The Newsfeed

A central Washington man, spent nearly two decades at Hanford, near the Tri-Cities, cleaning up its waste.

Today, he lives with brain damage.

His doctor ties to toxic exposure there.

He helped Washington pass a landmark law to help sick workers at the former weapons site get compensation.

But now, years later, he still tangled in appeals with the Department of Energy.

In collaboration with ProPublica, Cascade PBS reporter Lizz Giordano reports.

On good days Lonnie and Melinda Rouse take a familiar drive to a local grocery store where workers know Lonnie by name.

They cook dinner together.

Melinda, giving him one instruction at a time.

Potatoes to be washed and sliced.

I'll be right back.

We him give a task to do.

If it's too hard and he can't succeed at it, we switch the task to something that's easier.

So he has success every day.

Melinda's Lonnie's main caregiver.

Two of his adult sons switch off, taking the night shift.

They all get paid through a federal program that provides health care to sick Hanford workers.

Rouse started working at Hanford in 1990 as a nuclear process operator.

Once, he said, the floor of the Plutonium Finishing Plant melted the rubber off his boots.

That was kind of scary and weird.

I'd never seen anything like that before.

When the mission at Hanford Site shifted to cleaning up the radioactive waste, Rouse moved to a job in the tank farms, moving the toxic sludge between tanks.

We were always told that nothing is out here that's going to harm you.

You do what you are supposed to do, and you do what you are trained to do, and you're going to be fine.

But that's not what happens.

After nearly two decades of work at Hanford, Rouse was diagnosed with brain damage caused by exposure to toxins in 2009.

I was getting more, more and more and more angry at anything and everything out at Hanford.

I was getting more and more angry at at home.

He was denied for workers compensation when he applied shortly after his diagnosis.

Like other Hanford workers at the time, he had to prove his job caused his illness and nearly impossible bar, according to data and worker testimony from that period.

An approved claim meant a decade of back wages.

It would have staved off their 2014 bankruptcy, paid off their house and refilled their retirement savings they had exhausted.

Rouse and his wife, joined the push for a presumption law to flip that burden of proof to the employer, making the DOE show something other than the job made the worker sick.

In 2018, they stood behind as former Governor Jay Inslee signed the bill that was supposed to change Lonnie's life.

But his life has been nothing but appeal after appeal since he filed his claim again in 2018 under the new law.

20 in total.

In appeal documents, the DOE blamed alcoholism and family conflicts on his illness, which Rouse disputed.

He's not alone.

Our investigation with ProPublica found the DOE hasn't recommended approving any of the 102 claims filed over the past three and a half years, according to the latest state data.

The state, which has final say, approved roughly three out of four, anyway.

The DOE appealed all but seven of those approvals.

This was supposed to have ended a decade ago.

It's even worse than it was ten years ago.

The DOE declined to be interviewed and did not answer detailed questions or respond to the newsrooms' findings.

In a statement, a spokesperson wrote that the DOE is following all relevant laws and is committed to worker safety and protection.

Rouse finally received back pay last year, but that wasn't the end of his claim.

The DOE is now appealing his claim to Superior Court, and warn he might have to pay back the federal government if he loses.

I think they should.

For people who are getting really hurt and sick out there, they need to help take care of us because I believe it's their responsibility to take care of the people who help them.

I'm Lizz Giordano, Cascade PBS.

I'm Paris Jackson.

Thanks for watching.

To see our coverage of Hanford in our investigation with ProPublica, visit Cascade PBS.org/thenewsfeed.