Senate again OKs bill to aid radiation victims

N.M. downwinders, uranium workers to benefit; House to decide measure’s fate

The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed a bill by a resounding vote of 69-30 to extend radiation exposure compensation to New Mexico residents with health problems that stem from fallout of nuclear weapons testing or work in uranium mines.

New Mexico is among the states ineligible to receive federal compensation for exposure to radioactive fallout from nuclear tests — including the atomic bomb detonated at Trinity Site in Southern New Mexico during the Manhattan Project — and uranium mining after 1971.

The bill goes to the Republican-controlled House where it faces an uncertain fate. Last year, House leaders refused to include the measure in the military spending bill after it passed the Senate.

The yes votes in the Senate this time surpassed the 61 senators who backed the previous attempt to amend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act so affected residents in more areas would become eligible for one-time payments.

Those who lost family members to radiation exposure would also qualify.

Only parts of Arizona, Nevada and Utah now qualify for radiation exposure compensation. The amendment, which has bipartisan support, would cover the ineligible areas of those states as well as New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Guam. The measure also adds areas of Missouri, Alaska, Kentucky and Tennessee, where residents were exposed to unsafe storage of nuclear waste. And it would renew the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act program, set to expire in June, for another five years.

“I urge Speaker [Mike] Johnson to put this bipartisan bill on the House floor for a vote,” U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a New Mexico Democrat, said in a statement. “Every day that Congress does not act is another day that the federal government has failed these victims.”

Luján is sponsoring the bill along with Republican Sens. Mike Crapo of Idaho and Josh Hawley of Missouri. He praised the work of New Mexico advocates, including nuclear test downwinder Tina Cordova and former uranium worker Phil Harrison, for helping get the bill through.

Cordova was scheduled to be Luján’s guest at the State of the Union on Thursday night, while Harrison was the guest of U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, another New Mexico Democrat.

Affected residents and the bereaved family members of those who died from illnesses linked to radiation exposure were present for the vote, amplifying the emotion in the chamber.

“This isn’t about a handout. This isn’t about some kind of welfare program — this is about doing basic justice for the working people of this nation, whom their own government has poisoned,” Hawley said. “We have not done right by these good people. The Senate has a chance today to make right what is wrong.”

Hawley is seeking compensation

for people who suffered severe health effects from the federal government’s shoddy handling of uranium waste in North St. Louis County.

Uranium waste was stored in open or deteriorating metal drums at two sites, contaminating Coldwater Creek, a waterway that often flooded residents’ basements and was a favorite playing spot for children. Radioactive waste was also discarded at a defunct processing plant, a landfill and quarry.

Luján and Hawley decided to team up, believing a bipartisan effort had the best chance of helping uncompensated victims who they feel have been treated like Cold War collateral damage.

In New Mexico, many residents suffered radiation exposure not only from the atomic Trinity test and uranium mining, but from fallout drifting from aboveground nuclear tests conducted in neighboring Nevada until the early 1960s.

This bill was described as a somewhat scaled down version of last year’s proposed Radiation Exposure Compensation Act amendment. For instance, the maximum compensation to downwinders was reduced to $100,000 from the original $150,000, and a medical benefit was dropped.

It would cover uranium miners who were exposed to radiation between 1971 and 1990, the year the act was established.

In a speech before the vote, Luján said the biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw development of the atomic bomb, as well as the first detonation in New Mexico, will be at the center of the Oscar award ceremony Sunday.

But there’s a glaring omission in Oppenheimer, he said.

“That story left out an important part: the families we are here fighting for today,” Luján said.