LAWMAKERS PUSH BILL TO PAY OFF ALL VICTIMS.

Byline: KERRY CAVANAUGH

Staff Writer

Frustrated that hundreds of sick former Santa Susana Field Lab employees have been denied benefits under a program to aid former nuclear workers, three legislators have proposed a new law to help workers and their families get compensation.

Signed into law in 2000, the Energy Employee Occupational Illness Compensation Act pledged billions of dollars to government employees who got sick from their Cold War-era jobs.

But since then, just 60 of the 778 claims filed by former Santa Susana Field Lab workers and their families have been approved for payment. Some 330 claims have been denied; the rest still are being processed.

"The way they've handled it, well, the best way to describe it is unacceptable," said Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Thousand Oaks, who introduced a bill in May to aid field lab workers.

On Thursday, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer introduced a companion bill in the U.S. Senate.

Called the Santa Susana Fair Compensation Act of 2007, it would make eligible for payouts employees who worked at the field lab for at least 250 days and developed a serious illness as a result of exposure to radiation or toxins.

Under the proposed law, employees and their families could receive compensation from $150,000 to $250,000.

The bill is designed to help people like Betty Reo. Her husband, Cosmo Reo, died of renal failure that was linked to his work at the field lab, according to government experts.

And they confirmed that he worked for a Department of Energy contractor.

But despite a teasing pledge that the 79-year-old Chatsworth woman would soon receive $125,000, she was ultimately denied.

The reason?

Cosmo Reo worked in Area II, a section of the 2,900-acre hilltop lab that conducted rocket-engine tests.

But the compensation program will only pay out for workers assigned to Area IV, a section of the lab that conducted nuclear research and radioactive material work.

Feds too picky?

Critics of the program complain that the Labor Department is too legalistic. Employees moved between different work sites at the lab, and records from the 1950s and 1960s are often incomplete or missing.

Plus, they say, workers in other lab sites could have been exposed to toxic or radioactive contamination that originated in Area IV.

"This was a government installation that did mixed work. They had these artificial lines on the property. People were exposed to contamination on each side of the line," said Dan Hirsch with the lab watchdog group Committee to Bridge the Gap.

"It's just cruel. The chances of ever getting compensated are so slim."

Officials with the Department of Labor, which administers the compensation program, have said their hands are tied. The law says benefits are only available to employees who worked in Area IV, which was home to Energy Department nuclear reactors and research facilities.

"Other areas of the SSFL were controlled by non-DOE entities, some governmental, and some private," DOL Director of Public Affairs Gloria D. Della wrote in an e-mail response to questions.

"Even if contamination from Area IV spread to other areas of the SSFL, such contamination would not transform the other areas into a covered DOE facility under the statute."

But that answer only frustrates Betty Reo.

"They have the proof that our husbands were hurt working there, but nobody will do anything," she said. Reo's husband was an instrumentation mechanic at a rocket-engine test stand at the lab in 1959, when there was a partial nuclear-reactor meltdown.

Ill after lab work

At the urging of his wife, Reo left the rockets and explosions stand a year later and became a stockbroker. Three years later, his neck artery became clogged, cutting off oxygen to his brain. While recovering from treatment, his kidneys began to fail, he developed aneurysms in his stomach and he struggled to breathe through damaged lungs. Doctors couldn't explain his health problems.

"We kept asking, Why is this happening to him?" Reo recalled.

Ultimately, Cosmo Reo died of renal failure in 1980 -- a condition the Labor Department was able to link to his work at the field lab.

"Mrs. Reo's case is a tragic example of the flaws in the law. She is getting the run-around from the same federal government that her husband literally gave his life for," Feinstein said. "The legislation I will introduce will allow Mrs. Reo, and others like her, to receive the compensation they deserve."

kerry.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com

[phone]

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

(color) Betty Reo's husband died after working at Santa Susana Field Lab. A proposed law could provide her benefits denied so far.

Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer