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DR. ANDRADE: Absolutely. You know, I fully
support what Wanda said. I just think that in
this particular case where you did respond
initially to -- to the Congressional folks --
Congresspeople, we -- we hadn't come -- well, as
mentioned by Dr. Melius, we hadn’t come to this
point in our deliberations and now we can tersely
and quickly close the loop with these folks, and
hopefully that will be the case in the future.

DR. ZIEMER: I think we’re ready to proceed
with the public comment period, are we not? Do we
have any other business -- Jim?

DR. MELIUS: A thing that I hope we can do

quickly -- very quickly. For our next meeting in
Hanford -- I talked about this earlier this
morning -- is I think we need to come to grips

with sort of the procedural issues related to dose
reconstruction review and our dealing with our
contractor and so forth. And I know that there
have been various documents prepared. I don’t
think anything that’s actually been presented to
the Board on this, and perhaps a workgroup could
be charged with coming up with something by the
next meeting in Hanford so we have a -- something

to, you know, react to and that would also get

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survivors, all of these people have had a stake in
your work.

Our duty to our members and their families is
to make sure they are treated fairly by this
program. What we hear from families about the way
this program is going causes us great concern.

We greatly appreciate your willingness to
come to Augusta because so many of the affected
workers live in this vicinity, and we also
appreciate you holding public sessions in the
evening to give these people the opportunity to be
with you. I hope you found that experience to be
useful and I would hope that you will continue to
hold meetings in the places and at the times that
are accessible to people that are to be served by
this program.

I also want to thank NIOSH for asking to meet
with us about the recent issued site profile
document for the Savannah River Site. We could
only arrange this meeting on November 11th, which
is a Federal holiday, but they came anyway. We
are grateful for that, and for the discussion we
had. To show you that we took this seriously,
every one of our local union leaders participated

in the meeting.

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with this procedure that we’ve all approved on
reviewing the dose reconstructions and see how
those two -- I mean ‘cause we did one prior to the
other.

DR. MELIUS: And I would just ask that we
sort of cross-walk that or check that against some
of these FACA and contractual contracting rules so
that --

DR. ZIEMER: Right, we'll try to do that and
perhaps --

DR. MELIUS: -- we decide something -- we’re

not going to set up a structure that’s going to

get --

DR. ZIEMER: And I wonder --

DR. MELIUS: -- us or NIOSH or somebody in
trouble.

DR. ZIEMER: -- if we could get Tony to agree

to help us on that, too. We would just get a
third opinion on that, and we'll bring that
forward then.

MR. ELLIOTT: Building off what Dr. Melius
suggested, if you could -- when you get something
-- you know, some language to evaluate here, I
think it’d be good if you’d get it to us so that

we can give you some advice on Privacy Act and

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some input from NIOSH and staff in terms of -- of
some of the contractual and FACA issues related to

that so that we don’t have to go through those at

length and with the uncertainty involved. So I
think a small workgroup and -- whether it’s from
the, you know -- whether it’s the original group

that Mark chaired or a different group I don’t
think matters, but I do think we ought to get
prepared for this next meeting so we can make
decisions on that.

DR. ZIEMER: We actually have -- in fact,

Mark and I have worked a little bit off-line ona

sample. I don’t know if charter’s the right name,
but a structure for a subcommittee that would -- I
think, as it’s evolving now -- would have the

responsibility for managing the groupings of the
dose reconstruction audits and how we bring them
forward, that kind of thing. And basically I
think we have the draft materials that we could
just simply bring forward, we could distribute in
advance, in fact.

MR. GRIFFON: I think -- I mean I’d be
willing to work with you further on that. We have
a draft. I think what I would propose is to

cross-walk that draft of the subcommittee task

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members of the committee. Once again I bring you
greetings and welcome you to Augusta on behalf of
T.S. Yarborough, business manager of local union
1579 of the International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers, and also president of Augusta
building and construction trades council. Once
again, I’m sorry he couldn’t be here today. He's
still at home recuperating from surgery.

As I said, my name is Dennis Rocque. I’m
organizer from local union 1579 and also the
secretary/treasurer of Augusta building and
construction trades, and it is in this capacity
that I am here today. My presentation is also
behalf of the South Carolina building and
construction trades council.

First I would like to thank you for giving me
this opportunity to come and speak with you and
present my views. There are some 15 affiliated
unions of the various crafts in our councils.
Together they serve a estimated 37,000 workers who
have been employed at the Savannah River Site
since radiation sources were deployed at the site.
These members also have families, and altogether
this population numbers some 150,000 people.

Whether as workers or as family members or

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fine lettex. I mean the other thing we could have
is kind of a routine thing to say -- you want to
be timely in your response, so to wait until now,
you could have gotten another angry letter, why
haven't you responded, so I think something like
this and then say the -- your letter will be
shared with the full Board and will be discussed
at the upcoming meeting, something like that. But
I think, you know, now -- I don’t want to
necessarily enter into a dialogue with multiple
letters, so you want to do one letter and be done.
But now with Bethlehem on our site profile review,
so you know, we are being responsive, so I think
something like that rather than necessarily try to
get the Board together on a teleconference or
something, it’s -- it’s not that pressing. But I
think just to indicate that -- thank you, forward
it on to the Board and we'll talk about it
further. But it was a good letter, I thought.

