Congress needs to regain control of an insurance board it created that is refusing to disburse nearly $1 billion to Sept. 11 recovery workers for medical conditions they incurred during the World Trade Center cleanup, key House members were told yesterday.
“My colleagues and the other men and women who are sick and out of work because of their time at ground zero don’t have years to wait,” Michael Valentin, a former New York City police officer, told two House Judiciary subcommittees.
“What they do have is mounting frustration, worsening illness and disability, bills and mortgages they can’t pay and medications they can’t afford,” said Mr. Valentin, a 43-year-old who retired because of ailments after working at the cleanup site.
Congress created the World Trade Center Captive (WTCC) Insurance Fund in 2003 for claims from city workers and others who say they have developed respiratory and other illnesses working at ground zero.
However, the WTTC says it has a duty to challenge every claim in federal court and is spending millions of dollars on legal fees. Only a handful of nearly 9,000 claims have been paid out of the $1 billion fund.
“We don’t have the luxury of time to wait,” Mr. Valentin said. “I can’t believe that my Congress would have set aside a billion dollars to have that money go to pay insurance executives and law firms hundreds of millions of dollars to fight the very heroes that money should have been helping for these last five years.”
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, New York Democrat, called it an “outrage” that “heroes of that day are still waiting for the help they deserve.”
“The federal government has a moral and legal obligation to compensate the living victims of 9/11, to provide for their health and to attempt to make them whole for their subsequent financial losses,” Mr. Nadler said.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, California Democrat, said the insurance program was created to compensate victims, “not to force them into torturous litigation” and that Congress is obligated to ensure it functions effectively.
New York City, which operates the fund on behalf of the federal government, is challenging the claims for fear that it, too, could be held liable for injuries or medical conditions.
Congress could revisit its legislation and include immunity for the city, and Republicans on the panel said construction companies that immediately responded to the cleanup should also receive liability protections.
The construction companies “stepped up” without first obtaining insurance and worked for nine months until the site was cleared, said Rep. Steve King of Iowa, ranking member of the immigration subcommittee.
Rep. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said construction workers were sent into the disaster without protection in a “do-it-yourself approach.”
“Now cancer and lung disease is ravaging these survivors, and the city is in an adversarial stance against the victims of an environmental tragedy,” he said.
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