Area 51 Lawsuit

Like hundreds of former Nevada Test Site workers, Dunham is seeking compensation under an act that gives $150,000 to Energy Department workers and contractor workers who can prove their sometimes fatal illnesses are linked to exposure to toxic materials where they worked during the Cold War era.

"Under no circumstances was this material to be destroyed in an open pit environment. It was supposed to be destroyed in an EPA certified incinerator," Dunham, 56, told Labor Department hearing agent Sandra Vicens-Pecenka about the disposal process.

At the time, EG&G Special Projects was a subcontractor for the Department of Energy and Department of Defense.

Dunham wore an Energy Department badge that allowed him access to "the location."

"I left there because I was medically de-accessed by the military site physician because of my breathing problems," he said before the hearing. "I had coughed so hard that I separated the ribs on this side of my chest."

Dunham said the Air Force "has absolutely denied that anything occurred at the location. I am the individual who signed for the 100 gallons of diesel fuel, and I observed the pit being ignited. That was my job."

He didn't have to spell out for Vicens-Pecenka the place where this occurred, the 38,400-acre installation along the dry Groom Lake bed where for decades such high-tech U.S. aircraft as the U-2 Dragon Lady and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes and the F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter jet have been tested.

Among the documents Dunham submitted was a March 2 letter to him from Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., that names the location. "Thank you for contacting me about federal compensation for Area 51 workers," the letter begins.

In addition, Dunham presented Vicens-Pecenka with a letter from his doctor stating that he has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and that he was in excellent health "prior to working at that particular site."

Another document, listed as Exhibit No. 2 in Dunham's case, is an unclassified May 19, 2005 "Safety Supplement" for emergency responders that warns about the danger of inhaling "hazardous byproducts of burning wreckage" of F-117A stealth fighter jets.

In one instance in New Mexico, a firefighter died after responding to burning wreckage of a stealth fighter.

After the Aug. 28 hearing, Dunham described how he was exposed to dioxins and furans from the open-pit burning of 55-gallon drums of resins, solvents and hardening compounds, stuff he said Lockheed Corp. used to coat its radar-evading stealth aircraft.

Kenworth tractor-trailer rigs from Lockheed's Southern California facilities in Burbank and Palmdale "would come in late Tuesday," he said.

"Then Wednesday morning, I would meet them at the burn pit and the semi was opened and the material was put in the pit," Dunham said. "I was there to supervise the unloading of the material and make sure no other subcontractors came close to the pit."

After the drums of stealth coatings were dumped in a trench, other classified material such as technical manuals were put on top along with wood.

"Then I would make a call to POL, short for petroleum, oil and lubricants. Then the truck would arrive, and I would sign for 100 gallons of diesel fuel, which was sprayed upon the pit," he said. "Then, at approximately 3:30 p.m., I would make a call to the fire department and they would put a flare in the pit.

"As the fire burned through the night, these drums would explode and a big white cloud of smoke would whiff out through the area. You could wake up the next day, and the whole valley would look like L.A. smog," Dunham said.

"If you were standing there doing your job, you basically inhaled smoke for six hours. My wife would ask, 'Why does your uniform smell so noxious?' I would button my lip and say, 'Just wash the uniforms.' I wasn't at liberty to discuss it," he said.

Inhaling the smoke from 100 yards away affected Dunham's metabolism, causing him to gain weight. "I gained 80 pounds in a year," he said.

Before he worked at Area 51, Dunham weighed 196 pounds. "I used to play handball and racquetball. ... I was buff. I was a nonsmoker. I've never smoked in my life. Now I can't even blow out a candle on a birthday cake."

Years later, his body swelled to as much as 435 pounds, but he has since lost weight and was down to 380 pounds last week.

The burning of stealth coatings in open pits at Area 51 was the subject of a pair of decade-long lawsuits in which former workers and widows of former workers contended the practice amounted to criminal violations of Environmental Protection Agency laws.

In April 2003, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel found the Justice Department did not abuse national security when information was struck from court documents in the 1994 cases.

The same panel ruled in 1998 that the plaintiffs, who were clients of George Washington University environmental law professor Jonathan Turley, were not entitled to learn what hazardous materials were used at Groom Lake or how they were disposed. That same year, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the ruling sought by Turley.

Central to the cases are presidential memorandums to the chiefs of the EPA and the Air Force, saying it was of "paramount interest" to exempt the Groom Lake installation from adhering to federal, state, interstate or local laws regarding solid waste or hazardous waste if classified information would be disclosed.

Officials for the Air Force and EG&G Special Projects wouldn't comment on operations at Area 51 or acknowledge that open pit burning of stealth coatings occurred there.

Lockheed employees who became ill from inhaling fumes from stealth coatings at the Southern California facilities have since been compensated by the company.

And, ingredients of the secret material is no longer a secret to some foreign nations after an F-117A crashed in Yugoslavia in 1999 and parts of the wreckage were recovered by enemy forces.

