SHAKES COLORADO ROCKIES
Occasional stories have filtered into the press about the ultrapoisonous nature of the "G" gas being manufactured and stored by the U.S. army in the Denver, Colorado, area. The descriptions. of the deadliness of the nerve toxins which the U.S. is stockpiling in defense of the "free" world were evidently not exaggerations. The waste products, pumped down a specially bored. two-mile shaft for underground disposal, have set off persistent earthquakes in the area.
Two members of the Colorado House of Representatives, Roy. McVicker and Byron Rogers, both Democrats and therefore as unquestionable in their loyalty to the capitalist system as President Johnson himself, have demanded to know what the army intends to do about it. Army officials are not talking.
The United States Geological Survey, which began an investigation last December, reported March 18 that the great increase in minor earthquakes in the area “probably are related" to the disposal of the highly contaminated wastes in the well dug at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.
The quakes have ranged from minimal to 3.7 on the Richter scale. An earthquake of 3.7 intensity can damage homes.
Geologists from various Colorado universities, who made a collective survey, said that the ground center of the quakes clustered around the well. In addition, the region had experienced no earthquakes since 1882. When the well went into operation in 1962, the area began getting as many as twenty tremors a day.
The army reduced the pressure in pumping ‘the wastes into. the mountain roots and the earthquakes subsided in intensity. The dis- “posal system was then reduced to gravity flow and finally, last February 20, use of the well was” discontinued entirely.
It now remains to be seen whether ‘this will terminate the dangerous cycle of earthquakes. :
Meanwhile the army is faced with ‘the problen - of disposing of the deadly waste products. As to the stockpile of pure "G" gas there is no problem in disposing of that. It is intended for eventual use on human beings whose tremors will hardly register on the Richter scale.
NO