Urgent call to action

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), a sorely inadequate but important effort to address generations of health damage caused by nuclear weapons production in the United States, is set to expire very soon, in July of 2022. 

A dedicated group of impacted community members, organizations, and elected officials been pushing for years to renew and expand this program. The new legislation they have put forward would add downwinders in all of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Montana, Idaho, Colorado and Guam, downwinders of the Trinity Test Site, and uranium miners and mill workers in the industry after 1971. It also would increase the amount of compensation from $50,000 to $150,000 for all claimants. These changes are decades overdue. 

On December 7 the bill to renew and expand RECA passed the House Judiciary Committee: now it goes to the House for a vote. Impacted communities are concerned there is not adequate support for the bill to pass the Senate.

Your voice is needed to help it move through both the House and the Senate! Let your elected officials know the entire country is watching to see if they will join this bipartisan effort to care for the thousands of US residents harmed by decades of nuclear weapons testing and uranium mining. Four potential action items are listed below, and sample text is included at the bottom of this post. Please select the items that make the most sense for you, and share these items with your network! 

Action item 1: Please contact your elected officials and urge them to support HR 5338 and SB 2798. Feel free to use text from the sample statement at the bottom of this message. Find their contact information here: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

Action item 2: More senators are needed to co-sponsor S 2798. So far, only Senator Cory Booker has signed on as a cosponsor with sponsors Senators Mike Crapo and Ben Ray Luján. Urge your senators to co-sponsor this important bill! 

Action item 3: Is your senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee? Find out here: https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/about/members. Their support will be crucial to getting the bill to a senate vote.  Urge them to support S 2798. 

Action item 4: The following senators are viewed as important potential supporters of this bill. Ask them to support S2798. 

·      Senator Mitt Romney of Utah https://www.romney.senate.gov/contact  (202) 224-5251]

·      Senator Steve Daines of Montana https://www.daines.senate.gov/connect/email-steve (202) 224-2651]

·      Senator John Cornyn of Texas https://www.cornyn.senate.gov/contact 202-224-2934

·      Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado https://www.hickenlooper.senate.gov/contact/contact-form/ 202-224-5941

Every voice counts. Please take the time to contact your elected officials on behalf of all the radiation-impacted people who have been harmed by U.S. nuclear weapons production. 

Sincerely,

Sarah Fox

Historian, Author, Downwind: A People's History of the Nuclear West 

(University of Nebraska Press, 2014, 2018)

SAMPLE STATEMENT: please edit as needed!

Representative/ Senator ______:

I am writing to implore you to support HR 5338/SB 2798, a necessary renewal and expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. Manhattan Project officials and their successors in the federal Atomic Energy Commission knew full well that nuclear weapons development and testing and the uranium industry it generated were extremely dangerous, and still they did not warn the thousands of civilians, workers, and soldiers who were in harm’s way. Some communities were exposed to dangerous, mutagenic radiation for decades. Some are still at risk of exposure. This an unconscionable case of “collateral damage.” RECA as it exists now is sorely inadequate: if it is allowed to expire in 2022, an already horrible injustice will be made much more shameful. Renew, expand, and protect RECA. This history will not go away just because we turn our backs on it: our federal government needs to acknowledge and stand by the people it harmed. 

The entire country is watching to see if you will join this bipartisan effort to care for the thousands of US residents harmed by decades of nuclear weapons testing and uranium mining. Please do the right thing.

Sincerely,

Contact your senators and ask them to support the 2019 RECA Amendments!

Please take a moment to contact your senators and ask them to add their support to the 2019 Radiation Exposure Compensation Act [RECA] amendments. (If Crapo, Risch, Heinrich, Bennett, Udall, or Booker are your elected officials, thank them for their support of the 2019 RECA amendments!) Existing radiation exposure compensation legislation is only available to a handful of claimants in a handful of counties in Utah and Arizona. Ample scientific data (for example, this 1997 National Cancer Institute Study) demonstrates that substantial radiological contamination also impacted residents in Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Guam, not to mention the other counties in Arizona and Utah left out of the original RECA legislation. It is critical that more senators add their voices to this bipartisan coalition.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, March 28, 2019

Crapo, Bipartisan Group Introduces RECA Legislation

Would allow victims in Idaho and other western states to file claims for benefits after exposure to nuclear radiation

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) today introduced the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments of 2019. The legislation would expand coverage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to include victims in Idaho, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Guam. Senator Crapo chaired a Judiciary Committee hearing on the legislation in the last Congress, and introduced the legislation again today to continue pushing for its consideration and passage. The bill is co-sponsored by Senators Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Tom Udall (D-New Mexico), Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico), Michael Bennet (D-Colorado), and Cory Booker (D-New Jersey). 

“Many Idahoans have suffered the health consequences of exposure to fallout from nuclear weapons testing,” said Senator Crapo. “Congress has expanded coverage to include certain counties in other affected states in the West, and its past time for Idahoans and our neighbors to receive the compensation they deserve. As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee with jurisdiction over this program, I will continue to work for the passage of this important legislation.”

“It was wonderful to be able to have a Senate Hearing on our bill, we look forward to passage of our bill,” said Tona Henderson, Idaho business owner and leader of the Idaho Downwinders. “Idaho Downwinders appreciate all the help from Senators Crapo and Risch.” 

“For decades now, Idahoans have been pleading their case to the federal government for help in dealing with the health effects they suffered as a result of nuclear testing,” said Senator Risch. “This bill answers those pleas by providing the same assistance those in neighboring states already receive.”

