Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) today introduced legislation that would extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) as-is, without needed improvements to provide health care screenings and financial compensation to communities sickened by nuclear weapons tests conducted in New Mexico and Nevada, uranium mining and nuclear waste. Congress should reject the bill and focus its attention on existing legislation passed by the Senate that would protect and strengthen RECA.
“It is a huge betrayal to the entire state of Utah and surrounding states that my senators are pushing only for a temporary extension of RECA when what is urgently and desperately needed for all those suffering and dying is for the program to be expanded and strengthened as laid out in the bill proposed by Senators Hawley, Lujan and Crapo and passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in March,” said Mary Dickson, a journalist and cancer survivor from Salt Lake City, Utah.
“Senator, the residents of southern Utah were covered under the original RECA bill, but what about the folks living in northern Utah, not to mention southern Nevada, New Mexico, and other affected areas? The list goes on, but that’s because the fallout went on and on,” said Linda Chase, an author and downwinder from Nevada. “Support the RECA reauthorization that passed the Senate by a 3:1 margin. In your heart, you know it’s the right thing to do.”
"Any attempt to simply extend RECA without making it more inclusive would be a blatant disregard for the people who have sacrificed so much in the name of our country's national security,” said Christen Commuso, a community outreach specialist with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment and a cancer survivor. “Missouri played an integral role in the war effort by purifying the mass quantities of uranium needed to create the world's first-ever atomic weapons. This process created hundreds of thousands of tons of deadly radioactive waste. This waste has been allowed to harm the citizens of our region for over eighty years. We call upon Speaker Johnson to put S.3853 on the House floor for a vote without further delay. We urge Senator Lee to stand with his people in Utah and across this great nation by supporting the strengthening of the RECA program. We cannot continue with the status quo of neglect and harm to our own people and lands."
“I would ask Senator Lee: how do we decide who deserves to be taken care of and who doesn’t? Who gets to make these decisions? Why are people in certain zip codes considered more important than others?” asked Tina Cordova, executive director of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, a sixth generation New Mexican and cancer survivor. “We urgently need for our government to take responsibility for the egregious harm that was done to American citizens, including children, when nuclear testing was taking place in the American west and the Pacific. Not only did that testing negatively affect the health of those alive at the time, it destined our children and grandchildren forevermore to a life never free of the genetic damage associated with our overexposure to radiation. I can think of no other act that is more immoral than this.”
“It is past time to expand and extend RECA for all of the suffering citizens of our beautiful country. Anything less is a slap in the face,” said Tona Henderson, Director of Idaho Downwinders.
“After repeatedly voting against legislation that would help their constituents, Senators Lee and Romney are now putting forward a sham bill that denies Utahns access to health screenings and compensation for their suffering,” said Lilly Adams, senior outreach coordinator for the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Their bill to extend RECA would only extend the injustice suffered by Utahns and other communities that have been exposed to radiation, but never had the chance to apply for recognition and support through RECA.”
In March, the Senate voted 69-30 to advance legislation, sponsored by Sens. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), that would extend RECA for six years, giving victims more time to apply for aid, and make necessary improvements to the program, which has inexplicably excluded large swaths of the country impacted by radiation exposure for decades.
The bill proposed by Lujan, Crapo and Hawley would offer compensation and access to health screenings for the first time to communities impacted by the test of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico, as well as extend coverage to residents of Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah and Guam sickened by nuclear tests. Recent research from Princeton suggests that fallout from U.S. nuclear tests blanketed the contiguous U.S. The bill would also offer compensation to residents of Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee sickened by exposure to nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project and Cold War era uranium processing, and additional uranium workers.
The bill would modernize the program by increasing compensation for communities downwind of nuclear weapons test sites. Compensation levels have not been updated since 2000 despite dramatically rising health care costs.
Radiation exposure increases the risk of lung cancer and lung disease, leukemia, lymphomas and sixteen other recognized cancers. Many downwinders continue to struggle to access quality, timely health care. The legislation would fund the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program (RESEP) which supports education and screenings for cancers and other radiation-linked illnesses, and require the Government Accountability Office to conduct a study on downwinders’ unmet medical needs and issue recommendations on how to meet them.