. At—she began to become very—well—ownership of the—of the issue became a problem. Once we were out of it and she had it alone and she began to become very
00:15:49 – 2104
careful then about what she would share with us, I could see what was happening and I—I know you’re—you haven’t had a chance to interview her or go into her house but she had a small house on—in—in Dallas’ Oak Cliffs section—small frame house, two bedroom, kitchen, small living room. And that house became basically a filing cabinet. You would—she had generated so many documents, she had gotten so much paperwork from Comanche Peak and they had filed so many—so many reports themselves and she had it all—she kept it all in this—in this little house in—in Oak Cliff. And you would go into the front door of her house and she had a—she had a little aisle cut through the boxes stacked to the ceiling on either side that would bring you to her kitchen, and at her kitchen table—she worked at her kitchen table, which was just a small, little chrome kitchen table and it was surrounded by boxes and files. She and her husband lived there alone. They had no—their children are grown. Her bedroom was filled with boxes. She had her computer in—in her bedroom but it was—everything had boxes stacked except her bed. There were no boxes in the bathroom but, other than that, the rest of the house was a giant filing cabinet. At one time, her husband was having—was—I was over there and her husband was washing and the washing machine was sitting by the kitchen door but there were so many boxes in front of it that he had—he had made himself a hook out of a—out of a—a—a coat hanger and was reaching over to lift the lid and throw the clothes in with that hook. It’s an amazing—amazing story about Juanita and her—and her house and her boxes and her filing cabinets. But it became her life, I think. And it became—she became very possessive of it. And I think that this is one of the dangers of the—of—of a movement where people become so—so involved in—in the issue that
00:18:18 – 2104
they lose track of or lose sight of the larger issue, which is their own humanity, perhaps, sometimes, or their ability to then keep in touch and communicate with those who either have supported them or who are still sympathetic to them. What—what we got into at that point, trying—trying to continue to help her were doors were shut, one right after the other. So that, if we had suggestions or we saw something that we thought needed to be pursued, if it came from outside Juanita and her very small circle at that point, it wasn’t accepted. So basically she cut us out of the whole process. So my role, at that point, began to be one of I went back to my journalist role and began to write about it and it was advocacy journalism, no question about that. I had my biases and I did not try to hide them. But I did write—do a lot of writing at that point, I felt like—that this was the only place where I could then, you know, share what I knew and what I felt and saw was happening with the larger society, where CASE was closing off the larger society. And so I think that’s a very grave and serious danger in movements and I don’t know that it, you know, how it effected this one but in the sense of whether that—wit—there would have been a different outcome at Comanche Peak or not. But she was being—but she was still being effective in her role in the licensing process because Comanche Peak—she was still raising issues. She was still raising red flags and she was still able to raise questions that the NRC had to deal with and that TU had to deal with. But, because she had become so isolated by then from the—the rest of the people involved, I think what TU saw—because they are, if anything, they are clever on, you know, being able to try to manipulate people—what they saw was an opportunity to f—to get her out completely by buying her. And this is—this is a very touchy subject and it’s very delicate and I—I
00:20:55 – 2104
don’t want to—I don’t want it to come across as accusing her of—of having been paid off because in—in a real sense that’s what happened. But she did not personally profit from that payoff. But what happened was TU brought in a new dir—a—a new CEO and this guy began to woo Juanita. He met her for lunch and he talked to her and he told her he was going to do this and do that and he made all the promises in the world to her, that he was—that he appreciated all she had done and that he was going to make sure that they were all—that everything was implemented there. So, with Juanita, a couple of lawyers that she had from the—from Washington, they—eventually his—his meeting—and he was meeting her secretly. Her—her group did not even know that—that she was—sh—that she was having coffee with him and that she was having lunch with him and that they were negotiating some kind of a settlement. And, of course, she was running out of money. Not all of it ever came out of her pocket because they were working class people. They did not have the kind of money that it took. She—but she was getting funds from—from various and sundry groups. They had—they had gotten grant money. They had been able to get donations, you know, from people to keep it up. A lot of the—a lot of the work—so much of the work was done by her without charging that, you know, it would have—she would have been out of it a long time before had she had to be paying a lawyer or some—someone to—to do what she did. And—and she became an expert in this field and—of nuclear documents and—and all of the jargon that you have to know to talk to these people. But, at any rate, basically they—they came in and—
00:23:02 – 2104
and—and—what they did was—was see that there was a division and, then, they exploited that division. And when they offered the group ten million dollars—and what they offered them was a s—a ten million dollar settlement, which would pay the whistle blowers—at that time. The whistle blowers had filed a lawsuit against TU Electric and Brown & Root and those lawsuits were still hanging. They had not been settled. Whistle blowers were desperate because they had lost their jobs and they were not—they—they had no income. So she had that hanging over her, that the whistle blowers need to be paid, needed some—some recompense for what they had given. She also knew that—I think she saw that she wasn’t going to stop the plant from being licensed so, course, I’m—I’m assuming that—that—that this is what went on in her mind. I have no idea what went on in her mind. But, eventually, within a few months of—of these negotiations with Juanita in secret, there was an announcement by CFUR that they had—they were withdrawing.
