Washington approved 75% of 102 claims; DOE appealed all but seven
About 152 workers’ compensation claims approved by Washington remained under Department of Energy appeal, according to reporting by ProPublica, Cascade PBS and KUOW. The newsrooms asked the state for claims records dating to the presumption law’s passage in 2018 and received records only from 2023, three and a half years of claims data. Those records showed 102 new claims; the DOE recommended against approving any, and Washington approved 75%. The DOE appealed all but seven of those approvals. Half of the workers involved in the unresolved claims were dead, the report said, and the department continued to contest survivor benefits for their families.
Before the 2018 law, Hanford employees had to prove that workplace chemicals made them sick. The law instructed agencies to presume that work at Hanford caused certain cancers, neurological diseases and respiratory illnesses; the DOE then had to prove another cause to deny a claim. Rouse stood behind then-Gov. Jay Inslee as the governor signed the measure in March 2018. Rouse’s 2009 claim had already been denied; he had burned through his retirement savings and declared bankruptcy.
Rouse thought the presumption law would speed up his claim for benefits. State lawmakers and the former governor thought it would force the DOE to take responsibility for the harm Hanford workers were experiencing.
The report said workers, surviving family members, lawyers and state officials pointed to a pattern: the DOE challenged claims with recommended denials and then pursued appeals that dragged cases out for years, spending millions along the way on outside lawyers and expert testimony, including doctor evaluations that point to other causes for workers’ illnesses. Washington has final say over the claims, but the department can appeal the state’s decisions. In cases since 2018 in which the DOE appealed a Washington approval, the agency that handles appeals sided with workers nearly 9 times out of 10, according to state data. Since 2018, the DOE filed more than 500 appeals; in 20 cases, it appealed one worker’s claim half a dozen times or more.
Court records show the DOE has the right to file multiple appeals against a claim. According to court records, its appeals have sought to overturn claims approved by the state, narrow the period of back wages or block survivors’ benefits, among other things. In appeal filings, DOE lawyers have argued that factors other than work at Hanford played a role in the workers’ illnesses, including smoking, drinking, obesity or genetics.
Lawyers and families said the DOE has paid out benefits to Hanford workers in some cases while still actively appealing the claims. The DOE warns workers that they may have to pay the money back.
“We have seen tremendous pushback from DOE on essentially almost every single case that’s been brought,” said Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown.
Lonnie Rouse shuffled into a wood-paneled conference room at the Washington state Capitol in March 2018, nearly a decade after medical experts diagnosed him with a neurological disease they attributed to his exposure to chemicals at work. In the years since that diagnosis, he developed a stutter, began limping and lost several teeth biting into a banana.
For nearly 20 years, Rouse packaged plutonium and monitored radioactive waste at the Hanford Site, a now-decommissioned Department of Energy nuclear weapons production plant in south-central Washington and one of the most contaminated nuclear sites in the country. Tanks full of radioactive sludge exposed him to at least 48 potentially hazardous chemicals. Rouse said the worksite was so toxic that the floor once melted the rubber off his boots.
Rouse was among the thousands of workers responsible for the ongoing environmental cleanup at Hanford. Over time, some people at Hanford became so sick they could no longer work. Like Rouse, they filed for workers’ compensation. The DOE consistently recommended denying the claims and appealed state approvals; its lawyers argued that smoking, drinking, obesity or genetics played a role in workers’ illnesses.
His wife, Melinda, said she knew something was wrong when he could not remember how to cut an orange. His vision started to blur, he stumbled often, and suddenly he felt irritable all the time. His primary care physician first thought he might have had a brain tumor. The physician referred him to a neurologist, who noted cognitive impairment possibly due to exposure to multiple toxins at the Hanford Site, then to a neuropsychologist, who diagnosed him with “toxic encephalopathy” in 2009, saying it was “more likely than not” that chemical exposure damaged his brain, according to court records.
