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Compensation funds approved
This appeared in today's Washington Post. While I do not agree with the way
the settlement was enacted, I do agree that it is appalling that the U.S.
government promised funding and then refused to appropriate it.
I think the last paragraphs are an interesting commentary about who are
seeking compensation.
-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
3050 Traymore Lane
Bowie, MD 20715-2024
E-mail: jenday1@email.msn.com (H)
To view the entire article, go to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58546-2001Jul26.html
Bush Approves Funds for Radiation Victims
By Susan Levine
Veterans who witnessed the dawn of the Atomic Age; men who mined and
transported uranium for Cold War testing; families whose Western homes and
farms were downwind of the nuclear clouds the bombs produced -- nearly 500
Americans who are due $31.8 million for radiation exposure decades ago
finally will see their claims paid by the government.
The federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Program ran out of money in May
2000, and for the last 15 months, it has issued IOUs for approved claims.
The people who received those letters -- many battling cancer caused by
their exposure, or the survivors of those who lost their fight -- reacted
with confusion, anger and bitterness.
Late last week, however, a joint congressional conference committee passed a
supplemental appropriation bill that included funding for the radiation
debts. President Bush signed the bill Tuesday in Europe. A spokesman for the
Justice Department, which administers the program, said it immediately began
sending out information to expedite payments.
"What wonderful news!" exclaimed Natalie Morrison, of Silver Spring, whose
husband was a Naval Reserve ensign on diving duty in the Bikini Atoll during
two nuclear detonations there in 1946.
Thomas Morrison died at 49 of lymphoma, and his widow, now 71, has pressed
his claim on principle as much as anything. She is owed $75,000 under the
decade-old program.
"It's an embarrassment that our government has not paid these people," said
Sarah Echols, a spokesman for Sen. Pete V. Domenici. The New Mexico
Republican was one of the main backers of the measure, which provides for
"such sums as may be necessary" to pay about $84 million in claims expected
through the end of this fiscal year.
Domenici is working to make future trust fund payments mandatory to ensure
that the coffers don't run dry again. By some estimates, valid claims could
total more than $700 million by 2011.
Otherwise, Echols said, "This is going to resurface its ugly head."
As of early July, nearly 3,600 claims had been denied, and 3,900 others, for
$286.4 million, had been granted since the program's inception. Nearly half
of the latter were for "downwinders" in Utah, Nevada and Arizona, with
uranium miners the second biggest category.
Although tens of thousands of military personnel took part in the South
Pacific test blasts that followed World War II, less than 1,400 have
submitted claims under the program.
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