Mr. William Muszynsk
Acting Regional Administrator, Region 2
United States Environmental Protection Agency
290 Broadway
New York, NY 10007-1866

Dear Sir:

Your letter of July 23, 2001, concerning the falsification of 1988 Site Assessment documents submitted to the EPA by the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (KAPL) indicates that our allegations are serious in nature and of great concern to your agency. However, you then summarily dismiss the issue based on "additional information" provided by those who violated the law by making the original false submittal.

In addition, your letter misstates our allegation and fails to address important aspects of the falsification. Specifically:

1. We did not allege possible "falsification". We provided you with substantive and detailed evidence, historic data generated by the Laboratory itself, about very real and very obvious falsification.

2. The later KAPL submittals that you refer to are invalid because they were evaluated by the EPA without knowledge that the original submittal was falsified. In any case, it is not possible that these "later submittals" provide cause to pardon a prior violation of the law. Nor is it possible that these "later submittals" can negate historic documentation, which included extensive test results. Having been provided with irrefutable evidence that the original Laboratory submittal consisted of gross falsifications, how can you believe any later "information" provided by this organization?

3. Your understanding about the Peek Street facility is obviously based on well worn Laboratory propaganda that is also false. Soil samples along an adjacent bike path, used as a children's play area, were measured at 1200 picocuries per gram 30 years after closure, and included cesium-137 and plutonium-239 isotopes. This, sir, is far above any "standard" at the time of closure. In case you missed the point, Peek Street provides a perfect example of how this rogue organization has ignored its charter to protect the health and safety of the public.

4. Testimony given by landfill operators in two separate interviews, one by the Laboratory and one by the IUE-AE-301, verify historic documentation about the presence of hundreds of deeply buried 55-gallon drums in the KAPL land disposal area, many containing radioactive sludge. This landfill content, alone, is more than enough to qualify the site for listing on the National Priorities List. The KAPL land disposal area is a major health and environmental threat to the citizens of this area.

We request that you provide us with an explanation of why the gross falsification of the 1988 CERCLA submittal was not a violation of the law which is subject to severe penalty. We also request that a detailed explanation be provided as to how the 1993 Expanded Site Inspection report and the boilerplate Environmental Monitoring Reports, both generated by the original falsifiers, take precedent over historic documentation. The KAPL land disposal area is indeed a serious matter, and one that deserves at least a legitimate investigation into who is responsible for the falsifications, plus an on-site excavation to identify what deadly substances are actually buried within its confines.

John P. Shannon
Physicist, Nuclear Engineer
262 Jones Rd. Saratoga Springs, N.Y. 12866

Robert G. Stater
Nuclear Engineer, P.E.
105 Pashley Rd. Scotia, N.Y. 12302

cc
George Pataki, Governor of New York State
Cristine Whitman, Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Hillary Rodman Clinton, U.S. Senator for New York State
Charles Shumer, U.S. Senator for New York State
Michael McNulty, U.S. Representative
Richard L. Brodsky, Chairman of the N.Y. Assembly Committee on Environmental Conservation
Erin M. Crotty, Commissioner, State of New York Department of Environmental Conservation
Eliot Spitzer, Attorney General of New York State
Judith Enck, Policy Advisor, Environmental Protection Bureau of N.Y. Attorney General
Albert Jurczynski, Mayor of Schenectady, New York
Anne Rabe, Director of Citizens Environmental Coalition
Peter Sheehan, Sierra Club
Judy Sanders, Albany News Chief for WRGB TV