TEMPLE: Nuke workers need help not silence

By John Temple, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published July 19, 2008 at midnight

Text size  

• 5 Comments
• Email
• Print

Javier Manzano © The Rocky

Quest for aid: George Tutt, 75, a former uranium miner who suffers from a severe lung condition, discusses his battle for government compensation, at his house in Shiprock, N.M., as his son Davis, 28, listens.

They built the nuclear weapons that helped win World War II and the Cold War.

When the nation's future depended on them, they stood firm.

Now where is their government when they need its help?

I believe in the goodness and generosity of the American people.

If more of them knew the story of suffering we're going to share beginning Monday, I don't believe they would feel comfortable with what's being done in their name.

It hurts to read "Deadly Denial," a three-day series by reporter Laura Frank and photographer Javier Manzano.

It's almost unbelievable what some of these cold warriors have been put through. How about receiving a denial of your medical claim on the same day you receive an acceptance? How about having your 1,600-page medical file lost until after your death? How about being told that it would be better not to speak up about your situation if you know what's best for you?

But then we at the Rocky have run into our own stonewall from the U.S. Department of Labor.

Silence is the response to questions about its administration of a program to compensate sick workers or their survivors. A silence eerily reminiscent of the silence thousands of workers have heard.

As I write this column, it's been 64 days since the Rocky requested an interview with the labor department executive who runs the program, Shelby Hallmark. It's been 36 days since we sent him a three-page memo detailing the findings of an investigation that began in January and builds on years of reporting by Laura.

We never received a response to our request for an interview. We didn't get a response to questions as basic as the date for a meeting we'd heard was scheduled in Denver.

This column is not about the difficulties of doing our job. But the response our journalists have received — as of today, a single paragraph defending the outlay of nearly $4 billion to "energy worker claimants" — reinforces for me why sick workers and their families would reasonably wonder whose side the government is on.

It seems officials are more interested in debating whether the Bush administration did more than the Clinton administration ever projected doing to help nuclear workers. As opposed to carrying out a clear directive from Congress in 2000 and again in 2004 to run a program that is "compassionate, fair and timely."

When you read our investigation and watch Javier's videos on our Web site, I find it hard to believe you will think that the program has been any of those things.

Yes, the government has compensated thousands of workers. But the majority have been denied financial compensation or help with their medical bills.

I didn't enter this story outraged.

As editor, I just believed it was important to examine whether the program was living up to its promise — or whether it was hollow.

The answer we found is disturbing.

It's disturbing when 33 percent of taxpayer money is eaten up by administrative expenses, when a comparable program, such as Social Security Disability, spends 2.5 percent.

It's disturbing when rules are changed midstream, with the result being that fewer workers are compensated.

It's disturbing when decade-old evidence that toxic exposure had made people sick is denied.

It's disturbing when a government agency takes its "no-pay list" and hides it in a secret database, citing national security in refusing to release the database.

It's disturbing when a bureaucracy seems inept.

But what's most troubling is that it appears that a government agency is working against the interests of the people it's ordered to serve — the only fathomable reason being that it saves taxpayers money by doing so.

"Deadly Denial" got its start in 2006 and 2007, when at public hearings we heard what claimants said they had to go through to get benefits. It seemed they were trying so hard to do what was asked of them, and then one hurdle after another was thrown in their path.

Laura has been covering the plight of nuclear workers since 1998. She was in Washington, D.C., when then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced the original effort. Until then, that department had denied workers had been hurt by exposure. Reporters were criticized for writing about the issue.

When the program was created in 2000, it marked an amazing about- face.

By 2004, the program had become a scandal. The Energy Department had spent $90 million administering its part of the effort and compensated only 32 people.

So the labor department got the job, with explicit instructions to be, as I told you before, "compassionate, fair and timely."

I believe I understand the meaning of those words. But today they sound cruelly ironic.

But you be the judge.

That's why I'm asking you to take the time to read the story Monday. Learn what has happened to your neighbors here and across the country involved in every step of fabricating our nuclear weapons.

Government agencies still are supposed to work for the people.

After reading our series, will you be satisfied with the way the Department of Labor is treating these men and women who stood up in our name?

I can't believe the answer will be yes.

And then the question becomes: What can we do about it?

John Temple can be reached at editor@RockyMountainNews.com or by mail at 101 W. Colfax Ave., Suite 500, Denver, CO 80202.

• July 19, 2008

  9:55 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  jbowen43 writes:

  This an expense of nuclear technology that all the proponents of nuclear power would prefer to forget. Folks worry about the spent fuel waste when they should be thinking about the mess at the front end of the process. Uranium mining is dangerous for everyone including those not directly involved. It doesn't matter if it's hard rock mining or in situ. Water and air will be poisoned and people will get cancer. It has always been that way.

