Slash Red Tape to Aid Rocky Flats Workers

Saturday, June 16, 2007 | 0

By Denver Post Editorial Board

A federal advisory committee charged with slicing through the red tape plaguing workers at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant has labored long, only to bring forth a bureaucratic mouse.

It's time for Congress to step in and help civilian defense workers who risked their health and lives to win the Cold War just as their brothers and sisters in the armed forces did.

After two days of hearings, the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health voted 6-4 to reject pleas to put 3,000 ailing workers on a "special exposure" status that would have enabled them to receive $150,000 compensation plus medical help.

Lacking that fast-track standing, sick workers from Rocky Flats and other U.S. nuclear facilities have to wend their way through a bureaucratic maze to demonstrate that they suffer from any of 22 kinds of cancer linked to radiation.

The process is so laborious that the Department of Energy managed to pay just 31 claims in four years before Congress lost patience and shifted administration of nuclear workers' compensation programs to the Labor Department in 2004.

Unfortunately, Labor hasn't moved much faster, settling just 802 of the 6,140 claims filed to date by Rocky Flats workers.

Colorado Reps. Mark Udall and Ed Perlmutter on Thursday appealed to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt to overturn the panel and grant the expedited status to the Rocky Flats workers. If Leavitt spurns their appeal, the Senate should act on a request from Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar for a special hearing on the handling of the Rocky Flats cases.

In our view, the mistreatment of Cold War nuclear workers is a disgrace that rivals the neglect of merchant mariners after World War II. Merchant seamen sailing in U-boat-infested waters suffered higher casualty rates than their military counterparts, yet they were excluded from the post-war GI bill and its benefits.

Today, a similar unfairness has been visited upon civilian workers who helped America win the Cold War. Of course, we're not saying some civilian typist at the Pentagon should be entitled to veterans benefits. But civilian workers who risked their lives and health to maintain our nuclear deterrent should receive the same health coverage our soldiers do.

Military veterans are entitled to receive health care even if they suffer from illnesses like diabetes that are not related to their service. Civilians who handled risky jobs during the Cold War deserve the same standard of care.

This column first appeared in The Denver Post. The newspaper's Web site is http://www.denverpost.com.

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