The U.S. Department of Labor approved him for benefits in 2010 under the federal Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, saying it was “at least as likely as not” that Hanford contributed to his illness. A federal medical consultant praised the neuropsychologist’s “unusually thorough analysis of causation.” Rouse refiled his 2009 state workers’ compensation claim under the new law in 2018, and Washington approved it later that year.
The DOE appealed. It hired a medical toxicologist, who reviewed Rouse’s medical records and testified that he did not have the disease he claimed, and brought in an industrial hygienist, who downplayed the exposure risks at Hanford. The DOE argued that alcoholism and family conflicts explained his condition; its toxicologist testified that Rouse’s drinking was “the most significant, what we might term, ‘toxic exposure’ that’s described in the medical record.” The agency that handles appeals did not find those arguments persuasive.
According to Rouse’s lawyer, the DOE awarded him most of his back pay in 2024. Rouse declined to say how much and said he would not touch the money until the legal process concluded. The department filed more than 20 appeals over nearly eight years, contesting different aspects of his claim. Rouse, who now receives 24-hour care, said, “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,” and, “But that’s not what happens.”
Workers said the smell of ammonia warned them that the underground tanks, holding a mix of radioactive sludge, had burped chemical vapors into the air above. From 1998 to 2008, it was Rouse’s job to monitor the toxic waste held in the “tank farms,” containers that together hold more than 50 million gallons of liquid waste. Rouse said he lost count of how many times tanks released toxic vapor that took his breath away, sometimes knocking him to the ground and making him vomit and bleed from his nose. According to a 2014 report funded by the federal government, tank farm workers exposed to chemical vapors commonly reported nausea, headaches and nosebleeds.
The liquid sloshing around in those tanks represented the radioactive byproducts of the Cold War. Hanford produced two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear arsenal and fueled the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945.
Cleanup began after the DOE shut down its last reactor in the late 1980s and is expected to continue until at least 2086. As of January 2025, more than 13,000 people worked at Hanford, nearly all for private companies contracted by the DOE; the report describes the site as one of the largest and most expensive toxic-waste cleanup efforts in the nation’s history. Congress has also acknowledged, based on voluminous studies, that radiation at DOE sites poses health risks to workers.
The 2000 Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act provides medical care and one-time payouts to workers at DOE sites across the country. Congress enacted it as an acknowledgment that the nation’s nuclear weapons workers had been exposed to radioactive substances known to cause cancer. Lawmakers referred to a DOE policy of litigating occupational illness claims, saying it had deterred workers from filing and imposed major financial burdens on those who sought compensation. The federal program capped payouts at $400,000. Washington’s workers’ compensation system can provide steady wage replacement or, in some cases, a pension for the rest of an injured employee’s life, and can surpass the federal maximum.
Such laws generally protect firefighters who are regularly exposed to smoke, burned plastics and extreme heat. The National Council on Compensation Insurance, the Washington state attorney general and Gerry Pollet said they were unaware of any other state extending that protection to radiological workers. The federal government challenged Washington’s original law later in 2018, arguing it was discriminatory because it applied only to Hanford and the DOE. Lawmakers passed an expanded version while anticipating a Supreme Court decision that ultimately agreed, covering all workers at “radiological hazardous waste facilities,” including Washington’s only functioning nuclear power plant and a French-owned facility that manufactures nuclear fuel rods. Roughly 75% of the 428 claims filed since 2018 came from Hanford workers, according to the state Department of Labor and Industries.
Kathleen Kersey spent 10 years at Hanford during both production and cleanup, measuring radiation and checking that levels were safe. She said her safety training covered radiation but not chemical vapors from the waste tanks. Kersey struggles to walk, has short-term memory problems and at one point lost vision in her right eye for three months. A doctor diagnosed her with multiple sclerosis, a neurological disorder included among the illnesses the state law recognizes as related to chemical exposure at Hanford. She filed a claim in 2019, and the state approved it. The DOE appealed, arguing that something other than her time at Hanford caused the disease. Kersey’s claim is among the 152 still awaiting a resolution. Kersey said the DOE had not paid her any back wages; the DOE declined to comment on her case. She said, “I feel depleted and disgusted,” adding, “It makes me feel like I’m worthless. I have no value.”
