Deadly denial: Sick nuclear weapons workers fight for compensation.
American workers who built the nation's nuclear weapons are still fighting a cold war, and you can read all about it in Deadly Denial, a comprehensive series rolled out last week by the Rocky Mountain News.
Deadly Denial paints a grim picture of "tens of thousands" of sick nuclear weapons workers from across the country who've applied for compensation under a program put in place in 2000. But most have never seen a dime, says the Rocky Mountain News.
"Heroes from the Cold War who risked their lives to build nuclear weapon," is how Gov. Bill Richardson characterizes the workers. And regarding the lack of compensation, he told the Rocky Mountain News, "The bureaucracy has placed so many barriers, it's almost criminal that workers and their families are not being compensated."
Richardson is given credit for helping to create a compensation program for the workers during his tenure as Energy Secretary in the 90s. The program is geared toward sick workers who did top-secret nuclear work that exposed them to myriad poisonous elements. As the first article in the series describes:
For half a century, the federal government's official policy was to fight any workers who claimed job-related illness, often spending tens of millions in tax dollars annually to do so. The government at times absolutely denied that the workers faced undue danger. It was a flat-out lie.
Then the Clinton administration "reversed the stonewalling" and the Republican Congress at the time decided to get on board, agreeing to pay medical bills and offer $150,000 in compensation to sick workers. The Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act was passed in 2000.
But it didn't address bureaucratic intransigence apparently.
Congress promised these Cold War patriots an efficient, compassionate path to atonement. But a Rocky Mountain News investigation found that the government has derailed aid to workers by keeping reports secret from them, constantly changing rules and delaying cases until sick workers died.
Many ill workers have become mired in a process so adversarial that top program officials at one point considered putting some of them under government surveillance — spying on them.
A program that was supposed to help sick government workers almost immediately became mired in wasteful spending, the report finds, with a $90 million administrative bill for the first four years of the program, but only 32 compensated people. Congress then "fired the energy department from the job" in 2004, and transferred it to the U.S. Department of Labor, charging it to make compensation "timely, uniform and adequate."
Nonetheless, the lack of compensation continued, and in 2006,
...congressional hearings uncovered White House attempts to cut costs by denying compensation to more workers.
Congress was reassured when labor department officials repeatedly testified that the cost reduction plans had been jettisoned, and that they were compensating many more people than officials originally thought would even apply.
But the Rocky's investigation found that the labor department has delayed the cases of sick nuclear weapons workers or their survivors across the nation by giving misleading information, withholding records essential to their cases, failing to inform them of alternative paths to aid, repeatedly claiming to have lost evidence sent by ill workers and making requirements for compensation impossibly high.
"It's denial by design," said Janine Anderson, a sick worker who has spent seven years fighting for compensation while the government alternated between losing her file and denying her case. "I'll go to my deathbed believing this was set up to deny claims."
One of the people profiled is Ben Ortiz, former worker at Los Alamos National Laboratories, who says a doctor at the Labs once told him to keep his mouth shut. But instead, Ortiz testified before Congress about the need for the program, and once it was established he was one of the first to apply. But his advocacy on his own behalf and on behalf of others has cost him, he believes. He says one official at the federal resource center for the workers told him that every time his senator or congressman looks into the delay on his behalf, it only delays his case further.
And, Dept. of Labor officials in Denver told him the three ring binder of evidence he'd compiled with the help of Rep. Tom Udall's office had been lost.
Tom Udall weighs in for the story:
The bottom line is that hundreds of thousands of workers were told that they could help their country by going to work for their government. These workers trusted the federal government, and now many of them are sick and dying from diseases caused by their service. The government's job is to provide these workers some small measure of justice through fair compensation, not to add to their suffering with red tape and bureaucracy.
Ortiz isn't surprised at the difficulty. It's always been difficult he says in the series. Now 70, he's sounded the alarm for decades about the toxic exposure at LANL. Twenty years ago doctors blamed his deteriorating health on age, and also suggested it was all in his head. One asked him if he was practicing witchcraft, suggesting that might be making him sick.
Now, three experts have backed Ortiz up, saying his work at LANL led to his health problems, which include liver damage, brain damage and blackouts. He's losing control of his right hand, and his sense of smell and taste are damaged. Inhaling chemicals gives him migraines. His problems have been long known, in fact, with one neurotoxicologist reporting 15 years ago that Ortiz was poisoned through his work at LANL, with resulting "neurotoxicity and neuropsychological deficits."
But he's still not compensated. "I was a good employee," Ortiz told the Rocky Mountain News regarding his work as a mechanical technician. He soldered silver and cadmium and worked bare-handed, nearly elbow deep, in vats of chemical solvents. "They shouldn't do this to employees."
Amen.
The series is replete with documents, graphics, and both personal and big picture stories. Be sure to check it out.
Be the first to comment