Blankenship Agreement was reached subsequent to Blankenship v. Boyle, D.D.C., 1971, 329 F.Supp. 1089, between beneficiary miners and the Pension Fund Trustees, regarding the administration of the Trust.  It provided that to be eligible for pension benefits an applicant had to have completed 20 years classified service in the coal industry, including five years after May 28, 1946, with exceptions not applicable.


5
On August 25, 1973, Murn requested reconsideration which was denied.  On March 28, 1974, he filed a second application claiming that on January 1, 1950, he had been ordered by union leaders to strike Pioneer Coal Company, and that he had remained on strike until April, 1952.  The pension application was denied on the ground that strike time could not be counted in determiningindustrial solvents.



Opened in the 1930s, McClellan was a large industrial maintenance depot for the Air Force, where radioactive materials were used and studied. In a classified program during the Cold War, airplanes flew from the base into nuclear test fallout to gather samples of the radioactive isotopes released by the blasts.



In the 1930s and ’40s, the military used radium-laced paint on aircraft instruments to make them glow in the dark to help pilots see them at night. Cleanup water or solvents used to wipe down equipment or mop up radium spills may be responsible for the tons of contaminated soil at the base.



For decades, much of the radium-contaminated soil, which the Air Force itself has deemed “highly toxic,” lived in industrial landfills on the base in North Highlands,