DT: CASE, you mean?
00:24:21 – 2104
BB: No, I’m sorry, by CASE, yeah. That they were—that they were withdrawing, that they were going to—they’ve had a contract with TU Electric to monitor the plant for five years, and that they were getting a ten—ten million dollar settlement. Five point five million went to the whistle blowers, I believe, and the rest went to CFUR. And there were—course, we went ballistic you might say. We did see it as a sellout and we s—we saw it not just as a sellout of CASE, we saw it as a sellout of the whole fifteen-year effort that s—that—that many, many people had, you know, given their—that—those—those many, many years of their lives to try to stop the plant. And we also felt betrayed because there had been no contact with us to say, “Look, this is what we’re—we’re getting ready to do.” We were as knocked off our feet as most of the people in, you know, in the press and then—and who had followed it were. But the explanation was—was—was always straightforward that she had run out of money, that she couldn’t stop the plant, that she did it for the whistle blowers, and that the rest of the money went to the lawyers. And a lot of—a couple of—of Washington lawyers made a couple of million out of that deal.
DT: Maybe you can talk a little bit about the opposite side of the issue and Texas Utilities role in promoting the plant, and the charm offensive and public relations they had to try to promote and complete the plant.
00:26:08 – 2104
BB: Well, course, that started many, many years ago. TU Electric has always—had always been—well, at—at—Texas Electric Utility Company, as it was known to us in Fort Worth for many, many years, that—the electric company—had always been involved in promoting themselves through—to the community—through doing good works in the community and so forth. So—and—and they had—one of the—one of the interesting things they did when the—when they were promoting nuclear power—they were providing—they’d always provided book covers for the kids—for the school kids with—Ready Kilowatt was their symbol at that time and he was always cute, you know, and it was a—it was a kind of clever little thing. And—but, the book covers then with nuclear—with their Comanche Peak plant—the book covers made a soul shift. And that shift began to—you—you—you would see long little explanations of nuclear p—power
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and how—what a great source of electricity—how cheap it’s going to be, you know, the—the—the—early on the—the phrase was “too cheap to meter.” And we know it’s eleven billion dollar plant out there, that’s—that was one of the biggest lies. But they did—they did have all of this promo of nuclear power on the school text books. That was one of the things we had—we did fight and we—we were successful in—in getting the s—the school district to remove those text books from the—they did not—they did not disallow TU Electric to provide text books but they a—they made TU Electric take the promo for nuclear power off of the backs of the—of the text book covers. But we had to do that by embarrassing the school district quite a bit because we spent several nights of—at meetings explaining to them why this was not a good thing and we finally did get some success there. Other tactics they used—they used—they pro—they provided the money for seminars for teachers—for science teachers in the Fort Worth-Dallas area and they—most of the time it was in Denton at North Texas—or Texas University, one of those two. And those seminars were always provided to teachers during the summer when they could—and they were given credit toward their continuing education credits for attending these seminars. But they were hardly unbiased seminars about science. They were used to promote TU’s nuclear power plants, as well as their coal. At that time, they were under considerable criticism for their dirty coal plants. So they were also trying to protect their reputation in the industry and—but—and they did that through some propaganda with s—with school teachers. Lon Burnam and I and, I think, Dick Falk, the—the gentleman from Dallas, decided—we heard about one of these seminars and knew when it was—when they were occurring. And so we decided to crash one. We went to Texas Women’s University and we just walked in. We found out where they
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were holding them and what building and so forth, so we just walked in. We were quickly ushered out of the—of the room where one of the seminars was taking place. So we made our argument to—to the—to the gentleman in charge and, I think, he was one of the Deans at that particular college or that particular school and we were also persuasive in making our argument for fairness because the seminar that we had broken into was one on how—what—what a great source of energy nuclear power is. So we were able to crash that one and allow—we were allowed five minutes to give our side of the story. So we did—we—we spoke to those teachers. And, at that time, there were—there were the issue of—of being just—just little old housewives without much knowledge had been pretty well set out by TU Electric to discredit some of us, myself and Juanita as well. So one of the questions the teacher lobbed at me from the audience that day—I remember it really well—was, “Okay, give me your credentials.” Well, you know, mine were—my credentials were I graduated from high school, had a year of college, you know, raised a bunch of kids and then got involved in all of these movements. And she said, “Well, what makes you an expert on this compared to all of these other gentlemen here?” I said, “Well,” I said, “you know, when I was in high school,” I said, “I had a very good English teacher and she taught me to read critically,” I said, “and that’s all you really have to do and that’s all you really have to know to get into this kind of issue and find out where they’re wrong because they’re wrong on many things.” And I said, “If you know how to read critically and if you know the right questions to ask,” I said, “you can—you don’t have to be an expert, you just have to be somebody with a mind.”
