Ill Uranium Miners Left Waiting as Payments for Exposure Lapse
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo., March 20 - For all the reminders of Bob Key's cold war effort, mining uranium for American nuclear weapons programs, none stands out more than the tank of oxygen tethered to his throat. Mr. Key, 61, has pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs that is often fatal. A recent tracheotomy helps air flow to his lungs through a tube connected to the tank.
A decade ago, Congress recognized the contributions of Mr. Key and other uranium miners and passed the Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act of 1990. Signed by President George Bush, the law established one-time payments of up to $100,000 to miners or their families and to people who lived downwind from the nuclear test sites in Nevada. Last year, Congress increased the payout to $150,000, added new medical benefits and expanded the number of workers eligible.
But after years of smooth operations, the program is broke. Scrambling last year to pass President Bill Clinton's final budget, lawmakers never debated the Justice Department's request for additional money to cover the expanded program even as new applications were pouring in, and by May, nothing was left. And Congress has been reluctant to act until it decides how to apportion the federal surplus and how much to cut taxes.
As a result, for the first time, claims from hundreds of eligible applicants like Mr. Key have been held up, with many of the applicants receiving i.o.u. letters from the Justice Department, which administers the program, saying their requests will be processed only after Congress appropriates more money.
And the demand is only increasing. Claims from another 1,600 applicants under the original law are pending, and the department estimates that as many as 1,050 new applicants are expected to file for benefits this year, a number that would raise the cost of the program to more than $80 million.
"It's been a bureaucratic travesty," said Representative Scott McInnis, a Republican from Grand Junction, a city in western Colorado, who introduced legislation this year seeking $84 million to restore the program. "These people are due their compensation. There is nothing to be adjudicated. The money is owed. The debt is due."
For now, Congress has not decided how or when to continue the program. Lawmakers are discussing the possibility of legislation as part of the current year's budget to provide money right away.
Meanwhile, almost 200 people who have been approved for the money are still holding the i.o.u.'s, including relatives of some miners who have died of their illnesses while waiting.
"Just since January, we've lost five clients, and I'm sure there are more we're not aware of," said Keith Killian, a lawyer here who represents former uranium miners and their families. Rebecca Rockwell, a private investigator in Durango, Colo., said she represented the families of at least 10 clients with i.o.u. letters who have died.
Senator Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico and Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, both Republicans, have introduced legislation similar to Mr. McInnis's, asking for enough money to pay all claims through this year and to make the program a permanent entitlement so Congress does not have to authorize spending each year. They have urged President Bush to include money for the program in a supplemental budget proposal for the current fiscal year.
But miners and their families have been told that no new spending is likely until Congress resolves its fiscal issues, a process that could delay disbursement of the miners' money for months, even a year.
"I'm bitter about it," said Mr. Key, who worked in the mines from 1959 through 1963 and, like other mine workers, said he was never warned of the health consequences of exposure to uranium.
"I wonder how well those guys in Washington would do, see how they would like it, tied to a chain like I am 24 hours a day," Mr. Key said. "I know I owe taxes this year. I'm just going to tell them to take it out of my i.o.u."
Worried that he will not live long enough to receive a check because of his lung disease, Jack Beeson, 67, a former miner from Moab, Utah, said: "We worked in those mines, waiting for our golden years. Well, now it's our golden years, and it's done nothing but cost us gold. This is no way to live. I felt I was doing the government a service. Now, I feel they're doing me a disservice."
To many of the former miners who extracted uranium from hundreds of mines in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, the i.o.u.'s are insulting. From the 1940's through 1971, when mining for the nuclear weapons program ended, they regarded themselves as patriots, equal to servicemen. The relatively high wages paid by the mines were a lure, but so was the idea that uranium mining was crucial to national security.
Lorna Harvey's father, Loren Wilcox, was a cattle rancher. But he disliked Russia so much, Ms. Harvey said, that he took a mining job in 1954 and worked it for two and a half years. "He felt we needed to protect ourselves," she said. Mr. Wilcox died of lung cancer in 1969 at 62.
Most workers had no idea that the yellow ore they were mining could destroy their health. Wayne Hill, 69, who has lung cancer, said a tin cup hung at the entrance to one mine for miners and drivers to drink water dripping out of the rocks. "It was cool, clear water," he said. "I didn't know it was going to make me light up."
So little was known or revealed about the health consequences of uranium exposure that workers used uranium dust for fertilizer and uranium rocks for doorstops. "My mother made earrings out of it," Ms. Harvey said.
With deaths and illnesses mounting and ample scientific evidence to show that uranium exposure was a cause, Congress passed legislation to compensate the miners in 1990. And for nearly 10 years, the Justice Department's annual requests for financing the program were met. To date, $268.7 million has been paid to 3,595 people. About the same number were denied because they lacked proper medical records or copies of company logs that showed how long they had worked in the mines.
The financial crunch arose when Mr. Clinton expanded the program at a time Congress appropriated only $10.8 million to cover existing claims, an amount that was exhausted quickly. Efforts by Mr. Domenici and others to cover the shortfall, as well as the new applicants, failed.
Some of the i.o.u. holders have lost hope of seeing the money. Darlene Pagel's husband, Duane, died of pulmonary fibrosis in 1986 at 55. Since then, Ms. Pagel said, she has worked two jobs to pay off his medical bills, which still amount to $26,922.
"He didn't know uranium could kill him," she said. "If he'd have known he would have been dead at 55, he never would have taken the job."