By Mark Scott
Tonawanda, NY – New York's senior senator is critical of the federal government for its failure to compensate more than 500 former nuclear workers in the Buffalo area.
Standing outside the former site of the Linde Corporation in Tonawanda Monday, Senator Charles Schumer says a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office found that claims processing has "essentially stopped" for the now-retired workers. Many of them are now suffering from cancer related to their radiation exposure.
The problem, says Schumer, is a lack of site profiles at five former manufacturing plants in the area. He says those profiles are necessary before the federal government can determine how much each worker should receive.
"The federal government owes these men and women the compensation they've been waiting to collect for years," Schumer said. "Our message to them, and we're going to keep pushing for this, is to get the site profiles completed."
Schumer was joined by a handful of the former nuclear workers. Ed Walker was employed at Bethlehem Steel, which is the only local plant to have a site profile done. But Walker, who is suffering from bladder cancer, argues the profile was not done properly.
"They (the government) never came up to the site," Walker said. "They never talked to any of the people who worked there to find out what they were exposed to."
At one time, there were 14 plants in Western New York that were involved in the nation's nuclear weapons programs. Right now, Schumer says he's pushing for the completion of site profiles at the old Linde Air and Linde Ceramics in Tonawanda, Hooker Electrochemical and Simonds Saw in Niagara Falls and Bliss and Laughlin Steel in Buffalo.