DR. ZIEMER: Roy?

DR. DEHART: I don’t know how you would feel
about it, but we now have considerable progress
since your original letter was written. A follow-
up letter to the three Congressmen stating that we

now have a contractor, by name; that that

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I’ve been told NIOSH concluded that the
current draft of the site profile does not address
the exposure history of construction workers and
that it would need to prepare a separate profile
from this perspective. Is this is the outcome of
that meeting, we will be pleased also, although we
withhold judgment about the products until we see
it.

The reason for our concern on this score is
that we think NIOSH has the expertise -- or we
don’t think that NIOSH has the expertise and
experience in construction to ever adequately
understand the complexity of construction work.

It often seems they gloss over and simplify
something that can’t be made simple, and we
sympathize with that. The construction industry
and construction is messy, improvised, poorly
planned and unstructured. Once completed, the
construction work process is never documented ina
manner that could be replicated. That’s why
researchers who often come in contact with our
industry get frustrated. They want us to stand
still long enough to be captured by their methods,
but that just doesn’t happen.

This is not unique to this program. This is

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FACA and procurement requirements, et cetera.

DR. MELIUS: I just don’t want to get to this
next meeting and have to have you -- ask you a
question and have Larry have to go back and find
out ‘cause this is very complicated and the
answers aren’t always easy --

DR. ZIEMER: Right.

DR. MELIUS: -- and we ought to try to do
that as much ahead of time as we can.

DR. ZIEMER: Right. We’ll make sure that
gets done. Thank you.

PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD

Let's proceed now to the public comment
period. I have several listed here. Are there
any more --

MS. HOMER: No.

DR. ZIEMER: I have Dennis Rocque here, but
was this from last night or is Dennis --

MS. HOMER: No, that's from this morning.

DR. ZIEMER: Okay, a new sign-up, good.
Dennis, if you want to lead off again today and --
where’s the mike?

MS. HOMER: Right here.

DR. ZIEMER: The mike is right here, so...

MR. ROCQUE: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and

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Anything further than that, in my view, is asking
for us to involve ourselves in many dialogues from
many different approaches, and we should be very
cautious at the outset in following that course of
action.

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. he “iS roi
fully clear to the Chair yet as to whether the
Board wishes there to be a follow-up letter. Can
I take a straw poll and just get a sense of the
Board? Do you -- how many think that the Chair
should send a follow-up status report letter?

(Affirmative responses)

Four -- five -- one, two three, four, five,
six -- it looks like most do, and so I will
prepare that. Do you wish to see the follow-up

letter first? Yes? No? If you wish to see it
it will be a month from now. Okay, we will
prepare a follow-up letter and simply -- informing
these three Congresspeople of the current status,
that we have selected Bethlehem as one of our
audits and that our contractor is -- has been
selected and we‘re in process.

I don’t -- I don’t assume that any of us want
us to commit to having Congressional review of our

procedures before proceeding. Yes, Tony.

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ask HHS -- or ask -- basically it's NIOSH, but HHS
to provide them with our procedures when they
become available. We don’t have our procedures
yet.

MR. ELLIOTT: No, we have not communicated
yet. We are preparing a communication, though.

DR. MELIUS: Can that be shared with the
Board when it goes out?

MR. ELLIOTT: Yes, certainly, it will be tied
to the Board’s incoming.

DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Any further items on
this? Well, Wanda, yes. Thank you.

MS. MUNN: I would like to strongly urge
caution with respect to establishing a precedent
for long and detailed correspondence between this
Board and elected officials. I remind you there
are over 350 members of Congress. They passed the
law under which we operate, and a large number of
them have constituents who are concerned with what
we do here. We are a public body. We operate in
the sunshine (Inaudible) access to our minutes and
to our procedures. My personal view is that the
Chair has responded appropriately and that the
Agency has indicated they will provide the

documents that the elected officials requested.

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contractor is being given some directions with
regard to doing just what has been requested; and
that this particular institute or business is to
be -- is included in the monitoring of the
situation with regard to the status.

DR. ZIEMER: I'd be glad to do that if the
Board so desires. I would point out to you that
in the original letter, Congress not only asked
that -- or these three individuals not only asked
that we do an audit, but they asked to review the
procedures before the audit was done. And so it
was much -- the scope of what was being asked was
pretty extensive. And if you feel that you would
like the Chair to let them know that we are doing
the audit and that we've selected a contractor,
then I’m glad Lo do Lhat. But what we are doing
is not precisely what they had asked for.

DR. MELIUS: And I just think we should
clarify that in our communications.

Your letter also indicates that HHS will do
-- have follow-up communication with them, and I -
- I don't have -- haven’t heard about that and I
don't know if that communication has been sent.
Larry, can you --

DR. ZIEMER: I simply indicated that I would

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