Many of the workers who made the nation’s nuclear triggers at the Rocky Flats weapons plant have cancer. Some are dying; others have already died.
The nation promised help. Congress six years ago created a compensation program for nuclear plant workers.
But the search for the documents necessary to make claims, and the difficulty in determining whether a cancer or illness is related to their work, led to delays. And more delays.
The inaction has left the former workers bitter.
“We’re expendable,” said Mike Logan, 50, a former plutonium handler facing a risky surgery to remove a tumor on his spine. “I thought they only treated people like this over in Russia, or Iraq.”
Thus far, only 776 payments have been made to Rocky Flats workers out of 6,140 claims filed.
But starting Tuesday, a federal panel of independent scientists and doctors will meet with workers at the Westin Westminster Hotel. They have the authority to approve the workers for fast-tracked assistance of $150,000 each plus medical costs.
Federal officials say they are working to help the former employees as quickly as they can.
“Nobody can deny these folks are angry and upset,” said Fred Blosser, a spokesman for the Department of Heath and Human Services’ National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. “There’s no intent to stonewall. … We don’t deliberately do things slowly.”
U.S. Department of Labor officials declined to comment on the record.
Inadequate Cold War-era rec ord keeping and scientific uncertainty surrounding the effects of exposure to plutonium and other radioactive materials are such that “you’re never going to know for sure” what caused a cancer case, said Margaret Ruttenber, a Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment official who ran a 10-year federally funded study of workers.
“So why have a compensation program for the workers if you are not going to compensate them?” she said. “You have to be more flexible,” considering how little can be proven, she added.
“They lied to us”
Thousands of Coloradans worked at the Rocky Flats factory between Denver and Boulder, making plutonium triggers for the nation’s nuclear arsenal until 1989 – often as protesters lined fences warning of health risks. Some workers led the cleanup of the plant’s heavily contaminated buildings.
Now the complex is mostly dismantled and contractors have been convicted of environmental crimes. Federal officials plan a wildlife refuge on the site.
Any federal action to speed stalled payments to workers now would matter as much for “vindication” as for the money, said former Rocky Flats worker Judy Padilla, 60, who had a breast removed after contracting cancer.
“We helped win the Cold War. And we’re being tossed aside like a dirty Kleenex. They really scammed us,” Padilla said.
“I’d have never gone to work out there had I not been told my government was making sure I was safe. They lied to us, bald-face lied.”
The 11-member Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health plans to vote Wednesday night on whether to grant workers “special exposure cohort” status. That would mean workers with any of 22 cancers could automatically receive compensation and medical help.
Former employees from 18 of the nation’s nuclear-weapons facilities already have been granted this status.
Health and Human Service Secretary Mike Leavitt would have to sign off on the panel’s decision.
Claims often denied
“I want to make sure everybody who got cancer gets rewarded for what they did, like the soldiers over there in Iraq,” said former worker Bob Carlson, 82, who worked at Rocky Flats for 27 years and responded to fires in contaminated buildings.
He had colon cancer and now may have prostate cancer. Federal officials denied his claims for compensation three times.
For Charlie Wolf, 48, who supervised work in contaminated buildings and now is battling brain cancer, five denials of his claims convinced him “our system is broken.”
This year, Wolf received $250,000, which he said will help defray $800,000 in medical costs.
“Hole-in-the-head gang”
His doctors tell him he could die any day despite surgery to remove cancerous tumors.
He meets now and then with other former workers with brain cancer – “the hole-in-the-head gang,” he calls them.
Health permitting, he hopes to weigh in with federal officials next week.
“The problem is, there’s a lot of guys who are sick, and trying to prove it, the way the system is set up, you can’t,” Wolf said. “It shouldn’t be that way.”
Staff writer Bruce Finley can be reached at 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com.
