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| | | published Saturday, November 06, 2010 | 2320 Views :: 0 Comments | |  |
Speakers, rally raise questions on safety, morality of nuke-making in KC
KC Peace Planters
For immediate release Nov. 3, 2010
Contacts: Scott Dye, 573.881.1409;
Sarah Cool, 816-674-4224;
JimHannah, 816-254-4403;
Ann Suellentrop, 913-271-7925;
Henry Stoever,913-375-0045
Peace Planters* question safety, morality of nuke-making in KCSpeakers 11/3: Sierra Club program director Scott Dye andlocal resisters Sarah Cool, Jim Hannah
Through talks and music Nov. 3 and a rally Nov. 4, the KC PeacePlanters will highlight the dangers of making non-nuclear parts fornuclear weapons in KC and question the morality of that work.The Peace Planters will sponsor a festival of hope Nov. 3 from 7 to8:30 p.m. at St. Paul School of Theology in the Dana Dawson Library,Room L202, at 1535 E. Van Brunt Dr. The peace coalition will hold arally Nov. 4 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the site for a new nuclear weaponsproduction plant, at Mo. Hwy. 150 between Botts Road and ProspectAve., near Grandview.
The new facility will replace the current Kansas City Plant, operatedby Honeywell at Bannister Federal Complex for the National NuclearSecurity Administration (NNSA). Through a public-private funding deal,KC’s Planned Industrial Expansion Authority holds the title to the newfacility, and KC sold municipal bonds for up to $815 million tofinance the plant.
The NNSA FY 2011 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, p. 44,says, “Finally, because the new facility will be leased, there will beno initial capital investment and NNSA will not be burdened by costsfor legacy disposition should the mission ever be discontinued”(http://www.nukewatch.org/importantdocs/resources/Stockpile_Stewardship_Management_0610%20Annex_D.PDF).Scott Dye, who will speak at the festival of hope Nov. 3, says, “Itcouldn’t be clearer. The federal government knows that they’ll trashthe environment at the new plant, just like they did at the old plant,only this time they’ll leave the taxpayers of Kansas City holding thebag.”
Dye, of Columbia, Mo., directs Sierra Club’s national Water Sentinels
Program. In April, he and Ann Suellentrop of the KC Peace Planters
wrote to the Environmental Protection Agency (see the attached
letter). They asked the agency to reopen its investigation of
contaminants at the Bannister Federal Complex, which the EPA agreed to
do, says Dye.
Other speakers at the festival are Sarah Cool of Cherith Brook
Catholic Worker House in KC and Jim Hannah of Independence, Mo., a
retired Community of Christ minister and a board member of PeaceWork,
Kansas City. On Sept. 8, to protest nuke-making in Kansas City, they
and six others blocked buses with officials going to the new plant’s
groundbreaking, were arrested, and were soon released. The city has
dropped the charge against them, disorderly conduct, citing
“insufficient evidence,” so they have no fine or any other penalty.
On Nov. 4, the KC Peace Planters will rally at the public right-of-way
for the new plant, where soybeans grew in 2009. “Beans, not bombs!”
the protesters will chant. They will sow seeds at the fence line and
will offer fliers to drivers at the stop light by the plant entrance.
The peace activists will have a cross for each of the 122 deceased
persons listed by NBC Action News (see
http://media2.nbcactionnews.com/pdf/sickBANNISTERlist.pdf) as
employees who have become sick or died from toxins at Bannister
Federal Complex. The protesters will link contaminants at the current
complex to hazards for workers at the plant to be opened in 2012.
*KC Peace Planters is a coalition of PeaceWorks-KC, Physicians for
Social Responsibility-KC, East Meets West of Troost, The Recipe, Holy
Family & Cherith Brook Catholic Worker Houses, KC’s Loretto Peace &
Justice Network, Benedictines for Peace.
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