Invoices obtained by the newsrooms through a federal records request show that three physicians and an industrial hygienist earned more than $1.7 million testifying against Hanford workers since the presumption law’s passage. One go-to expert witness doctor earned more than $200,000 from the DOE last year alone. A single law firm, Wallace, Mann, Capener, Bishop & Debney, handles all of the DOE’s appeals, and in addition to the fees paid to expert witnesses, the department paid the firm nearly $10 million between 2018 and 2025. The doctor and the firm did not respond to requests for comment.
Isidoro Mata Jr. died after his children drained fluid from his lungs through a tube doctors had surgically inserted into his chest.
Mata demolished buildings at Hanford for nearly 30 years. Court records show that he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2015, one of the illnesses Washington’s law ties to work at Hanford; his daughter, Sara Chilcoat, said he kept working as long as he could. State claims managers approved his claim in 2019. The DOE appealed, writing that “medical opinion supports denial of this claim as not related to the distinctive conditions of employment,” and the appeal did not elaborate further.
Chilcoat said the state forced the DOE to pay his wages and medication costs. But the DOE filed a separate motion to stop his benefits while the appeal was considered. In that motion, the DOE argued it was likely to prevail because a doctor who examined Mata in 2019 believed his cancer was unrelated to his work at Hanford, according to court records; the state found the doctor’s examination “lacking in objective findings.” Chilcoat said, “He was fighting for his life while they were trying to do that,” adding, “That makes me mad.”
Mata’s case file notes that he missed three meetings with DOE lawyers in 2020. The state attorney general’s office sent the appeals judge a letter in July explaining that Mata was unable to participate because of chemotherapy treatments. The DOE, which did not respond to questions about Mata’s case, dropped the appeal in December. Less than three months later, Mata died.
Gerry Pollet, a Washington state representative who sponsored the 2018 law and co-founded the Hanford cleanup watchdog group Heart of America Northwest, said, “It seems pretty coldhearted, calculated, that they’re trying to save money on the back of sick workers who they made sick,” and added, “That’s why we needed a state law.” He said the law had fallen short of his expectation, noting that sick Hanford workers were still awaiting back wages and medical care: “This was supposed to have ended a decade ago,” and, “It’s even worse than it was 10 years ago.” He also said, “I think their actions are not only despicable, but they are criminal,” about the DOE.
Attorney Charlynn Hull said she thought the DOE’s approach might soften during the Biden administration but observed no change in the agency’s behavior. Her firm, Smart Law, represents the majority of Hanford workers’ compensation claimants, including Rouse and Kersey. Hull said the appeals require children and spouses of dead workers to testify. She said, “I think that it’s just, it’s tormenting to them, in many ways, to relive how awful that experience was, especially with the cancer-related death,” and asked, “When does this end?”
After Cascade PBS and ProPublica raised questions, regulators at the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries met twice with DOE staff. Spokesperson Carrie McCausland said the agency could point to no other action beyond the meetings, but staff were concerned and assessing the severity of the patterns. The DOE did not answer detailed questions or respond to the findings; a spokesperson said the department was following “all applicable local, state, and federal laws” and had “a long and successful record of accomplishment of protecting human health and the environment.”
The state agency said it expected to engage further, which could include an improvement plan and monitoring. Regulators also have the option of revoking the DOE’s ability to accept and pay claims directly; contractors would then choose whether to join the state-managed fund or seek state approval to manage claims, which could limit the DOE’s power to appeal, though contractors would retain appeal rights. Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown said he wants to wait to see how the appeals play out in higher courts and hopes that once the DOE’s losses start stacking up, it will slow the volume of its litigation. An editor’s note said Brandon Block began work on the story as a reporter for Cascade PBS and now works at the public defender’s office in King County, Washington, which receives a small portion of its funding from the state. About 152 approved claims remained under DOE appeal as Washington regulators considered their next steps.