According to newspaper reports, the administration is delaying the compensation until studies are completed to determine whether exposure to uranium and silica dust in the mines caused the illnesses.

RECA, passed in 1990, is supposed to compensate uranium miners who contract lung cancer and other diseases from prolonged exposure to radiation during the 1940s, '50s, and '60s.

In 1992 RECA was amended to include uranium haulers and millers. But about a year ago the government let the fund run out of money, and the Justice Department issued IOUs to miners whose claims had been approved. Since 1990, out of 10,654 claims received, the department has approved 3,907, totaling $286 million. The department has denied 3,587 claims and there are 3,160 pending.

Meanwhile, the federal government set up another program this year, the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program (EEOICPA). The fund is to compensate a larger group of workers who were employed at plants such as the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility in Colorado and others. The compensation is administered through the Labor Department.

The RECA program originally provided up to $100,000 in compensation to former uranium miners, participants in nuclear weapons testing, and people living downwind from test sites. Under a new federal program, eligible workers or their survivors who have been approved for compensation under RECA could receive an additional $50,000 and future benefits under EEOICPA.

In an article entitled, "The Shaft for Uranium Workers?" the August 29 Rocky Mountain News reported that according to budget documents, "the administration is working on legislation for later transmittal that will limit the eligibility of those down-winders who contracted lung cancer who were also heavy smokers, and would postpone awards for millers, ore transporters, and above-ground miners, pending the outcome of the ongoing studies." An Associated Press report in the August 29 Denver Post said that the administration wants to delay the payments until three studies are completed. The newspaper cites Chris Ullman, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, as its source.

Several days later, area newspapers began reporting that some of the miners and their widows who held IOUs from the government were starting to receive their payments.  
 
'Shouldn't have to wait anymore'
"My husband worked in the mines starting in 1943," said Elva Ayers in an interview with the Militant. "He developed lung problems in 1958 that forced him out of work and eventually killed him. We don't need any more studies; the studies have been done. They denied compensation to my husband because he worked 18 months above ground out of the 10 years he worked in underground uranium mines," she said.

"I have seven brothers that worked in the uranium mines. I've lost four to cancer and another has bladder cancer," Ayers explained. "The people should not have to wait any longer. The first mistake they made was to cover up the facts. The second was to provide little or no ventilation to the miners. They lied to us and now they want to find a way to weaken the compensation. They are supposed to work for us yet we have to fight for every cent due to the miners and others affected by exposure to uranium."

Recent news reports featured Clara Harding, whose husband Joe worked at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, in Paducah, Kentucky. Before Joe Harding died of cancer in 1980, his bones were found to contain up to 34,000 times the expected concentration of uranium. Harding was denied compensation, "because official records showed he was only exposed to small amounts of radiation," according to an AP report.

When Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao traveled to Paducah to hand over a $150,000 check to Clara Harding as part of the compensation program, Chao had to publicly admit the government's responsibility for the situation. "It's difficult to accept the fact that the illnesses which claimed the lives and best years of workers like Joe Harding were the result of carelessness, inaction, and even duplicity at the hands of our government," Chao said at the event.

Beginning in the 1950s, workers at the Paducah plant were involved in enriching recycled uranium to create plutonium for use in nuclear bombs. The workers came into direct contact with technetium and plutonium, the most radioactive and toxic substances known. The government estimates that it would take 75 years and $240 billion to clean up the plant.  
 
Government IOUs
As of July of this year there were 438 government IOUs totaling more than $30 million. The majority of those are held by workers in the West: 191 in Utah, 71 in Colorado, 68 in Nevada, 47 in Arizona, 42 in New Mexico, and 13 in California.

Many of those who have received payments have had to wait years for compensation and a growing number have died before payment was made. One of those miners was Robert Key, a uranium miner from Fruita, Colorado. He died July 28 of complications from pulmonary fibrosis as a result of working for years in uranium mines. He held an IOU from the government for close to a year.

