I'm embarrassed that it takes me posting on this forum to figure out my problems. This fixes it:
zip_file_name=File.join(Rails.root, 'public', 'data', zip_file_name)
[Message sent by forum member 'wischr' (cwise_at_murmurinformatics.com)]
http://forums.java.net/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=383606