DT: Can we talk about another side of reading? That’s your writing career where it seems like after you were involved in a number of these movements you became able to return to your writing career and re-enter journalism…
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BB: Right—right.
DT: …and were an activist in a sense in the kinds of articles that you took…
00:32:27 – 2104
BB: Yeah, it was…
DT: …and the views that you expressed.
00:32:29 – 2104
BB: It was—it was fortunate that it—it—that the Texas Observer has—has been able to survive all these years because the Texas Observer is one of the few outlets for this kind of journalism that we have in—in the state. So I wrote for the Texas Observer for a long time about Comanche Peak, about feminist issues, and about political issues. And, as a journalist—as an advocacy journalist, it was—it was the best forum that I had because I could write about these things that I had—by then, I think, had steeped myself in very well. I also wrote for the—I was op-ed page writer for the Fort Worth Star Telegram, and I wrote about Comanche Peak during those years too. So I had those two forums and, you know, on the op-ed page, of course, you can express your opinion. So I was able to get back to journalism through that particular route and it allowed me to do what I wanted to do as—as a—as a young woman a—a—in a profession that I loved but it also allowed me to write about something that, by then, I thought I knew a lot about.
DT: What sort of reaction would you get from your editors and from the readers that would see your columns?
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BB: Well in—in the—for those editors and readers of the Dallas Observer, it was like preaching to the choir. So it was always good response, you know. The editors of the—of the Dalla—of the Texas Observer were also ver—were always very supportive and wanted—wanted writings and—and articles on Comanche Peak because there were not very many journalists who had followed the—the story. There were not very many who could write about it so they welcomed my—my work on—on the plant. And—and at the Fort Worth Star Telegram I had some very good editors during that period of time who were editors of the op-ed page and, while they weren’t necessarily supportive or sympathetic of the issue, they thought that they were the type of editors and journalists that we don’t have enough of anymore—they thought that issue should be aired, you know. They—they were strongly in favor of the issue of nuclear power, its dangers, the waste issue, what are we going to do with it, how much it’s going to cost and that sort of stuff that needed to be aired. So I had—I had two forums where I had editors who were more than willing, you know, to publish my work.
DT: Can you comment a little bit about the scope and tenor of the environmental coverage in Texas in the media?
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BB: Not good. I—I think you—you get—you get good coverage in the Observer—the Observ—the Texas Observer has done some fantastic work on environmental justice issues on the—on the things that are happening along the border, on Sierra Blanca, on—on other local—localized issues of—of pollution where, you know, and—and not just pollution but deliberate kinds of releases from plants, plants locating in areas where people are poor. And I don’t see this as a—as a racial thing as much as a class thing. Corporations are not particularly concerned about whether it’s Black folk or Hispanic or others. It’s, you know, where these communities are poor and if they’re poor communities they can sway them several ways. They can ignore their protests because they are usually politically margini—marginalized anyway or they can buy them off and—which is what they did with Glen Rose. So they can bring in a lot of money and put money into the schools and put money into the community and hire people. And then it’s, you know, it’s many years into the future when the people really realize that they have been badly used and that their children are dying. But I think the—the Observer has done some of the best stories on those issues. The problem with the Observer is—the Texas Observer—it’s a very limited readership, you know, it just doesn’t have the
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circulation in the state that it should have. But I don’t—I don’t think the other papers in the state—they’re corporate owned now and there’s—there’s no competition, you know, no—no daily competition except, perhaps, maybe in—is Galveston or Corpus? I don’t know. I don’t know that there’s any daily competition any more in the state. Arlington, Texas, I guess, you might say is the only that has—cause the Arlington Morning News and the Arlington Star Telegram are both operating there but they’re still owned by large corporate entities. So I don’t think that we have good environmental coverage here. Otherwise, I don’t think that George Bush would be getting such a buy on it.
