Please Reject SB 569 – Public Hearing Testimony, 4/2/2021

Please Reject SB 569

 

My name is Gary Zuckett, I’m E.D. of WV Citizen Action, a consumer protection group active in people-centered public policy since 1974.

I’m not a lawyer or a doctor I’m a consumer advocate. Citizens want clean air and water that won’t cause them to get sick or develop environmentally caused diseases. This bill is not good for public health.

It turns our Medical Monitoring law on its head. Citizens don’t want to wait until they get sick to get tested, that is shutting the gate after the horse has left the stable. 

Look at the situation in Parkersburg. It was the study of that population that determined the various illnesses that exposure to c-8 caused. If large multi-national corporations are going to use our population as guinea pigs, we at least deserve access to medical monitoring that is not a sham, but does what the medical experts recommend. 

If the goal of this bill is to make sure that awardees don’t divert awards into other uses, there are better ways to do this – amend this bill to make it clear that awards in such cases must be placed into trusts for medical costs only. 

Please don’t pass SB 569 as is, don’t gut the whole process to fix a minor perceived problem in the code. In other words, fix what’s broken, don’t break what’s working!

Mr. Chairman, Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

I am available for additional comments at 304-437-3701 or garyz at wvcag.org