Bill may yet exclude NTS workers

Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2000 | 11:20 a.m.

Although hundreds of Nevada Test Site workers believe they can claim compensation under new legislation awaiting President Clinton's signature this week, some may not qualify under last-minute changes to the bill.

The $25 million compensation package for Department of Energy workers or their survivors tucked into the defense budget leaves decisions about the details of who receives benefits until next year and after the Nov. 7 election.

A new president and energy secretary will have up to six months to decide guidelines for coverage, according to the final language in the bill.

In April Energy Secretary Bill Richardson admitted that the DOE had harmed its workers through exposure to radiation, silica from dust and beryllium at nuclear plants and laboratories across the nation.

An estimated 4,000 former nuclear weapons workers are supposed to be eligible for compensation, including 800 Test Site workers. Each worker or surviving family member could receive $150,000. The surviving workers also could receive medical benefits.

The Test Site workers were almost cut out by Republican House leaders, congressional staffers said.

But Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan, both D-Nev., won major victories in the bill after "we fought the House Republicans tooth and nail on this," Bryan spokesman David Lemmon said. Bryan is retiring from the Senate after this year.

Bryan and Reid insisted that worker compensation is an entitlement, meaning Congress will not decide year after year how much money to put in the fund. An earlier bill passed in 1990 benefiting those living downwind of the Test Site depends annually on the whims of Congress.

House GOP leaders then tried to keep the Test Site employees from receiving benefits for lung diseases from silica and beryllium particles.

Staff of both Nevada senators said workers at the Test Site and in Alaska are included under the three categories of compensation: radiation, silica and beryllium.

The next president will have to announce changes to the bill if silicosis victims are removed.

Republican staffers made a last-minute technical change to the X-ray standards, making it harder to prove silicosis, but there are two other ways to qualify for benefits. Victims can have proof from another computer-assisted diagnostic technique or a written diagnosis accompanied by a lung biopsy.

There are a number of issues in the bill that lawmakers want to come back and fix and the silicosis issue is one of them, said Robert Simon, Democratic staff director of the Senate Energy Committee.

"On behalf of the Nevada delegation, this legislation would never have happened without those two guys," Simon said of Reid and Bryan. "They moved heaven and earth to get the silicosis in."

The Clinton administration may cement some parts of the benefits so future administrations could not change them, Simon said.

Reid said that if Test Site workers are excluded from the bill, he will include them next year.

Employees such as John Taylor, 57, who worked at the Test Site from 1969 until 1992 and suffers from prostate cancer and respiratory problems, said hope is dimming for benefits.

For the past eight years, Taylor and 20 other workers formed the Southern Nevada Injured Workers Association to try to help laborers harmed on the job.

Taylor, who stood at a roadblock on the site 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas when the fallout cloud from the December 1970 experiment called Baneberry shrouded him in radiation, said he has had little luck finding out his radiation exposure records.

He also worked inside the tunnels where the DOE said employees could have been exposed to dust and beryllium metal particles.

While X-rays of his lungs show spots possibly related to dust exposure, more sophisticated CAT scans indicate nothing was wrong with him, Taylor said.

"We wallowed in it," Taylor said of the dust and fallout, but he added that the compensation bill Congress passed won't do much for workers like him.

"It is totally and completely political," Taylor said of the bill's language.

Preston Truman founded Downwinders, a watchdog organization for radiation victims living in the path of radioactive fallout, more than 20 years ago. He agreed with Taylor.

"There's a lot more hype than hope in that bill," Truman said, noting that there is no guarantee of which workers will be included in the compensation.

Last week Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, negotiated a provision in the bill that protects uranium miners and gives them an extra $50,000 each. The House tried to slash benefits, capping each worker to $100,000.