[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 174 (Friday, December 14, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Page S13296]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I would like to highlight two provisions 
in the Defense appropriations bill we passed last Friday night that are 
of great importance to Iowans. I have spoken here before of the 
continued health and environmental legacy of the nuclear weapons work 
at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, of conventional munitions work at 
the same plant, and of the secrecy issues that make it difficult to 
help the workers there. In the last couple years the Department of 
Energy has made real, if slow, progress toward addressing these issues. 
Two provisions in this year's Defense appropriations bill promise 
similar progress in addressing concerns of workers on the Army side of 
the plant.
  Last year an amendment I offered to the Defense authorization bill 
required the Pentagon to review its secrecy policies to ensure that 
they do not harm workers at defense nuclear facilities, to notify 
workers who may have been harmed by radioactive or toxic exposures at 
these plants of these exposures and of how they can discuss them with 
health care providers and other officials, and to report back to 
Congress. But six months after the bill passed the Secretary had not 
even designated an official to carry out the provision. There still has 
been no notification and no report to Congress.
  My amendment to the Defense appropriations bill this year clarifies 
that provision by explicitly including employees of contractors and 
subcontractors of the Defense Department, a colloquy last year between 
Senators Levin and Warner and myself had clarified this intent, and by 
limiting its scope to facilities that manufacture, assemble, and 
disassemble nuclear weapons. The amendment also applies similar 
provisions to the Army side of the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant. It 
requires the Department to determine the nature and extent of exposures 
of current and former workers there to radioactive and other hazardous 
substances. It requires the Department to notify the workers of such 
exposures and of how they can discuss them with health providers, 
cleanup officials, and others. These actions are to be taken, and the 
Secretary is to report back to Congress, within 90 days of passage of 
the Act. I am pleased that the Defense Department has supported this 
amendment, and I hope that this time the workers in Iowa will quickly 
receive the support they need.
  Another provision in the bill provides $1 million for a health study 
for workers on the Army side of the plant. The University of Iowa is in 
the second year of a study funded by the Department of Energy of the 
health effects of exposures on workers at the nuclear weapons facility. 
The new funds will begin a similar look at the health of workers on the 
Army side of the plant, who were exposed to many of the same 
radioactive and toxic substances. The work is to be done in conjunction 
with the Department of Energy study. I believe that these two 
provisions will help the workers on the Army side of the plant to 
address the same questions that workers at the nuclear facility in Iowa 
and around the country have faced: what dangers have they encountered 
while serving our country, have they been harmed, and how can they get 
help?
  I would like to thank the managers of the bill for their assistance 
in including these provisions, in passing another amendment I offered 
on the Iowa National Guard's CIVIC project, and in addressing other 
concerns of the people of Iowa in this bill.

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