When Sue Maes saw a government letter addressed to her husband just a few months after he died in 2000, she read it and threw it away.

The letter explained that people who'd sacrificed their health building the nation's nuclear weapons, or their survivors, were going to be compensated by the federal government.

Maes was devastated by her husband's death. She said she was not emotionally ready to consider that his immune system cancer could be related to his work at Rocky Flats, the massive Cold War-era atomic bomb factory northwest of Denver.

After a second letter arrived, she wound up applying for compensation. That was seven years ago, and the widow is still navigating what has become a highly complex and criticized process.

Most recently, government officials informed Maes they had lost her file.

"There are days I think I just can't do this anymore," Maes said. The officials "are not helpful. I thought they were supposed to be helpful."

But help may be on the way for Maes and others.

Nine people from across the country came to Denver recently to create a clearinghouse of information for sick nuclear workers and their survivors. A Denver-based home health care company hosted the ill workers and their advocates, and donated a Web site for the new group, which also hopes to publish a newsletter.

The nonprofit organization is called Cold War Patriots.

"This is going to help so many people," said Terrie Barrie, of Craig. For the past several years, Barrie has tried to help ill workers like her husband, George, who also worked at Rocky Flats.

"It's a wonderful idea to be able to share all this information in one place."

Sick nuclear weapons workers nationwide have complained bitterly about the yearslong process of trying to prove they qualify for federal compensation.

For some, it's meant finding pay stubs from government contractors that no longer exist, medical records from doctors now deceased and proof of exposure to chemicals and radiation so top secret they couldn't even tell their families about them.

"Put bluntly, the average claimant cannot do it successfully," said Maureen Merritt, a New Mexico physician and member of the Cold War Patriots advisory board.

Barrie said the Cold War Patriots hope to point people like Maes to information about the weapons sites that will help them no matter where they are in the process.

"We're really trying to help them build a community of people," said Greg Austin, president of Professional Case Management, the Denver home health care company helping the new group.

Austin said most sick nuclear workers will probably never need the services of his company, which supplies doctor-ordered end-of-life home health care to those who've been approved for medical coverage. But in serving sick weapons workers across the country, Austin said his company recognized a need.

It's good news based on bad news: The Utah Department of Health has found that lung cancer deaths in the southeast Utah town of Monticello are "significantly elevated," a claim that residents here have been making for years.

Now members of the town's Victims of Mill Tailings Exposure (VMTE) committee are hoping the study results will persuade the federal government to help the beleaguered town. San Juan County commissioners are in Washington, D.C., this week, armed with the new data, lobbying for a bill that would provide funding for early detection health screening and treatment.

The U.S. government owned and operated the uranium mill in Monticello from the time it was built in 1941 until 2000, when the site was finally considered free of toxic materials following a Super Fund cleanup. For the first 19 years, the plant provided source materials for the U.S. atomic energy program — and produced toxic dust that blew across the town, landing on window screens and clotheslines. After the mill was closed, uranium tailings were used by unsuspecting residents in the mortar and foundations of their homes and in children's sandboxes.

Proving that exposure to the dust and tailings actually caused hundreds of cases of subsequent cancers is impossible, says state health department epidemiologist John Contreras. "There's no technology available that can tell you that," he says. But the new study shows that lung and bronchial cancers are significantly elevated compared to all lung and bronchial cancer deaths reported in the Utah Cancer Registry, and notes that lung cancer has risk factors associated with exposure to the contaminants.

The elevated rates were found in three five-year time periods between 1973, the year the Cancer Registry began, and 2004. Stomach cancer rates were elevated in one time period only, so those results are considered inconclusive.

The health department study was based on 159 cancers diagnosed in Monticello. That's well shy of the 502 cancers (and over 100 cases of other serious illnesses) that VMTE member Barbara Pipkin has documented, but some of these were diagnosed prior to 1973 — including many of the leukemias — and some were diagnosed outside of Monticello, after residents moved away. "Even two miles away," says Pipkin.

To make the study an apples-to-apples kind of study, the health department restricted it to cancers diagnosed in Monticello. To include the others, Contreras says, "would have taken millions of dollars."

In a letter hand-delivered this week to officials at the U.S. Department of Energy, VMTE Chairman Steve Young of Monticello noted, "You cannot replace the lives lost, but you can begin to assist with the problems caused. ... It is time to act as the costs continue to compound and human lives are being lost."

