Old News: Area 51 workers eligible for aid

Here's a 7-month-old article on the Area 51 environmental case [courtesy of reader Archangel]:

Former Area 51 workers eligible for aid: Downwinder designation OK'd
(Las Vegas Review-Journal, 6/26/08)

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.

Also, here is a 1996 article on the Helen Frost case in the Wall Street Journal...

A Secret Air Base [Violated] Hazardous Waste Act, Workers' Suit Alleges
(Wall Street Journal, 2/8/1996)

The Obama Area 51 Connection

If you have been looking for an Area 51 connection to Barack Obama, here's one: Every year he is going to have to sign an Executive Order exempting Area 51 from environmental reporting regulations. Clinton did it, and of course Bush II did. Will Obama?

The annual exemption is the result of a lawsuit by the widow of a former Area 51 worker who died after alleged exposure to toxic substances at Groom Lake. (Keywords: Helen Frost, Jonathan Turley.) The lawsuit was unsuccessful in obtaining any compensation, but it did result in the annual Presidential order.

The Executive Order is a publicly-published document that should be found in the Federal Register. I believe it is signed every January. [A reader says September.] I'm not sure whether Bush already did it this year or Obama has yet to do it. It is the sort of thing that is bound to get buried in the avalanche of orders the new President will release.

I expect he will sign it without much internal debate. New leaders don't usually break with precedent on routine matters like that, but you never know.

—Glenn Campbell

BTW: Here are my photos from the Inauguration.
[Be sure to see the reader comments linked below.]