Thursday, October 30, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

NUCLEAR WEAPONS: Effort would move claims by workers

Senators cite pace of DOE in seeking to transfer cases to Department of Labor

WASHINGTON -- Frustrated by the Energy Department's pace in processing disability claims by nuclear weapons workers, including more than 400 from the Nevada Test Site, a group of senators is trying to transfer all claims to the faster-moving Department of Labor.

"Former nuclear weapons workers in our states and around the country are dying while government officials, though well-intentioned, are still learning on the job," the senators said in a letter this month.

The senators, five Republicans and three Democrats, said the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program of 2000 is failing.

The letter was signed by Sens. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.; Jim Bunning, R-Ky.; Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.; Mike DeWine, R-Ohio; Charles Grassley, R-Iowa; Edward Kennedy, D-Mass; Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and George Voinovich, R-Ohio.

The 3-year-old compensation program requires the Energy Department to help states identify workers with illnesses caused by exposure to toxic substances at nuclear facilities. These workers could qualify for workers' compensation from states.

The program also requires the Labor Department to pay up to $150,000 in federal money to workers who developed silicosis, an incurable lung disease that afflicts many test site workers who labored in tunnels.

The Labor Department also is authorized to compensate workers who developed certain cancers after being exposed to radiation.

The senators complained the Energy Department has been slow in setting up panels of physicians to review workers' claims.

They noted the department has not even begun processing more than 74 percent of the claims it has received, and will need seven years to get rid of the backlog.

The Energy Department's Web site shows claims filed by 402 workers from the test site; two from the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain and one from the Project Shoal Site, an area 30 miles southeast of Fallon that was used for a nuclear test in 1963.

The Web site does not say whether any of the Nevada claims have been processed.

Meanwhile, the Labor Department's Web site shows the department already had paid $11.45 million through Sept. 29 to compensate workers at the Nevada Test Site. The department had approved 120 claims by test site workers and rejected 731.

The Labor Department does not want to take over the Energy Department's claims.

"The transfer would only serve to slow down the system of processing claims for these injured workers," said a Labor Department spokesman.

Calls to the Energy Department were not returned.

An annual energy and water spending bill approved by the Senate includes language that would transfer all nuclear weapons workers' claims to the Labor Department. But the House version of the bill does not.

In their letter, the senators urged Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water, and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., the subcommittee chairman, to fight for the transfer in conference negotiations with the House.

"Although I understand that the House conferees strongly object to the Senate provision, I will support inclusion of (it) in the conference report," Reid said in an Oct. 22 letter to the senators.

House and Senate negotiators are expected to complete work on the bill within the next week.