• July 19, 2008

  10:43 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  fastnloose writes:

  Are other country's on nuclear power, going thru the same problems these workers are having? Or is the mining of uranium much safer now than it was in the past?

• July 19, 2008

  10:55 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  PaducahWorker writes:

  Thank You Mr. Temple for trying to help us. Your efforts in Rocky Flats will help us in Paducah KY. Some points that might also help:
  The Paxton Family joined Vice President Alben Barkley in the 1940’s to get the Gaseous Diffusion Plant located in the Paducah area. Today, the Paxton Family owns in the neighborhood of 150 newspapers, mostly in our area, the only TV station, a controlling interest in all the local banks and one is Mayor of Paducah. Little, or no real truth about the extent of the numbers of sick workers and neighbors reach the general public.
  I am one of those whom you mention being on the “no-pay list”, blackballed by the Plant Management as being a Disgruntled Employee, to which there is no truth. My only sin has been to try to warn my previous co-workers that there are deadly dangers of which we were not told.
  Petty childish name-calling is a tactic that has been used by the Dept. of Energy since it was developed decades ago. If person did not go along with the crowd, that person would be tagged, most often by a person in management as a “trouble-maker”, or some other tag, even to the point of being tagged as “not trustworthy” in some cases. I have seen really good people crushed emotionally by being tagged with these names.
  Paducah workers and sick plant neighbors have given up and will not organize, believing that there is no hope, or reasonable hope that we will ever receive just compensation. Your taking a stand helps us tremendously. I pray for a day when our Government will step up and will be responsible to us. God Bless You in your efforts.

• July 19, 2008

  10:55 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  SL10 writes:

  Try being a vet of the past who were exposed to radiation during the Cold War days. Many vets are systematically being denied VA benefits. The government under a GOP president for 8 years and his croonies are to blame for alot of this crap. Bullets for Bagdad mentality.

• July 19, 2008

  11:39 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  solar_satellite writes:

  "They built the nuclear weapons that helped win ... the Cold War." -- nuclear weapons did not help win the Cold War; this is just an attempt to rationalize the trillions of borrowed dollars wasted on such weapons after we achieved nuclear overkill under Nixon. The Soviet Union collapsed due to internal pressures, not because of Ronald's attitude towards them. The fantasy-history implied by that opening sentence is the purest self-delusion. The national debt we accumulated under Nixon and Reagan for weapons systems, real and imagined, from which we derived no benefit, hangs over us now and prejudices our future (read 'Imaginary Weapons'; Rumsfeld wanted to order up gamma-ray bombs, despite there being every reason to believe that the idea was a scam -- this only wasted millions instead of trillions though).

  As to the plight of nuclear workers -- it is real, although their tragedy pales in comparison to the national consequences of the policies which poisoned them. We should provide adequate medical care for every person in this country, not the least our nuclear workers. We should not conflate our frantic and irresponsible Cold War weapons programs with our politically stalled peaceful development of nuclear energy, which we desperately need if we are to move away from a fossil fuel based economy.

  The focus of this article clearly is not what I've written about. Its tenor is all about the wrongness of injustices wreaked on blameless individuals by their government. I am concerned for them and about our government's treatment of them, but I am more concerned that substantive treatments of our history and our policy regarding nuclear energy cannot appear here because 1) very few readers have any grasp of nuclear science, and 2) as a result of being scientifically illiterate, readers can only relate to peripheral issues that comport with their fixed beliefs -- the bizarre schizophrenia of the American Right, which honors our founding principle that government should be of, by, and for the people by denying the validity of government, referring always to it as "they" or "it" rather than "we", and equating taxation with theft.

Featured

• Through Your Lens

  

  Submit your photos or see the Editor's Choice slide show here.

• Rocky Multimedia

  

  The news comes alive in our videos and slide shows. Catch up on what's happening today.

• Holiday Lights

  

  Is your house the jolliest on the block? Submit your holiday lights display.

• Holiday Gift Guide

  

  Looking to get a jump-start on the holiday shopping season?

• Mount Crushmore

  

  Which four Broncos greats should be immortalized on Mount Crushmore? Vote here.

• Bronco Dean's rant

  

  Listen to Bronco Dean's midweek rant on the Chiefs.

• Broncos Video

  

  Get the latest from Dove Valley as the Broncos prepare for Sunday's matchup.

• Calendar wallpaper

  

  Download this month's desktop wallpaper calendar

• Sam Adams' Open Mic

  

  Open Mic: Stirrin' the Soup with Matt Iseman