When Dunham first applied for compensation under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness program, the Labor Department denied his claim because he didn't submit complete medical records.

But after last week's hearing, Vicens-Pecenka told him that because of the medical evidence and the revelations about his employment at Area 51, "you have a pretty good chance."

Dunham said that is encouraging, but he wants to see secret military installations comply with state and federal environmental laws so other workers and wildlife in those remote areas are protected.

Recently, 71 wild horses died from high levels of nitrate they drank from a watering hole at the Tonopah Test Range.

Investigators from state and federal agencies are still trying to pinpoint the source of the contamination. But a former worker, Kevin Dye, said the deaths could have been prevented if nitrogen compounds used for de-icing planes were properly disposed in a catch basin instead of being allowed to run off into the desert untreated.

Dante Pistone, a spokesman for the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, said Friday that representatives from the division's Bureau of Water Pollution Control made a trip to the site at the Tonopah Test Range. Their preliminary findings "seem to eliminate the airstrip or de-icing materials as possible sources of the nitrates."

The de-icing agents currently used by the Air Force don't contain nitrogen compounds, and the pond near where the horses died is uphill from the airfield, some five miles away, Pistone said in an e-mail Friday.

But Dunham said the source of contamination from past years is no mystery to him.

He said urea, a crystalline substance high in nitrogen, was used at the Groom Lake installation when he worked there, and, like at the Tonopah Test Range, the contamination accumulated over years in the dry lake bed.

"When it got cold up there, they had a tank of it to de-ice airplanes, and they gave us a sack of it to throw on the ramp where passengers exit," Dunham said.

"What it did is eat the surface off the concrete. There was no control over it. They're supposed to have gutters and things where the stuff rolls into a sanitation facility."

May. 19, 2008
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Area 51 workers in twilight zone

Test site cohorts get compensation; they don't

By KEITH ROGERS
REVIEW-JOURNAL

A former Energy Department contract employee has been denied an illness compensation claim solely because he worked at Area 51, though federal officials years ago told base contract workers they would receive the same consideration as Nevada Test Site workers who became ill.

And that makes Fred Dunham think the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program should be scrapped for a more fair system that follows a course Congress intended.

"I would terminate the whole lot of them and replace them with people who want to do the job at hand. Congress has tasked them with a job to do, and they have turned their back on Congress and the citizens," said Dunham, a 57-year-old Las Vegas resident.

He has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease that he blames on inhaling toxic, dioxin-laden fumes while he worked for EG&G Special Projects at the government's secret installation along the dry Groom Lake bed.

Labor Department officials don't dispute that his disease is linked to toxic materials from his workplace. But they denied his claim because the place where he worked was outside the boundary of the Nevada Test Site, according to the Feb. 29 denial letter signed by Angelino P. Patueo, a senior claims examiner for the Labor Department in Seattle.

Dunham appealed the decision on March 7, but hasn't heard back from the Labor Department.

The place known as Area 51, adjacent to the test site and 90 miles north of Las Vegas, is where the nation's high-tech aircraft have been tested against foreign radar systems and where nuclear weapons safety tests have been conducted.

To reach his security post there during the 1980s, Dunham wore a Department of Energy badge worked on Department of Energy land at an installation that was operated by the Department of Defense under a memorandum of understanding from the Department of Energy that dates back to 1958, when the land was withdrawn from public use by DOE's forerunner, the Atomic Energy Commission.

Dunham said his paychecks came from money funneled to his employer, EG&G Special Projects, through the test site's prime contractor at the time, Reynolds Electrical & Engineering Co. Inc., also known as REECo.

It wasn't until President Clinton signed the Military Lands Withdrawal Act of 1999 that the 38,400-acre rectangle that contains Area 51 was transferred from DOE to the Air Force.

According to a "sense of Congress" document that the Labor Department is supposed to follow in awarding at least $150,000 in compensation for workers who became ill from exposure to toxic or radioactive materials, the place where Dunham worked fits the definition of an Energy Department facility.

"The term 'Department of Energy facility' means any building, structure, or premise including the grounds upon which such building, structure or premise is located in which operations are, or have been, conducted by, or on behalf of, the Department of Energy," the law reads.

So, are Area 51 workers covered by the compensation act or not?

The Review-Journal posed that question April 23 to the Department of Labor's public affairs staff in Washington, D.C. Last week, the response from spokesman Loren Smith has been that the question was referred to the Department of Energy and was in "a holding pattern."

In an e-mail Thursday regarding the Area 51 issue, Smith wrote: "We are in contact with the Department of Energy, and they have advised us that we should expect a response in the near future."

Dunham doesn't understand why he has been denied and another former EG&G contract employee, Lori Marie Fox, was awarded $187,500 in compensation this year, even though she worked outside the boundaries of the test site as an Energy Department contractor. She worked at the Tonopah Test Range.

"I didn't think I would ever see any money out of this," said Fox, whose bout with lung disease is linked to exposure to toxic substances including asbestos and chemicals from an inventory she monitored.

