Article Published: Sunday, September 26, 2004 
Denver Post editorial

Cold War workers need aid now

During the Cold War, tens of thousands of workers at federal defense sites handled some of the world's most dangerous materials, such as radioactive elements, heavy metals, asbestos, acids and solvents.

As a result, thousands of workers later suffered cancer, organ damage and other diseases. The U.S. government promised to compensate them, but now, four years after that promise was made, almost none of the victims has gotten a dime.

Congress funded the program to the tune of $95 million and assigned the Department of Energy to handle the claims.

The DOE has almost nothing. As of the end of July, the department had made payments on just 31 claims out of 25,000 cases filed, The Associated Press reports. This point deserves emphasis: Four years and $95 million later, the DOE has paid just 31 of 25,000 claims.

At least 1,600 of the exposed workers are from Colorado, although the number may be much higher, said a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Mark Udall, whose district includes the former Rocky Flats nuclear bomb plant between Golden and Boulder.

Clearly, the DOE's pace is unacceptably slow and indicates problems far deeper than bureaucratic lethargy. The department is ill-suited to managing the process, as it lacks expertise in compensation programs.

And frankly, the DOE has no motivation to admit that its facilities or contractors made serious worker safety mistakes in the past.

Several U.S. senators, mostly Republicans, want to move the nuclear worker compensation program out of DOE and give it to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The senators reason that because Labor has experience running national compensation systems(such as the black lung program for coal miners), the agency could more quickly process claims for injured nuclear workers. The proposal also calls for the government to directly pay the claims, rather than route money through contractors. (Questions have been raised about how Energy has used contractors.) Supporters included Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and Energy Committee Chair Pete Dominici of New Mexico.

The plan easily passed the Senate as an amendment to the defense authorization bill, but the House didn't include it in its version of that bill. The issue is headed to a conference committee. House opposition stems from the Bush administration's intransigence. The White House's stated reason is that the changes would cost too much. In fact, the amendment doesn't expand benefits, it only speeds the claims process.

The real reasons involve bureaucratic bickering: Labor doesn't want the responsibility, and Energy doesn't want to surrender millions of dollars in funding that come with the program.

Fortunately, Colorado's House delegation has shown unusual solidarity on the matter: Six of the seven signed a letter urging the conference committee to include the compensation amendment in the final defense bill.

Colorado's seventh House member, Republican Joel Hefley of Colorado Springs, didn't sign the letter because he will be part of the conference committee, and committee members don't send letters to themselves. Hefley should heed the advice from his Colorado colleagues and push the committee to support the amendment.

The compensation program is a mess, and everyone seems to know it except the DOE. The government should step up to its responsibility, and soon.