Federal officials decried

Former Nevada Test Site workers said Wednesday that they are losing hope they will live long enough to see the day the government compensates them for cancer and other illnesses they blame on their Cold War service at the nation's nuclear weapons proving ground.

"They've got more excuses than they have settlements," Don Slagle, who worked as a miner and an operating engineer at the test site for more than three decades, said of compensation officials.

His comments came after a meeting Wednesday with aides to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., at a labor union hall on East Bonanza Road. Like many other former test site workers who attended, Slagle's cancer claim for $150,000 plus medical expenses offered under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program was denied.

Reid's representatives explained that funding for a lung cancer screening program had hit a snag because of the Energy Department's reluctance to fund it during the 2008 fiscal year.

Other remedies haven't materialized, such as an act of Congress to grant the former test site workers special status to obtain compensation in light of questionable exposure records kept by the government.

The aides acknowledged that the compensation program hasn't worked as designed.

"This is a national issue. The whole program isn't working properly," Reid's legislative aide, Alexander McDonough, told the former test site workers.

He said a hearing to air the workers' concerns would be held before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chaired by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. The hearing is tentatively set for Oct. 23.

Reid's spokesman Jon Summers blamed the snag in cancer screening funding on the Department of Energy.

"We can't override what DOE decides to do with its discretionary funds," Summers said by telephone.

"He's going to be doing everything he can to make sure we take care of these Cold War veterans so that they get the care and compensation they deserve," Summers said about Reid, the Senate majority leader.

Later in an e-mail message, Summers wrote that health screenings would still be conducted for eligible claimants but they would be done in a different way.

Nevertheless, many former workers at the test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, said they've experienced at least six years of frustration in seeking compensation. It seems the deck is stacked against them, they said.

"It's going to be filed somewhere else, and nothing's going to be done," said Oscar Foger who worked at the test site from 1959 to 1995 and fought a bout with kidney cancer.

Wallace Morgan, who worked at the test site from 1958 to 1995, said his radiation-caused cancer compensation claim was denied.

"We'll be dead sitting around waiting," Morgan said. "They deny you and tell you to re-file in 60 days. You get the runaround."

John Taylor of the informal group Southern Nevada Association of Injured Workers sent a written complaint to the branch of the Labor Department handling the energy employees compensation program.

"I filed my claim July of 2006 and for 13 long months, I heard nothing from (DOL's) Seattle district office till August 20th, 2007," he wrote in a letter Monday to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in Cincinnati.

In a letter last month to Reid, Taylor complained that Peter Turcic, director of the Labor Department's energy employees illness compensation office "is issuing bulletins to his complete staff that there is no causal link to toxic substances for 20 cancers and 57 diseases."

Taylor said Turcic has circumvented the intent of Congress when former workers and survivors were told in 2000 that they would be given the benefit of the doubt in processing their claims.

"Turcic's bulletins ... eviscerate our due process," he wrote in his Sept. 20 letter to Reid regarding his complaint to the Labor Department inspector general's office.

Calls to NIOSH officials from the Review-Journal seeking Turcic's comments were not immediately returned late Wednesday.

Taylor said he was exposed to radioactive particles and hazardous materials during his employment at the test site from 1969 to 1976 and from 1980 to 1992.

He said he was at a road block at the test site with other workers in December 1970 when Baneberry, nuclear test No. 666, vented causing an accidental release of radioactivity that was detected off site.

"The cloud blew across us and the camp," he said, referring to worker camp No. 12, which was in a forward area. "It got dark. We were pretty scared."

Taylor, a heavy equipment repairer, said he suffers from prostate cancer and a chronic bone marrow disease called myeloproliferative disorder that stems from exposure to radioactive materials or benzene.

"If it goes untreated you're dead in two years," he said.

Taylor said his illness is linked to his employment at the test site, not only because of the Baneberry venting but also because he steam-cleaned radioactive equipment.

"I know I took in a lot," he said.

John Funk, another test site worker, who wasn't at the meeting Wednesday, also suffers from myeloproliferative disorder. He worked as a carpenter installing bulkheads in tunnels where nuclear weapons effects tests were done.

Funk's claim for compensation fell short of the mark that his illnesses were more than likely caused by his work at the test site, from 1976 until 1992. His appeals haven't been answered for more than a year and he has little hope that the hearing will accomplish anything.

"I don't think anything is going to be coming out of the hearing," Funk said. "I'm finding out we don't have friends on either side of the aisle.

"We're being traded for funding for other things related to the test site that have nothing to do with us," he said.

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0308.