Downwinders may get IOUs

WASHINGTON — Instead of cash for compensation, qualifying downwind cancer victims of atomic testing may soon have to settle for government IOUs — again.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, says trust funds are projected to run out of money to pay expected claims by June 2005. It happened once before, in 1991. Congress then thought it had fixed such problems by ordering higher, automatic annual funding.

But the government is receiving more claims than expected — and processing them more quickly than anticipated. With that, Hatch says the U.S. General Accounting Office now projects a total shortfall of $78 million in funding through 2011. The Justice Department projects shortfalls nearer to $100 million.

Hatch says the Bush administration recognizes the problem and tried to help fix it by requesting an additional $72 million in Bush's just-proposed 2005 budget — above the $65 million already ordered for that year through prior legislation.

Hatch reinforced that request Tuesday by writing to leaders of the Senate Budget Committee, asking them to include that extra money in the 2005 budget resolution they are now preparing.

Hatch noted that when the compensation program ran out of money in 1991, "claimants were very upset because even though their claims had been approved, there was no money available to compensate them."

He added, "I am deeply concerned that we will be in the same situation we were in during 2001 — in fact, according to the Department of Justice, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act trust fund is expected to run out of money by June 2005. I am extremely concerned about this situation; it is one of the most important issues facing my home state of Utah."

Hatch and the late Rep. Wayne Owens, D-Utah, passed the compensation program for downwinders in 1990. Hatch expanded it with amendments in 2000 to make people with more types of cancer eligible for payments.

The Justice Department said the program has paid $666 million to 10,141 claimants through the years, as of Monday. Also, it said another 2,592 claims now pending but not yet decided have a potential value of $180.8 million.

The program set up compensation for five different types of radiation victims.

Victims of some types of cancer who lived downwind of Nevada atomic bomb testing — who lived in some southern Utah counties and in Arizona and Nevada at certain times — qualify for payments of $50,000 each. About 66 percent of such claims that have been decided so far have been approved.

Victims from other categories — uranium miners, uranium millers, ore transporters and participants at the Nevada Test Site — qualify for $100,000 each. Higher amounts are available to them, in part, because the government was shown to clearly know their work could cause illness and death but did not warn them.

Onsite participants have won 41 percent of the claims decided so far; uranium miners have won 60 percent; uranium millers and ore millers have both won 87 percent.

More information about the compensation and how to apply is available on the Justice Department's Web page, www.usdoj.gov/civil/torts/const/reca/index.htm.

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E-mail: leed@dgsys.com