If you've listened to the main episodes of Acuse Third Season,

you know that the Fernald Uranium Plant in Merlohia was,

let's say problematic,

it polluted the air in the water, allowing Uranium particles to escape into both.

It hired scientists to provide misleading data, both to the media and in front of judges.

Most egregiously, it lied to area residents and its own employees about the danger

they were in, and have fought ferociously in court to avoid paying those people any settlements

or providing them medical monitoring. Knowing all that, this next bit of trivia might come as a

surprise. The Fernald Plant is actually applauded by community activists and other weapons production

plants across the country. That's because, despite the protracted fights, the US Department of

Energy, which oversaw the plant, eventually settled the class action lawsuits filed by residents

and workers. That's right. People got paid because, while the DOE didn't admit wrongdoing,

the courts seemed likely to rule that folks had been lied to, put at risk, endangered, and gaslit.

Residents in 1989 got settlement payments of $78 million for property value losses,

emotional distress, and more. Five years later, Fernald workers reached a similar settlement

for $20 million. As part of the settlements, residents were provided varying degrees of

medical monitoring. People who lived closest to the plant received it the longest, while workers

were promised monitoring for life. But Fernald was just one in a list of plants across the country.

Other communities with similar plants were similarly shut down, but most haven't seen

similar outcomes when they've sued. That could be because Fernald's lies were some of the earliest

caught. My read on this is that Fernald was early enough in the process and unique enough

and what they were trying to do, and the fact that there was so much deception that they could

...