New Mexico downwinders pushing for federal compensation face a setback in Congress

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Dec. 7: New Mexicans who haven’t been easily paid by the federal government for their radiation exposure for decades this summer had a reason to be optimistic. On Wednesday, his case suffered a setback.

Those who were exposed to radiation after the nuclear test at the Trinity test site and the years of uranium mining in northern New Mexico and the Navajo Nation pushed for an expansion of an already existing federal program, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. It compensates other people exposed to atomic radiation in Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, as well as uranium miners who worked in the mines before 1971.

In July, the expansion bill was approved by a qualified majority in the Senate. But on Wednesday, he got rid of the National Defense Authorization Act in the House.

For Tina Cordova, founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, the fight is over. Created in 1990, the payment program will end in June 2024, but she is sure there will be an end to expanding it.

“Maybe the only thing that matches the pain and suffering and sacrifice of the people of New Mexico and other parts of the American West and Guam is our conviction on this,” Cordova said. “We will never give up.

“We will never give up and it is outrageously immoral. The way Congress has dealt with this is outrageously immoral. You know, in our country, this democracy that we live in, where there’s law and order and regulations and where you stick to them. . . it’s not okay to do something very reckless, harm someone else, and walk away saying, “I don’t have the money to take care of it. “

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N. M. , introduced the decision in the Senate along with Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Mike Crapo of Idaho. Lujan said in a statement that the fight for radiation reimbursement doesn’t end there.

“The NDAA fails to deliver justice to New Mexicans who sacrificed for our national security,” Lujan said. “Generations of New Mexicans and their families have fallen ill and died due to radiation exposure and the long-lasting effects of the Trinity test. That New Mexico was Floor 0 for the first nuclear weapon (and was excluded from the original RECA program) is a mistake, an injustice. “

Hawley pledged to vote against the NDAA if the expansion is not included in the final bill. Production of uranium in Missouri contaminated the Coldwater Creek.

“At the last minute and behind closed doors, Republican leadership stripped critical compensation for downwinders and uranium workers from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It is absolutely outrageous,” Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M., said in a statement. Leger Fernández introduced the expansion in the House.

RECA paid $2. 6 billion, according to a report by the U. S. Department of Justice. The proposal would have raised about $143 billion over 10 years, according to the nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. billion between 2023 and 2032.

The proposed expansion would have added situations such as kidney failure, expanded pay for out-of-state miners, adding New Mexico, and expanded pay for uranium miners who worked in the mines from 1972 to 1990.

Uranium mines

Phil Harrison, of the Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims Committee, watched his father die of lung cancer at age 43, after working for 21 years in uranium mines. Harrison grew up in Cove, Arizona, where there were uranium mines in the 1950s and 1960s. He has been an advocate for uranium miners for forty-five years and helped draft the amendment that would have expanded the RECA.

“They took away the merit of my people, even though they had no education, they didn’t know how to read or write, and they gave them a shovel without warning,” he said. “Families lived among the mining camps. They were exposed to leeward wind or piles of uranium. People used the water from the mine for their own consumption. “

His younger brother died when he was an infant after drinking powdered milk mixed with mine water. Harrison himself suffered from kidney failure, which he attributes to the four months he worked in a uranium mine.

In his work as an advocate for former uranium mine workers, Harrison said he’s seen many post-1971 uranium miners, who were not eligible for compensation under the current version of RECA, die from COVID-19.

“We have a lot of other people on oxygen, and a lot of other people have died, and that’s anything that Congress perceives, that they perceive that they’re poisoning our other people. They are poisoning our lands. “People used to farm and they don’t anymore because of the ongoing uranium contamination coming from the mountains,” Harrison said.

Harrison is a veteran of the U. S. Air Force. He was in the U. S. and met many veterans who worked in the uranium mines with their families.

“They did double duty. They didn’t get medals, but they got lung cancer,” Harrison said.

Generations of Cancer

Cordova is the fourth of five generations in her family to have cancer. Her great-grandfathers both lived in the Tularosa area at the time of the Trinity Test, and both died within 10 years of the test with diagnoses of stomach cancer.

“They were given morphine. They sent them home to die and in a very short time they did,” Cordova said. “And that’s at a time when no one had ever heard the word ‘cancer’ in our communities. “

Both of his grandmothers had cancer, and his father, who was four years old at the time of the Trinity checkpoint and lived forty-five miles from the checkpoint, died of cancer after tumors grew in his mouth. He never smoked, chewed tobacco and rarely drank, he said.

Cordova had a thyroid at age 39 and her niece had a thyroid at 23.

Cordova has seen the story of her own family circle reflected in out-of-state downwinders, such as a Utah woman with thyroid cancer and a niece with thyroid cancer.

“I wish I could say that my circle of family members is unique,” Cordova said. “We’ve documented so many families across the state of New Mexico who have four or five generations of cancer. We have alarming cancer rates and that’s not happening. It’s not passing, it’s passing. And guess what. ” We know that this is a major contributor to the poverty we see in our state. It’s no coincidence that New Mexico is one of the states with the highest medical debt in the country. “

In 2022, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reported that about 18% of New Mexicans had debt, averaging $2,692, for a total of $881 million in statewide debt.

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