By KEITH ROGERS

REVIEW-JOURNAL

Pipe fitters on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project were told by a foreman two years ago to sabotage the tunnel's main water line and make a special pipe to bypass a meter that measures how much of the state's water is used.

That's according to a claim made in a Labor Department whistle- blower case and in interviews last month with former contract workers at the site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Before Ronald Dollens of Pahrump was fired in May 2003 by Yucca Mountain Project contractor Bechtel SAIC, he said he endured "a lot of harassment" for reporting what he perceived as violations of worker safety laws and Environmental Protection Agency laws, including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.

It's unclear whether the bypass was ever installed, but a labor investigator has recommended that Bechtel SAIC pay Dollens $250,000 for retaliating once he raised the complaints.

"There was sabotage that went on. A pipe that went into the portal was purposely broke for overtime," Dollens said.

In a separate incident, he said, pipe fitters made a special pipe section so that groundwater, pumped from a well near Yucca Mountain, could be installed temporarily to bypass the place where the state's water is measured.

Later that year, in November 2003, Nevada State Engineer Hugh Ricci denied the Department of Energy permanent rights to 140 million gallons per year of groundwater to build and operate a repository at Yucca Mountain for the nation's spent nuclear fuel and highly radioactive defense wastes.

During federal court proceedings over the water issue, however, the state agreed to allow temporary use of water at Yucca Mountain to refill four potable water storage tanks for restroom facilities and emergencies.

In a statement that Dollens filed for a Labor Department investigation into his wrongful termination claim, he said his foreman, Mike Oettinger, asked him and co-worker Dale Cain in November 2002 "to purposely break a line that ran into the tunnel just so we could get overtime pay fixing the pipe that would be broken."

"I told Mike, 'You're crazy,' and so did Dale. We then left and, when we came back to work on Monday, and in the Plan of the Day meeting, they told everyone to thank Mike Oettinger for coming in on his day off to fix a broken pipe. ... I asked Mike Oettinger if he had broken the pipe, and he just laughed and said, 'Don't ask,' " Dollens stated in his affidavit. "Nothing ever happened for this pipe sabotage."

Reached Friday at his home in Amargosa Valley, Oettinger wouldn't comment on the case or the allegations.

A spokesman for Bechtel SAIC, Jason Bohne, also wouldn't comment on the allegations, citing ongoing litigation.

Cain said he was frustrated by the situation and doesn't stand to gain anything for confirming Dollens' story.

"I'd just like to see those people tell the truth for a change. There's nothing they can do to me," he said in a telephone interview Thursday.

In a previous interview, Cain described how Oettinger discussed a plan with them for bypassing the water meter at the pumphouse for well J-13 at the Nevada Test Site.

"His plan was that the water was metered at a certain point, and they would be able to tell when he turned the pumps on," Cain said.

"If you eliminate the piece with the meter and then put a straight, spool piece in it, then you could bolt it up on two ends and then unbolt it, put the meter back in and nobody knew," he said.

"That was exactly how the idea was explained to us. Me and (Dollens) knew what was right and wrong," Cain said.

Cain and Dollens said they never saw the bypass piece installed.

"I observed the piece being made and delivered. Whether it got used, who knows?" Cain said.

Cain was laid off in December 2003 for an unrelated incident. Cain said it was Oettinger who initiated proceedings that led to that termination.

Last year on April 1, Christopher Lee, deputy regional administrator for the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration in San Francisco, recommended Dollens receive a $250,000 punitive award from Bechtel SAIC for "reckless conduct indifferent to the rights of the whistle-blower."

The penalty, Lee wrote in a letter to Dollens' attorney, Sangeeta Singal, and Bechtel SAIC's attorney, Mark Ricciardi, "appears appropriate to act as a deterrent to any such further retaliatory actions."

Bechtel SAIC's attorneys objected to the suggested punitive award, and the case is now before Administrative Law Judge William Dorsey. A trial date has not been set.

Singal claimed Bechtel SAIC had created a hostile work environment for Dollens because, among other things, he protested "when a supervisor instructed the workers to steal water from the state of Nevada and change the water spools to bypass the state's water meter," according to Lee's letter,

That, Singal said, was in addition to protests Dollens lodged when a supervisor instructed pipe fitters to purposely punch holes in air conditioning systems to vent Freon, a toxic refrigerant. That was also in addition to purposely damaging the main water line to the tunnel so they would have to work overtime to repair it.

Lee wrote that, because of inadequate information, he could not establish if water line sabotage, air conditioning tampering and theft of the state's water had in fact occurred.

Nevertheless, the investigation found that Dollens had been humiliated on March 23, 2003 for reporting an unsafe condition at the site's 1-million-gallon potable water tank. Lee said the humiliation took the form of yelling at Dollens.

A month later, on April 24, 2003, Dollens called for a "stop work" order after Oettinger told him and another pipe fitter to work on some valves in the J-13 pumphouse.

The workers were worried that if they opened the wrong valve, they could possibly spill radioactive-laced water from old tanks at the test site.

"These tanks are old, and I did not want to be the cause of contaminating the area," Dollens' affidavit says.

Lee's findings state, "This event led to a subsequent confrontation with his supervisor."

Dollens blames a heart attack he suffered on the stress from the confrontation.

That eventually led to Dollens' firing, according to the investigator.

Singal also is representing three other former Yucca Mountain contract workers -- Greg Dann, Lon Fuller and Tom Koscik -- who claim they were fired by Bechtel SAIC because they refused to sign affidavits for the company in the Dollens case.

MAP

YUCCA WATER WOES

A former contract worker at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site claims a project supervisor devised a plan in 2003 to steal state water from Well J -13 by installing a piece of pipe to bypass a water meter.

SOURCES: Department of Labor, Department of Energy

Mike Johnson/Review-Journal

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