NEIGHBORLINESS is taken for granted in the Texas Panhandle, and rancher Lee Cockrell has been neighborly toward the government's Pantex weapons plant for years. He even went so far as to help disperse anti-nuclear protesters who once wanted to camp on his land. But now his water is contaminated, and Cockrell wants the government to do the neighborly thing, 'fess up and deal with the problem.

Longtime Competitive Roper
Now Taking On Pantex Plant

By David Bowser

PANHANDLE, Texas — At 66, rancher Lee Cockrell can still make three wraps and a hooey in less time than ropers a third his age, but it's not a calf out of the chute he's trying to get his loop around these days. It's the state and federal government.

Cockrell, whose calf roping career stretched from the 1950s to the 1980s, ranches across the road from a U.S. Department of Energy plant that assembles, or these days disassembles, nuclear bombs. Indeed, when the Pantex plant was first established here during World War II in Carson County between Amarillo and Panhandle, the government took 1280 acres of Cockrell's family homestead to help make up the 10,000 acre bomb manufacturing facility.

In those days, the government made conventional bombs that were headed for duty in Europe or the Pacific. After the war, the plant was converted to assemble nuclear weapons. With the end of the Cold War, many of those weapons are being disassembled here. Others are maintained or tested, and parts are stored here.

Cockrell's ranch was originally settled in 1891 by his great grandfather, N.L. Garrison.

"He homesteaded two sections, then he bought out some other homesteaders," Cockrell says. "At one time there, he had about eight sections."

Another grandfather, Lee Cockrell, was a rancher in Denton County. During Prohibition, there was so much corruption there, he was appointed sheriff to clean the place up.

"He was sheriff there for four terms while he farmed and ranched," Cockrell says.

Yet another grandfather, O.H Ingrum, married one of Garrison's daughters. He was a rancher in Gray County in the Texas Panhandle.

"He was a good hand with a catch rope," Cockrell recalls. "He could rope better than any of the hired hands in the country."

It was his Grandfather Ingrum who started Cockrell roping.

"I was chasing cattle around when I was nine or 10 years old," Cockrell says. "I roped in junior high and high school rodeos."

It was his Grandfather Ingrum who also started Cockrell farming and ranching. Cockrell was on a tractor by the time he was six. By age 10, he was driving grain trucks to the elevator. After high school Cockrell wanted to go to college, but his grandfather told him he would have to work his way through. Ingrum put his grandson to work on the place in Carson County and told him he could use the money from there to pay for school.

"He told me that if I couldn't make enough to go to college on 1000 acres of farmland, then I needed to reconsider going," Cockrell says.

Cockrell says his Grandfather Ingrum was really responsible for everything he's accomplished in his life.

"I finished high school in May 1952," Cockrell says. "I started farming in June. I was plowing within a month. My granddaddy told me I wasn't going to freeload through college."

Cockrell had been recruited by a legendary coach of the football and rodeo team at a college in Abilene.

"I went to Hardin Simmons University because of Sammy Baugh," Cockrell says.

Baugh later took over as coach of the New York Titans, which became the New York Jets.

"He really taught me how to think under pressure," Cockrell says.

Cockrell turned to the professional rodeo circuit his second year in college.

"I would have never done it without his teaching me how to concentrate and perform under pressure," Cockrell asserts.

When he was the National Collegiate champion, Cockrell was pitted against Toots Mansfield, then World Champion calf roper, in a match roping. The roping club at Childress organized the match. They guaranteed the winner $500 and the loser $250.

"Fifty years ago," Cockrell says, "that was big bucks."

Cockrell called Baugh and told him he was really worried about it. Baugh told him not to worry.

"He said, 'You're 20 years old and fast as hell. Toots can't tie as fast. He can't rope any better,'" Cockrell remembers. "He said, 'You've got a big, high-powered horse you paid $2000 for.' He said, 'You've got a better horse. The only thing's beating you is his reputation and those seven World Championships he got. He's 39 years old, twice your age. He's over the hill.'"

Baugh told Cockrell to pretend he was at home by himself or in the Hardin Simmons arena.

"He said, 'Don't even watch him rope,'" Cockrell recounts.

Cockrell figured how far the calves would have to go before he could start his horse without busting the barrier. Cockrell was in a 15-foot box with a six foot long horse.

"He only had to go nine foot to break the barrier," Cockrell explains.

The calf had to go 14 feet before the barrier released. That meant the calf had to be about eight feet outside the gate before Cockrell could start.

"Most of these places I'd been roping in, the calf only had to get half out of the gate," Cockrell says. "Sam told me to figure the length of the box, take the horse off of the box and however far that is, go out to the line and walk back. Put you a Coke cup out there. Throw some dirt over it where it's not noticeable.