DT: Maybe you can talk a little bit about what sort of issues you think are coming down the pike, whether they’re being covered by the media or not, but, environmental challenges that we might be facing in the future.
00:38:17 – 2104
BB: Well we’re just facing some dreadful ones. I mean, I—the—the—the fact that the issue of global warming is being debated any more at all as to whether it’s valid or not is scary because it’s valid. There’s no question that we have put too much in the atmosphere and that we are, you know, slowly choking off this—this beautiful little blue planet that we live on and choking ourselves in the process. But what I—what I see—the danger I see from the issue of global warming, whether it is being denied or whether it’s being promoted, it—it’s—it’s being debated, there’s no question about that. But this is another one of those opportunities for the nuclear industry to jump back in and—which is what they’re doing and they’re doing it kind of subtly and without too much fanfare. But they’re—they’re looking now at promoting—or they are promoting the reintroduction of nuclear plants as a source of domestic energy to offset global warming because they don’t produce anything into the atmosphere. And this is true, they don’t put anything in the atmosphere that contributes to this—this phenomenon. What they don’t talk about and won’t talk about, is what they put into the ground, what they put into their holding tanks, which is the waste from this production of nuclear energy. And what they’re proposing now are smaller plants—a series of smaller plants that will be—that they can build economically and quickly and get set up, you know, across the country and start producing power very quickly. Now these plants will be the—granted, they will produce lower amounts of nuclear waste, but there’s going to—they’re still going to produce a lot of it because they’re going to—they’re propo—what they propose is to have a lot of them, you know. Instead of having a giant mega generating plant like Comanche Peak, they could have ten around here. But we don’t—we don’t hear much about that and we—there’s not much coverage abou—of that in the—in the press. But it’s happening in the—and the NRC is proposing it and they are working on guidelines. They’re working on regulations. They are spending an awful lot of bureaucratic time and money in Washington developing this proposal. So I see that as a big danger. And I think that the people will be sold on that again. We’ve got a whole new generation of folks and—and there’s been a long period of—of quiet about nuclear power because there have been no new plants built here since Comanche Peak was completed. And none ordered, they have—there—there’ve been no—all the orders have—were cancelled back in the ‘70’s. So utilities were—are not—were not ready to get into nuclear because of the massive costs, as well as the massive opposition. But now, very subtly, we’re—we’re seeing a shift. The utilities are working at the NRC on this but the—but the public doesn’t know it.
DT: Considering these challenges like the resurgence in nuclear power, other environmental problems, do you have a bias from all your years of experience that you could pass onto future generations about how they can deal with the difficulties and opportunities?
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BB: Well, yeah, it—it’s always—it’s always kind of difficult for those of us who are older to do this without sounding kind of pompous or kind of condescending but, you know, it’s—I just go back to that simple little—simple little phrase that was given to me by my very good and long, dear departed English teacher, which was, “Read critically.” But go beyond that reading critically because what—what I think people have to do—what young people have to do and—and this generation has to do—it’s—it’s—it’s very similar to the young women now who think that everything has been won and there’s nothing left to do in the feminist movement. Well there’s a lot left to do in that. And there’s a lot left to do as far as trying to save the environment. Saving the environment is not something that you do and—and go on. It’s something you do every day. You never stop saving the environment because the threats to the environment are massive. They’re constant and the corporations do not have a soul. They’re not concerned about the environment. So I think it’s something that people don’t—should understand, they don’t understand. And even people in my generation didn’t understand that, that this is an
00:43:38 – 2104
ongoing thing, the battles are—maybe the battles are won but the war is never over in that sense. And if they don’t—if we don’t address population, if we don’t address the third world—the third world problems of health and if we don’t address AIDS and if we don’t address global warming and if we don’t address nuclear waste, there is not going to be a planet for our children and it’s just that simple. I don’t know how to say it any differently to—to young people. I mean, each person can do something. And I know a lot of people think, “Well, I recycle, so, therefore, you know, I’m—I’m doing my part.” But, it’s so much more than that and it means we have to be involved politically. You have to know who your legislators are. You have to—you have to raise hell with them. You have to scream and holler when you see anything going on and you have to ask questions whenever anything is being proposed that’s going to impact your community. You have to go and ask questions. Getting involved politically and—and trying to remember that it’s never over and it never ends is all I can say because I—I think that this is what frightens me is that many people think that either it’s been done and we won or I’m a small human here and there’s nothing I can do. But I can tell you that small human beings, like Juanita Ellis and myself and other people across this country, have impacted the environment in ways even we will never know. One of the—one of the gentlemen who has been tracking the exposure of radiation on humans around nuclear plants told me—I—I was very despondent about the fact that Comanche Peak finally got licensed and that we had failed, and he said, “But you didn’t.” He said, “Don’t you realize what you did?” He said, “You postponed the licensing of that plant for fifteen years so you gave almost a whole generation, you know, some relief, and you ga—you gave almost a whole generation a chance at life that may not—they may not have had.” So, you know, those are the kinds of things that you don’t think about at the time but, you know, there it is.