Although some uranium miners and widows have received their compensation recently, there are many others who haven't. From their home in Grand Junction, Colorado, Lucille Hill, wife of Wayne Hill, a uranium ore hauler from 1953–1961, told the Militant, "Where is our compensation? We haven't even gotten an IOU."

Hill said she and her husband filed for compensation almost a year ago. Wayne Hill, 69, suffers from lung cancer and just completed treatment for the cancer that spread to his brain. Hill loaded dump trucks and drove uranium ore to several sites in Western Colorado, which included Uravan, a town that was condemned in the 1980s by the Colorado Department of Public Health. The town was leveled because of radioactive contamination.

"We would drink the water that was running down the walls that would pool up in the mine," Wayne Hill said. "It was clear, cold, and tasted good but it was poisonous as hell. We didn't know it was hot [radioactive]. The mine walls were hot, the floor was hot, the dust was hot." Hill described how miners would butcher a deer, bring it into the mine, and hang it on the wall. "When we would get hungry we would slice off a piece and eat."

"The government and companies weren't about to tell us what we were doing to ourselves," he said. "We were told everything was safe. We didn't know we were killing ourselves. The government didn't tell us anything and they knew. Almost everybody I worked with has died from working at the mines."

Hill will be directly affected by the Bush administration's attempts to limit compensation for ore haulers, millers, and downwinders. "We just have to keep fighting," explained Lucille Hill, who, along with Wayne, is a member of the Colorado Uranium Miners Council. The organization has helped to expose the U.S. government's complicity in hiding the facts about uranium exposure and is fighting for the compensation miners and others affected deserve.

According to government sources, there were 600,000-plus workers employed by the nuclear weapons industry since the 1940s. Nearly every state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico had companies owned by or under contract with the U.S. government to process radioactive and toxic material for the weapons program.

The Sept. 21, 2000, issue of USA Today contained a list of 550 sites where the Energy Department either knows work was performed for the nuclear weapons program or where questions have been raised about whether such work was done. The newspaper found thousands of workers at the private contracting sites were exposed to extreme levels of radiation and chemical toxins.

Shelby Hallmark, director of the office of workers' compensation programs at the Labor Department, told the New York Times, "These are people who incurred diseases in the last 60 years, since the beginning of the Manhattan Project. A lot of those individuals, obviously, have died. There may not be an eligible survivor to pursue a claim."

Management practices at many of the facilities also allowed pollution of the air, soil, and water with contaminated waste. One site is the Atlas mine tailings pile at Moab, Utah, which is located 750 feet from the Colorado River. Atlas's uranium mine operated from 1956 to 1984. The 150-acre, 10.5 million-ton uranium waste pile leaks 57,000 gallons of contaminated fluids into the river each day.

The contaminated waste sits on the Ute tribe reservation. The radioactive isotopes released into the river slowly make their way down river into the water of Lake Mead, which supplies drinking water to 25 million people in Arizona, southern California, and Las Vegas, Nevada. Government officials estimate that it will cost $300 million to remove the 40-year-old pile of radioactive waste. Atlas Corporation, the mine's former owner, declared bankruptcy and is free from liability.

State investigators in Hemitite, Missouri, discovered that radioactive technetium-99 was turning up in the soil and drinking water wells near the closed Mallinckrodt Chemical uranium fuel making plant. The plant was one of many in the St. Louis area that used thousands of pounds of recycled uranium to fabricate metallic fuel rods for nuclear reactors. Officials there are debating who is responsible for the cleanup. Radioactive technetium, a highly toxic material, requires special disposal and has a half life of 213,000 years.

The U.S. government, as part of the nuclear weapons program, established a number of uranium mines following World War II. Many of these were established on the Colorado Plateau and many were on Native American land. While corporations scored huge profits from the "uranium rush" of the 1950s, Native Americans were paid less than minimum wage at the expense of their health and well-being. Just on the Navajo Nation alone there are more than 1,000 abandoned uranium mines.  
 
 
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