Editorial: It’s time to finally get it right

Monday, Jan. 15, 2001 | 9:27 a.m.

For four decades, from 1951 to 1992, about 100,000 workers at the Nevada Test Site helped develop nuclear warheads. The Cold War has long since ended, but thousands of workers there and elsewhere in the nation sometimes were exposed to dangerous amounts of radiation and other harmful materials.

Last year Congress finally passed legislation to provide compensation to nuclear weapons plant workers, who often racked up large medical bills that the federal government for years had refused to pay since it wouldn't acknowledge that they were work-related. Still, the legislation had its shortcomings. Specifically, the new law effectively limited the eligibility of those Nevada Test Site workers who had come down with silicosis. So it is heartening that Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson is calling on Congress to change last year's law to include those who were left out last time, including those at the Nevada Test Site.

It's unclear how seriously the Republican-controlled Congress and new Republican president will consider this proposal from an outgoing Democratic administration. Also, if the past is a guide, Congress usually resists amending legislation in the following session if what passed the first time took some difficulty. In the case of the radiation compensation legislation, there initially was formidable opposition by House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. So trying to add more workers -- and with it, adding to the compensation program's costs -- is going to be an uphill battle at best. Yet the incoming Bush administration and 107th Congress should support this important proposal, which has received the bipartisan backing of Nevada's congressional delegation.