"He said, 'When the calf's feet cross that Coke cup, you can ride.'"

Baugh told him he would miss it by about a foot or two every time, but Cockrell says he'd rather be a foot late and wide open than be into the barrier and pulling up.

"You lose your momentum," Cockrell explains.

When it was all over, they'd roped 12 calves, and Cockrell beat Mansfield by 14.5 seconds.

"He never missed a calf," Cockrell says. "I never missed a calf, and I never broke a barrier. I never saw him rope. My deal was between me and the calf."

Cockrell joined the Professional Rodeo Cowboy's Association the year he won the college championship, 1954. He was already an experienced roper, but he was just beginning. He competed at Cheyenne Frontier Days for 35 consecutive years, from 1952 to 1987.

Over a five-year period, Cockrell won Cheyenne, Calgary, the San Francisco Cow Palace and Madison Square Garden, and the National Finals at Oklahoma City.

"Nobody had done that before," Cockrell says. "I did it 35 years ago."

But through it all, it was the ranch in Carson County that was home. It was his ranch here that got him through school, that was his retreat from the pressure of rodeos across the country, that was his link to the past and his assurance of the future.

He had planted wheat in the fall before he left for college and cut it when he got out the following summer.

"I'd come home and plow my milo ground during Spring Break," he said. "I had a week to plow my milo ground in March."

He started with four momma cows and eventually added a fifth. He says all his tack, travel expenses, horses, everything he needed was provided by the wheat and those yearling calves he sold while still going to college.

Cockrell used to run 450 to 500 head of wheat pasture cattle, but for the past 10 years, those pastures have been in the Conservation Reserve Program.

"If it was out now and I had it in wheat and was running wheat pasture cattle, we'd have a real problem with water," Cockrell says.

State and federal officials admit that an aquifer beneath the Pantex plant and some of the surrounding ranch and farm land is contaminated, but they claim it is an aquifer that is perched between the surface and the deeper Ogallala Aquifer, a huge underground aquifer stretching across the Great Plains from Texas to South Dakota. Cockrell claims the contaminated aquifer is part of the Ogallala.

Whether the contaminated aquifer is directly connected to the Ogallala or not, Shawn Hess with the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, the state agency charged with protecting the state's ground water, admits that the contaminants in the upper aquifer have only one way to go.

Cockrell says he was unaware that there was any water pollution problem until about a dozen years ago. For more than four decades, Cockrell says, Pantex seemed to be a good neighbor, and Cockrell responded in kind. In the 1960s and 1970s, he even helped disperse anti-nuclear protesters that gathered outside the plant and wanted to camp in Cockrell's pasture.

"I never had a problem until they polluted my water, then they thought I was a bad guy," Cockrell says. "Once they found they had polluted water over here, they kind of turned against their neighbors. Before, they liked all their neighbors."

The first person to tell Cockrell about the contamination was a member of the guard's union at Pantex. They wanted to park on his property during a strike at the plant in 1986.

"The guards were the first ones to notify me," Cockrell says.

In 1990, the Texas Water Development Board informed him that the groundwater was polluted, possibly under his ranch.

Then he woke up one morning in 1995 to find the Amarillo newspaper reporting that residue from HMX, a high explosive, had been found in his water wells.

"The DOE told me in 1994 that there might be 50 acres on my side of the road that might have polluted water under it," Cockrell says. "In 1995, they said there might be 100 acres."

In the fall of 1995, DOE drilled five test holes.

"This was after they'd already found it in my drinking water," Cockrell says. "Three different tests showed it in my drinking water, by both the TNRCC and the DOE."

The contaminants were two different kinds of explosives, solvents and various heavy metals.

Cockrell says one of his roping horses broke out with welts. It was about the same time that Cockrell broke out with a rash. The rash kept getting worse until he, too, had welts.

A local physician ran a series of allergy tests that all proved negative. The doctor suggested it was something in the water Cockrell was drinking or something in the air.

Cockrell says he's supposed to get copies of the water test results under his contracts with the government to drill test wells on his land, but he had difficulty getting them.

The welts, Cockrell says, cleared up when he moved to his Pampa ranch.

Today there are 26 wells along the highway on the east side of the plant across the road from Cockrell, and more are being drilled. There are also monitoring wells off-site.

Cockrell claims the DOE has breached several contracts with him concerning water wells, monitoring wells and information.

"I only want honesty and safe water," Cockrell says. "I have never asked for any damages. I just asked for them to be honest and provide safe water."

While it would be easy to blame the government for the problems he's faced in connection with the Pantex plant, Cockrell doesn't. He does, however, question the bureaucracy and the inbreeding in the program that seems to result in a cavalier attitude toward their neighbors and the public at large.