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