Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

NUCLEAR WASTE REPOSITORY: Lawsuit over Yucca project dust returned

Judge wants revised complaint by Jan. 10

A complaint against Yucca Mountain contractors that claims they exposed workers and visitors to toxic dust during construction of a tunnel at the planned nuclear waste site was too long and overstated, a federal judge ruled Monday.

U.S. District Judge James Mahan directed attorneys for Gene Griego, of North Las Vegas, and seven others in the class action lawsuit to submit a revised complaint with less hyperbole for a Jan. 10 hearing on the case to allow Bechtel National, Bechtel SAIC and a host of contractors to rebut the revised complaint.

"He called it a public relations document," one of Griego's attorneys, Joe Egan, said about after Monday's hearing. "I can tell you I wrote every word of it."

Griego said the decision to allow a revised complaint to go forward was a victory of sorts because the judge didn't throw it out but instead found it had potential merit for litigation.

A spokeswoman for Bechtel SAIC said the company "was gratified that the court decided to strike the improper complaint."

"We are hopeful that they will file a document that is appropriate for a court of law," said Bechtel SAIC spokeswoman Beatrice Reilly.

Griego, a retired Los Alamos, N.M. employee, worked as a tunnel supervisor when the five-mile exploratory tunnel was bored into the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

He blames his chronic lung ailments on inhaling dust that contained silica and the cancer-causing, fibrous mineral, erionite, and a sister mineral, mordenite, during the tunnel excavation.

In his complaint, Egan wrote that his clients were deliberately "grossly contaminated" by toxic dust "and they took measures to deceive workers and visitors by hiding, doctoring or failing to accumulate key data on actual workplace conditions."

Egan had argued in court papers that a reference to the Hawk's Nest incident that perhaps killed as many as 1,500 tunnel workers who were exposed to silica dust during the mid-1930s in West Virginia "provides background and historical material directly relevant to the wrongdoing alleged in this case."