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POISONED BY TOXIC CHEMICALS - A LEGACY OF GENOCIDE IN NEVADA By Mark Clark, Las Vegas Tribune, 10-02-02 From November 1996 through January 1998, news surfaced about an attempt to pry loose information about alleged toxic waste burning at the Air Force's Groom Lake testing facility, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 3-0 ruling upheld the Air Force's claim that giving out such information could endanger national security and a 1995 Executive Order by President Clinton further restricted it's disclosure. Lawyers for five current and former workers at the secret Air Force base, and the widows of two workers allegedly killed by toxic wastes, are not entitled to learn whether hazardous substances exist there or how they are handled, the results of a federal toxins inspection, or even the name of the base. The former workers sought the court's intervention out of fear that the government was targeting them through a criminal investigation because they are the plaintiffs in a civil law suit who had gone public about the alleged unlawful burning of hazardous toxic waste. The workers, whose names are protected by a civil court gag order, alleged that throughout the 1980's, the Air Force regularly filled 55-gallon drums with toxic waste and dumped them in trenches the size of football fields. The drums were covered with combustible material, doused with jet fuel and set ablaze at the base often called Area 51 which is some 93-miles north of Las Vegas. The base does exist. Its not like "brigadoon" which in legend is said to appear and comes to life out of the fog every hundred years on the Scottish highlands. Within the next ten years, Nevada is going to have nuclear and toxic waste traveling within its borders and that waste is to be stored at the Nevada Test Site's Yucca Mountain facility. Accidents are bound to happen and we already know ahead of time what the federal government is going to do - they're going to hide behind the cloak of national security. Now, you have to ask yourself the "$64 million dollar question," what is the State of Nevada going to do in the case toxic waste accidents do happen? Well, let me enlighten you and educate others on what the State of Nevada has been doing within the past ten years when its' citizens report claims of toxic poisoning while on the job. A doctor, Dr. James Craner, hired by Nevada's State Industrial Insurance System (SIIS) found in an investigation for SIIS that state employees were being poisoned by toxins at the Grant Sawyer Building (Nevada's own Government Building) located at 555 Washington Avenue in Las Vegas. Dr. Craner was promptly fired by the state for his findings and the employees of the building were denied medical care and work loss compensation. This reporter has learned a civil suit has been filed on behalf of employees working at the Sawyer Building according to one state source. Approximately ten years ago, the Clark County Sanitation (sewer) District accidentally poisons over 200 of its workers. When SIIS approved the first disability claim, the yearly insurance rates for the Sanitation District rose from $100,000 to $195,000. The second poisoned worker who filed a SIIS claim was harassed, intimidated, and is refused medical care and testing. Subsequent injured workers were refused the right to even file a SIIS claim. Afterwards, SIIS bureaucrats could then insist that since there was only one claim filed, the evidence shows that nobody else was injured on the job. While fighting the 200 sewer district poison claims, SIIS realized it needed a law to help it defend all of its future poison case decisions. So SIIS sent along a long list of changes it needed to the 1993 state legislature resulting in the 1993 senate bill No. 316. The senate committee on commerce and labor took no notice of the section that became NRS 617.358 and it looked innocent enough on the surface. It simply stated that any injured worker with an occupational disease such as poisoning, would have to prove his case with a preponderance of evidence. I'd like to mention its second paragraph easily as sinister as the first that states that if an employer fires an employee before the employee files his disability claim, the sate can then presume that the employee didn't get poisoned on the job. First of all, if you read this statute and then read the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and you compare the two, the statute seems to be in conflict (unconstitutional) with the U.S. Amendment which requires equal protection under the law. If you consider the facts surrounding why SIIS asked for this law, it would be prima facie evidence that SIIS intended to discriminate against occupationally poisoned workers. All injuries must be judged under the same standards. The state cannot discriminate against one class of injured worker while favoring another class of injured worker. The statute is designed to protect the powerful State of Nevada from the dying workers that the state was legally obligated to protect in the first place. Why else would the state legislate a different, higher standard of evidence to prove injury? It's no wonder that for more than ten years, virtually no worker who gets poisoned on the job in Nevada has a claim approved by SIIS or the Nevada Social Security Administration. Anyone remember about ten or more years ago a man named Jim Forrester. He filed an injury claim with SIIS here in Las Vegas and it was subsequently denied. Then Forrester drove his Ford Suburban through the front door of the SIIS building on Charleston Avenue and was shot in the head by a state "dead eye Dick" security guard. Forrester recovered from his wounds and was prosecuted. The state eventually had to pay Forrester's claim, probably while he was in prison. Need I say more? I would like to thank Mr. Dwayne D.Eukel (Duke) at the Tribune for writing the introduction for this article on September 4,2 002, while I was ill. It was very informative and damning; hence announcing the Tribune's investigation surrounding Mr. Jessie Battey's accusations of murder, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and fraud allegedly committed by a construction company, a local union, and certain Agencies of the State of Nevada. I was the reporter Duke referred to as becoming ill from handling these stored documents Mr. Battey provided me to write this series of articles. The documents evidently had some toxic residue still left on them, even after all these years. I had some of the same medical symptoms Mr. Battey and his co-workers had. I have not yet fully recovered, but I now have some newly copied documents revealing just how Tommy Ford Construction, Carpenter's Local 1977, Nevada's Occupational Safety and Health Enforcement Section (OSHES), SIIS, and the Nevada Social Security Administration handled several cases of toxic poisoning developed by Mr. Battey and his co-workers while working at Caesar's Palace Tower No. 2 in 1997. Please visit Mr. Battey's web site at CivilRights552.com and follow the "bouncing ball" on my next article called the "Tommy Ford Conspiracy". I can be reached at MARKSNOSY@EARTHLINK.NET and I welcome your comments. WORKING TOGETHER TO ATTAIN FAIRNESS | ||
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