DT: Something else that I try and ask people, you know, thinking about all these dire problems, I think, makes everybody look for some solace, and I was wondering if there is a place that you like to go to or just to think about that has the beauty and peacefulness that gives you some respite?
00:46:45 – 2104
BB: Well, it used to be—it used to be the Big Thicket in East Texas. We had a—we had a cabin there for a long time and—and we would—we lived there for a—a p—about five years in—in the very edge of the Big Thicket. That was one of the most beautiful—we were on a creek called Village Creek and it was a great canoeing creek and we had a wonderful, wonderful life there for a short period of time. I would—I would say that that is a place that I would s—go back to to find respite and solace if it were still there. The problem is most of those woods have been cut around the thicket. The timber companies have come in and—and decimated all the areas around the thicket and they have—some of it is coming back. Some of it’s being planted in tree forms and will never be the same again. So places like that—that—that’s a place that’s lost to my husband and I and our kids, even though we did have that for a period of time. So we know it can exist and does exist. As far as—as far as the—in—in Texas there are very few places except, maybe, the—the—the mountains that—on—along the Mexican border but there are very few places that, I think, that we can go to and, frankly, I find this place the most s—the place that I find the most solace in. It’s—it’s…
DT: Your home.
00:48:28 – 2104
BB: …my home. Well we’re fortunate in this—in this—I’m fortunate in this because it’s the home that I was raised in. I was reared here as a child and every room and every book and every nook and cranny holds comfort for me. And my mother was an avid reader and my father was too. So we still are surrounded by their books and their—their memories and so forth. But I think that, you know, it may be cliche-ish and it may be kind of—but—Pollyannaish in some ways but, you know, being able to be in the same place where I was reared as a child is one of the most comforting things I have now at my age. So, frankly, I’m ver—very happy to be able to come home to this little, I think, island of peace every afternoon.
DT: Do you have any thoughts that you’d like to pass on that come to mind that aren’t prompted by my nosey questions?
00:49:45 – 2104
BB: Yeah, I—I—I—I think that—I don’t think the war is over. I don’t think we’ve lost. I don’t think the planet is doomed. I think that it’s threatened and I think that there’s no question that it’s under serious threat. I don’t have a crystal ball so I can’t look into the future to see what will be here for my grandchildren. But we have fourteen grandchildren and, if we didn’t do what we have done over the years, I could not look them in the face, quite frankly. And I think this is one of the things that—that I would pass on to people. The—and—and this is another cliché, and it’s been overused but the—the Indian philosophy—the tribal philosophy of some Indians to call the seventh generation—to think of what impact your actions today will have on the seventh generation is—is truly something that should be writ in stone, I think, in our philosophies, all of our philosophies. Because if we would—if we would do that—if we would think, if our government would think, if we could get our corporations to think of what our actions today would have on the seventh generation who come after us, I think we could change the world.
DT: Sort of like a seventh generation Hippocratic oath, Do no harm, but, also…
00:51:25 – 2104
BB: Right.
DT: …do no harm to the seventh…
00:51:27 – 2104
BB: Right.
DT: …generation.
00:51:28 – 2104
BB: Well it’s certainly true in—in the question of nuclear waste because that’s going to go beyond the seventh generation. We’re going to have generations thousands—hundreds of thousands of years into the future that are still going to have to be dealing with the waste we’ve left behind today. And it is—it’s a cruel, I think, and a—and a terrible legacy to—that we are leaving. And I think we’ve got to stop doing that, period.
(misc.)
DT: Thank you very much.
(misc.)
End of reel 2104.
End of interview with Betty Brink.