Last night I attended the monthly meeting of the U.S. Dept. of Energy Citizen's Advisory Board (or CAB as it is commonly known) for the Paducah site. What D.O.E. does at Paducah is try to "clean-up" the highly polluted Paducah gaseous diffusion plant site. (PGDP) In fact, DOE and contractors have spent over 2 billion dollars, (yes, with a "B") in the last two decades or so attempting to "clean-up" the site. Unfortunately, the worst problems at the site, which are numerous, are yet to be addressed.

This was only the second meeting of the CAB that I had attended since I and 6 others quit the CAB in August of 2003 in protest over continued lies by DOE officials about the George W. Bush administration plans to significantly change (and weaken) the cleanup efforts at the PGDP and the CAB's inability to have any meaningful input into the process. http://www.paducahsun.com/component/content/article/183-archive/114067-

I had been a loyal and active member of the CAB for 8 years. In fact, for 6 of those 8 years I was elected Chairman. But I felt like now that the CAB does not accurately represent the community anymore, and is not "fairly balanced" in terms of points of view represented, which is a requirement of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, or FACA. Purportedly, the CAB is chartered under FACA.

I went this time because one of the team members of the so-called "research team" that tried to have me arrested for wanting to keep a document that they gave me at a public meeting was giving a presentation on the study they did supposedly measuring public opinion about what to do with the gaseous diffusion plant site after it closes. A description of the events of that night are on this blog at http://www.ruralthoughts.net/?q=node/409. I wanted to tell my story.

After sitting through a boring hour of DOE officials basically telling the CAB a one-two punch about their woes over coming budget cuts, plus how the CAB wasn't really going to have any input into it at all, my eyes were glazing over. But I was determined to stick around long enough to have my say. It sounded all way too familiar. The thing that really is awful is they try to make it seem like they want your opinion, when in reality, it's the last thing they want.

I came last night because I wanted to respond to the research dude's presentation and tell everyone what happened to me when I tried to participate.

to be continued.......