Huffington Magazine Issue 61 | Page 68

KENTUCKY’S KING says Terry Lash, director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy during the 1990s. “Because of the threat to the existence of the country, they just didn’t worry about the long term.” McConnell and other Kentucky officials were intimately familiar with the plant’s problems. Tim Thomas, who worked on McConnell’s staff as a field representative for Western Kentucky starting in 1997, told HuffPost that the senator’s office and the Department of Energy had discussions “on a regular basis.” McConnell and his staff toured the facility every few years and knew about the contaminated water supply and the mountain of leaking storage containers. McConnell also knew the name of Joe Harding. “I had heard of the widow,” Thomas says. “We had heard of Joe Harding. We didn’t know if this was an isolated incident or what. We were not in an investigative position.” Mark Donham, 60, served as chairman of the Paducah Citizens Advisory Board, which was tasked with watchdogging safety issues and making recommendations to the Department of Energy about the cleanup. He doesn’t recall HUFFINGTON 08.11.13 Thomas or any other representatives from McConnell’s office taking a big interest or even attending the board’s public meetings detailing the contamination spread. Meanwhile, the plant’s own community relations plan in January 1998 noted that the number of possible hazardous waste zones had soared to 208. Despite all the concerns, Donham says, “McConnell never stood up and lobbied for an investigation.” When The Huffington Post asked McConnell at his weekly Senate press conference on the Hill in June about his handling of the hazardous waste issue, the senator brushed it aside. “That’s of course a parochial question,” he said. “I’ll be happy to address it if you’ll check with the office.” His office did not respond to follow-up questions or multiple requests for an interview with the senator. It was not until the Washington Post reported in August 1999 — 19 years after Harding’s death and five years after the Superfund listing — that thousands of plant workers “were unwittingly exposed to plutonium and other highly radioactive metals,” turning the plant’s problems into a national scandal, that McConnell finally sprang into action. He called for hearings into the contamination outside the plant and