Murray, Cantwell Say Hanford Workers Deserve Compensation Faster

WASHINGTON,
D.C. – Today, Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Patty Murray urged the
Department of Labor and Department of Energy to fix inefficiencies slowing
down claims processing for former and current Energy workers and
contractors whose health has been adversely affected on the jobsite. In a letter to the
secretaries of both departments, the Senators cited recommendations from a
recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on improving
the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program (EEOICP). The
Senators say GAO’s recommendations should be implemented as ‘quickly as
practicable’ to ensure Energy workers like those at Hanford have their claims
processed without unnecessary delay.

“We
have many constituents who worked at Hanford during the cold war and still live
in the Tri-Cities area,” the Senators wrote in a letter to Secretary of Labor
Hilda Solis and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. “These constituents have
raised concerns regarding delays in resolving claims. …The recent Government
Accountability Office (GAO) report released in March identified areas in the
Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program (EEOICP) that still
need improvement and making recommendations on how to solve or minimize
problems. We are writing to urge the Department of Labor and Department of
Energy to implement recommendations made by GAO in its report on EEOICP as quickly
as practicable.”

The
problems identified in the GAO report as contributing to compensation delays
include: restrictions on Department of Energy site information; incomplete or
nonexistent records relating to employment and health; problems with the process
to determine the level of one’s exposure, known as dose reconstruction; and new
scientific information linking the exposure to cancer, which causes the
reconstruction process to take longer.

Though
DOL and DOE stated in March they would begin to implement many of GAO’s
recommendations, some of them have not been fully addressed or implemented, and
the concerns of many former Hanford workers, or other Energy employees living
in Washington state, have not been fully addressed. Since the average length of
time to process a claim takes between one and three years, one of the biggest
concerns of Hanford workers is fully understanding upfront the requirements to
qualify, rather than investing months and even years of time and resources to
ultimately be denied. The GAO report confirmed that enhanced oversight and
transparency of EEOICP could improve the program’s credibility.