Ex-Hanford Worker Sues For Reward
Hanford engineer Clark Hodge figured he’d get a bonus for helping suggest a giant radioactive trash disposal trench that has saved taxpayers $1.2 billion.
His bosses at Westinghouse Hanford Co. praised the 1994 “megatrench” idea for the money it would save. So did the U.S. Department of Energy, which had pledged to rein in nuclear cleanup costs.
Now, the $65 million facility has a more formal name - the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility. It will hold nuclear garbage from old burial pits near the Columbia River.
A Hanford success story?
Hodge says no. At least not for him.
“My reward was to be demoted and laid off,” he said.
This week, the 58-year-old former senior engineer filed suit in U.S. District Court in Spokane, claiming he was aced out of a bonus for coming up with the megatrench idea.
“I thought it was simple. They had a program to reward you. But then they said, this cost savings is way too big,” Hodge said.
Hodge’s suit seeks up to $14 million - about 1 percent of the estimated savings to taxpayers.
Government attorneys will fight the case, said Paul Davis, a DOE lawyer in Richland.
“It would be doubtful the U.S. would say, ‘Gee Clark, you’re absolutely right, we’ll send the $14 million,”’ Davis said.
Westinghouse’s cost-saving awards program, ECCEL, wasn’t set up to provide huge bonuses, said company spokesman Craig Kuhlman.
“The maximum ECCEL award per cost-saving was $2,500,” Kuhlman said.
Westinghouse supported Hodge’s idea, but DOE didn’t approve it for a bonus, Kuhlman said.
“We didn’t get (a bonus) either,” Kuhlman said.
Why DOE turned down bonuses for Clark and Westinghouse is likely to be a key issue in the lawsuit, said DOE spokesman Terry Brown.
Robert Dunn, Hodge’s Spokane attorney, filed a federal tort claim in mid-1994 against DOE. The agency failed to respond in six months, clearing the way for this week’s lawsuit.
Hodge, now retired in Kennewick, said he wants recognition for his idea - and an acknowledgment he was mistreated.
Last fall, after a demotion and a negative performance review - the first in his 22-year career - Hodge chose early retirement over being laid off.
He was among the Hanford insiders who spoke out over misspent money in the Hanford cleanup for The Spokesman-Review’s “Wasteland” series in November 1994.
, DataTimes