Like Dunham, she too inhaled fumes from the open-pit burning of plastic materials.

"The situation at Groom Lake was the same as it was at Tonopah," she said.

Former test site worker John Funk, chairman of the nonprofit advocacy group Atomic Veterans and Victims of America Inc., has alerted the Labor Department to dozens of flaws in the test site's profile, on which case workers rely to assess claims.

Among those he noted in an April 19 letter to John Vance, Labor Department regulations policy branch chief for the compensation division, is that the profile "fails to address employees who worked in Area 51."

"All of the personnel working in Area 51 were hired by REECo and were processed through Mercury (the test site town) and they wore DOE badges. ... They came and went to Area 51 through the Mercury gate just like everyone else, their paychecks ... were funded by DOE appropriation funds," Funk's letter reads.

Funk also sought compensation for various cancers, including a type of bone marrow cancer caused by exposure to benzene or radioactive materials. He has battled the Labor Department system for years and was denied, but after an appeal was recommended this year for compensation for his exposure to radionuclide-laced lithium hydride, benzene, cyanide, arsenic and mercuric chloride.

Asked if he believes he will receive compensation, Funk said only when he sees the check in his hand.

"I've been here before," he said.

Jun. 26, 2008
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Former Area 51 workers eligible for aid

Downwinder designation OK'd

By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Former Department of Energy and contractor employees who worked at the top secret Area 51 base now are eligible to seek health payments available to nuclear weapons workers who got sick from their jobs, a top federal official said Wednesday.

The announcement by Shelby Hallmark, director of the Office of Worker Compensation in the Labor Department, cleared an obstacle that has prevented some former Nevada workers from getting help to battle job-related cancers and other serious illnesses that showed up years after they completed careers at weapons sites.

Hallmark said the Labor Department has designated Area 51, the 60-square mile guarded installation on the northeast border of the Nevada Test Site, as part of the test site for purposes of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation program.

Initial estimates varied widely of how many people might be eligible to gain payments, from less than a hundred to several thousand.

Darwin Morgan, a test site spokesman, said only about 25 to 100 people may be covered. While the Energy Department controlled Area 51 for much of its history, the secret development of military aircraft and weaponry at the site was performed by Defense Department contractors who are not covered by the compensation law, Morgan said.

But John Funk, a Las Vegas advocate and former test site carpenter, said it was clear to workers employed by Bechtel Nevada, Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Company, EG&G Energy Measurements Inc., and Wackenhut Services Inc., among other firms, that they were there at the behest of DOE and its predecessor agencies.

Funk said test site employees routinely were sent "over the hill" to the secret base. He said as many as 2,000 former workers may be covered.

"You can call them what you want, but they were all DOE workers," said Funk, chairman of the nonprofit Atomic Veterans and Victims of America.

Labor Department officials could not estimate the number of potentially covered workers. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is attempting to clarify the eligibility question, aides said.

As for designating Area 51 part of the health program, Reid said, "This is very good news."

"I have been working for this for a long time now because these workers deserve a fair shake," Reid said. "Clearly, there are still some questions that need to be answered and I will continue to work to have those concerns addressed."

Hallmark said in an interview that examiners will identify all claims that have been filed to determine if they may be affected by the program expansion. Claims that have been denied may be reopened.

He suggested former workers and their families who believe they may be affected should contact the Las Vegas Resource Center that processes claims under the energy workers compensation act. The toll free number is 866-697-0841.

"We also will conduct other outreach efforts to get this information to all affected claimants and to all former NTS employees and their families who have yet to file a claim but may be affected by this change," Hallmark said.

Hallmark cautioned that the Department of Health and Human Services, which works with Labor to administer the program, may need to take further actions as well.

The health department may need to update its Nevada Test Site profile that provides the basis for weighing claims. It also may need to determine whether certain workers fall into "special exposure cohort" categories that would make them eligible for streamlined claims processing.

The compensation law covers the Nevada Test Site and dozens of other Energy Department and contractor facilities where workers took part in nuclear weapons programs and could have been exposed to radiation and toxics.

Former workers who contracted cancers or other diseases linked to exposures to radiation, silica or beryllium are eligible for $150,000 lump sum payments and medical expenses. Another part of the program provides worker compensation-style payments for job-related illnesses.

The Labor Department declared eligibility for DOE workers who were at Area 51 for the period between January 1, 1958 through December 31, 1999. Those were the years DOE controlled the site that is roughly 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

A land swap at the end of 1999 gave control to the Air Force.

Environmental lawsuit

Clinton's Area 51 Exemption

Attempted Exemption Of Secret Air Force Base By President Clinton Is Challenged As Military Violates Commitment Previously Made To Federal Court

Environmental lawsuit

Clinton's Area 51 Exemption

Attempted Exemption Of Secret Air Force Base By President Clinton Is Challenged As Military Violates Commitment Previously Made To Federal Court