Earlier this winter, says the VMTE's Pipkin, yet another Monticello resident died of leukemia.

Navajo plan to govern land use

By John Christian Hopkins
Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK — With a special session today to vote on the Navajo Nation Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, the council spent Monday asking a myriad of questions on the proposed law.

Whether or not NNCERCLA passes remains to be seen, as delegates seemed evenly divided on the issue; some felt the law was needed, others saw it as redundant to federal environmental laws.

“Anyone doing land disturbance activities needs to know there are criteria,” said Navajo Environmental Agency Executive Director Stephen B. Etsitty.

The purpose of the NNCERCLA is to address issues of hazardous waste release, provide funding for site cleanups and regulate the redevelopment of Brownfield sites.

“This law is a good law to have on the books,” Etsitty said.
“It is time to step up to the plate,” said attorney David Taylor, of the Navajo Department of Justice.

The act is needed on the reservation, said attorney Jill Grant of the Nordhaus law firm. The federal EPA regulations are geared more toward larger sites, near heavily populated areas, Grant said.

Often, on the reservation, the former sites are not close to heavily populated areas, she added.

There are about 1,000 abandoned uranium sites on Navajo — most too small to be covered under federal law, Grant said.

Another advantage for Navajo to have this act is that it would be able to move quicker to address hazardous spills and cleanups, Grant said.

Delegate Leonard Tsosie said the NNCERCLA mimics the existing federal law. But the federal law does not include petroleum, so would the federal government provide funds if Navajo wanted to clean up a petroleum spill, Tsosie said.

“This law is too broad and will apply to the Navajo person working in a rundown garage, who has several buckets of motor oil in his yard,” Tsosie said.

The act needs to be specific, and clearly spell out what the Nation does not want the law to do — such as be used to target individuals in their own yards, Delegate Lorenzo Curley said.

Many Navajos transport small quantities of petroleum for use in their homes, Delegate Elmer Begay said. But he thought the new law would be geared toward businesses, and not target individuals.

While NNCERCLA closely resembles the federal EPA law, there are differences, Grant said. In addition to listing petroleum as a hazard material, the Navajo act would also cover uranium clean up on the reservation, she said.

“It sort of creates more red tape,” Delegate Johnny Naize suggested.

The NNCERCLA would only strengthen the Nation’s position if it takes legal action regarding hazardous spills, Etsitty said.

“A law like this gives us another set of tools,” Etsitty said. “We’re not out there to kill projects or squash development.”

John Christian Hopkins can be reached at hopkins1960@hotmail.co

Children from Belarus enjoy the sun last year

CHILDREN born in the aftermath of the worst nuclear accident the world has ever seen are still feeling the effects over 20 years after it happened and future generations will not be able to escape its legacy.

Youngsters in Belarus breathe in infected air and eat infected food every day but just one month away from their country could add two years to their lives and people in Hampshire and Dorset could help them to do this.

The Ringwood Silver Birch branch of the charity Chernobyl Children's Lifeline is in desperate need of people who are willing to open their homes to a child from the eastern European country for just a month this summer.

Charity chairman Sue Molden said: "They are eating food grown in their own gardens and the ground will be contaminated for years. If you are a parent with the choice to not feed your child or to give them food from contaminated ground you really have no choice.

"The contamination is being pushed into their bodies and what we do is build up their immune systems. It makes a huge difference to these children and it is so rewarding for the host families."

The children stay with a host family in the UK for a month and are given health treatment and foods to build up their systems as well as being taken on trips and excursions that they would never be able to experience at home.

The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 saw a reactor explode at the plant in the Ukraine, sending radioactive fallout over a huge area of eastern Europe, with 60 per cent of the plume landing in Belarus.

Controversy has raged ever since about how many deaths can be attributed to the aftermath of the accident, with some estimates placing the number of related cancer death in the region of tens of thousands but others insisting there is no proof this is the case.

There are branches of Chernobyl Children's Lifeline all over the country and tens of thousands of children have benefited from its work not just for health reasons but also as a respite from the poverty in which many live in their own homes.

Silver Birch is looking for host families from around Hampshire and Dorset who can open their home to a child in June/July this year.

Anyone who can help can contact Mrs Molden on (01425) 480251.