Friday, Oct. 31, 2003 | 9:52 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and other lawmakers are pushing for the Labor Department to take over claims to speed up payments to Nevada Test Site employees who are ill from work-related exposure to toxic chemicals and radiation.
A provision in the pending energy and water spending bill would transfer some claims responsibility from the Energy Department to the Labor Department and would require the Energy Department to transfer employment and exposure data.
The Energy Department created a compensation program in 2000 to help former contract workers apply for state workers compensation. The department compiles employee work and medical records and then an independent physician panel determines if the job-related exposure to harmful materials caused the illness. If it did, the Energy Department assists the employee in filing state claims.
Under the same law, the Labor Department helps former Energy Department employees who are sick from exposure to beryllium or have cancer or silicosis caused by radiation exposure. Those people are supposed to receive lump sum payments of $150,000 each and payment of future medical expenses associated with their illness from their work at department facilities, including the Nevada Test Site, located 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Berkley and seven other Democrats sent a letter to House appropriators this week saying the Labor Department needs to administer the whole program.
"Former nuclear weapons workers throughout the country are in dire need of assistance," Berkley and the other members wrote. "The Department of Energy's poor record on claims processing necessitates a change in the current (law). The Department of Labor has a proven record of success, and we owe it to these workers to transfer claims processing duties to those who have the expertise."
The letter says the Energy Department has received more than 20,000 claims but has sent only 81 to the physicians panel with about 74 percent still untouched. Meanwhile the Labor Department has finished 95 percent of its 35,832 cases.
For the Nevada Test Site, 2,081 claims have been filed, and about $11.5 million has been paid on 89 claims, according to Labor Department Statistics through Sept. 29.
But Energy Department data from Oct. 3 indicate that 402 claims have been filed by Nevada Test Workers, but do not say which claims have been processed.
Senators have also sent letter to Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who heads the Senate subcommittee in charge of the bill and Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the panel's top Democrat.
"The need for changing agencies is immediate and urgent," eight senators wrote in an Oct. 17 letter. "Based on DOE's own publicly available data and the General Accounting Office's evaluations so far, it is plain that this program is failing,"
They note that the General Accounting Office estimates that the Energy Department would need seven years to work off its backlog.
"Workers made sick in the nation's nuclear weapons facilities simply don't have that kind of time to wait for assistance," the five Republicans and three Democrats wrote.
But Louisiana Democrats Sens. John Breaux and Mary Landrieu do not want the switch. In a letter to Domenici sent Sept. 26, the lawmakers wrote that "the two programs are functionally very different."
They wrote that the Energy Department's portion requires a clinical approach not the "simple pay/no pay decision" that would be put in place by the Labor Department. They said the Labor Department approach was not suitable.
But a government watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, point out that Science & Engineering Associates is a Louisiana-based Energy Department contractor the oversees the computer databases association with the program and has been behind a heavy lobbying campaign to avoid the switch.
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