Editorial: Yucca lawsuit well warrants strong action

Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2004 | 9:26 a.m.

A class-action lawsuit against nine Energy Department contractors that have performed work at Yucca Mountain is gathering momentum. The civil suit, first filed in March in Clark County District Court, claims that the contractors willfully exposed workers to toxic dust in order to meet deadlines. This week the suit was amended to add the names of two former industrial hygienists who worked for Yucca contractors. The two claim they were fired, one in 1996 and the other in 2002, after warning their separate employers about the toxic dust.

The lawsuit was filed by the Washington-area law firm of Egan, Fitzpatrick, Malsh & Cynkar, the same firm Nevada has hired to lead the state's legal efforts against the opening of Yucca Mountain in Southern Nevada. The Bush administration and its Energy Department are pushing to open the mountain by 2010 as a burial vault for the nation's high-level nuclear waste.

Joe Egan, the attorney handling the lawsuit, told the Sun that what has happened at Yucca Mountain since research and tunneling began there in 1992 is nothing short of an industrial disaster, one of the worst in U.S. history. "There are many people who will die prematurely as a result of this," Egan said. The suit says that as many as 1,500 workers may have been exposed to deadly dusts, including silica and erionite. It claims that the contractors "intentionally and fraudulently concealed the truth about the hazards at Yucca Mountain" and "placed a higher priority on ... deadlines than they did on human safety and health." The contractors deny the allegations.

In August the Sun's Washington reporter, Suzanne Struglinski, uncovered memos and e-mails showing that the Energy Department knew about the danger of toxic dust at Yucca Mountain years before it warned the workers. The documents were among the papers the Energy Department has filed as part of its application to open Yucca Mountain. In January the Energy Department started a silicosis screening program for former contract workers, after acknowledging that dust protections, including proper respirators and ventilation, may not have been up to date or even enforced at Yucca from 1992 to 2000.

Also adding to the lawsuit's momentum this week was Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval, who notified the Energy Department that he is considering criminal charges against the nine contractors. The lawsuit "raises grave issues of possible corruption, malfeasance and deliberate violations of law ..." Sandoval said in a letter to the Energy Department's inspector general. Sandoval is right to be monitoring this case and his strong warning is justified and welcomed.