“Justice is long, long overdue for the New Mexico families and Tribal members who are victims of radiation exposure as a result of the government’s nuclear testing during the Cold War,” said Senator Udall. “While we can’t undo the years of suffering for these individuals and families, I will not rest until we make sure the many unwilling Cold War victims – including those living downwind of the Trinity test site in New Mexico's Tularosa Basin and post-1971 uranium workers in New Mexico -- and their families are fairly compensated. Providing just compensation to victims of radiation exposure will not erase the years of pain and illness, but it is the least we can do to honor the sacrifice that so many made to keep our nation secure.”

"Congress needs to pass the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments to provide medical assistance and compensation to those who bore the health costs of our nation’s nuclear history,” said Senator Heinrich. “That includes families who lived in and near New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin at the time of the Trinity Test and all of the uranium mill workers and miners who continue to cope with serious health problems due to exposure to radioactive nuclear material. I will continue to fight for the justice these Americans deserve.”

The bill would increase compensation and widen eligibility requirements for victims denied government help for more than fifty year for health problems relating to cancer caused by radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s and 1960s. Idaho, Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Guam would be added to existing areas where victims can apply for compensation under the federal RECA program. At present, only residents of certain counties in Utah, Nevada and Arizona are eligible to apply for benefits, something witnesses repeatedly noted during their testimony.

Art and Bearing Witness to the Nuclear West: Guest Post by Emma Catherine McAllister

This post was contributed by Emma Catherine McAllister, a former student in Sarah Fox's Environmental Policy and Decision-Making Course "Nuclear Narratives of the American West." McAllister is a Sophomore at University of Puget Sound, where she is double majoring in International Political Economy and Environmental Policy and Decision Making.

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“Healing begins when someone bears witness. I saw you. I believe you.”

When I first heard these words, it had been a year since Sarah Fox had introduced me to narratives of the nuclear west—one year since I had learned of the “Atmospheric Nuclear Testing and Uranium Mining” chapter in the (lengthy) tome of American environmental injustice. In this year, Professor Fox had guided my class through the systematic efforts of the federal government—specifically, through the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)— to suppress information about the collateral damage it was inflicting in the course of its development of a nuclear arsenal. Professor Fox had opened our eyes to the horrific reality that communities living downwind of nuclear weapon test sites and communities working to extract the uranium necessary for these weapons had been deliberately kept in the dark about the devastating impact of the radiological material. She proved how these communities successfully organized to demand the release of classified data, the funding of health research, and eventually, the passage of policies dedicated to protecting health and the environment from the ravages of nuclear industries.

She also made clear that there is a great deal of work left to be done. There are thousands of nuclear sites—whether unremediated uranium mines, abandoned uranium processing plants, or nuclear power plants located on multiple tectonic fault lines—that continue to pose significant dangers to the communities in which they are located. Our final project for the class was to identify a nuclear site and develop a research paper explaining its history, its role within the development of America’s nuclear hegemony, and its impact on adjacent communities.

With Professor Fox’s guidance, I settled on researching Midnite Mine, an abandoned uranium mine located on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Eastern Washington. The following is a brief summary of my research:

The Spokane tribes originally occupied about three million acres of land. President Rutherford B. Hayes’ 1881 declaration limited the tribes to 156,000 acres of “some of the least valuable land” which was “Too rocky for farming, [and] also turned out to have little of the gold and silver early prospectors wanted.”

The dry, sandy soil that was poorly suited for agricultural development proved to be rich with uranium deposits. Midnite Mine, owned by Dawn Mining Corporation, capitalized on these deposits. It was located near the center of reservation land and worked on extracting uranium from 1955-1981. It necessitated the construction and use of a mill, which processed uranium ore into yellowcake (the raw material used for making nuclear rods). During its operating period, the mine and mill provided employment to the Spokane people, but also wreaked incredible destruction to tribal members’ bodies and land. The miners were not provided with any information about the dangers of uranium mining, nor any protective measures (such as face masks, laundry facilities, etc), and many developed respiratory disorders, thyroid malfunctions, and cancer. No semblance of cleanup efforts followed the mine’s 1981 closing, and it leeched radioactive waste and heavy metals into water sources on which the Spokane people depend for decades while the Spokane tribe tried to compel a cleanup effort. Eventually, they succeeded, and remediation of the mine and mill sites is now in progress, striving to employ tribal members as much as possible. The employment opportunities provided by remediation efforts guarantee some degree of financial security for the Spokane people’s foreseeable future, but do little to comfort those who have seen their loved ones taken by disease associated with the mine.

Doing this research made me want to do more than be a silent observer of this tragedy of environmental injustice—I wanted to do something. I reflected on my capacities as an artist, and how those capacities could potentially be used to bring greater awareness of the ongoing reality of toxic nuclear sites. I wanted to talk to and work with the Spokane people—to whatever extent they were willing—to tell their story, as I had witnessed Professor Fox had helped tell so many stories of Downwinders and uranium-affected communities.

I was ultimately unable to travel to the reservation in the course of the semester, and unable to contact community members before the deadline of the project. But in still having a pressing need to do something, I found a photograph taken by Jed Conklin for The Spokesman-Review newspaper and turned it into a black-and-white painting. a tableau of the grief and anguish of the Nuclear West. In the photograph, “Charlotte Corral [is] break[ing] down in tears while speaking about her husband, Chico, in their home on the Spokane Reservation” and “Sandra Belvail, a volunteer advocate who is helping Chico make a radiation compensation claim, offers comfort.” Originally, my idea was to render this photograph as a black-and-white painting with yellow splattering or superimposed landscape of the mine to represent the destructive contamination of uranium into the lives of those pictured--elements from Navajo artist and Downwinder Ed Singer’s painting “Łeetsoii shaa yíjooł (I Am Downwind)."  However, after finishing the black-and-white transmutation of these two women onto canvas, I did not want to present such a jarring representation of the role of the toxic uranium, and left off with the painting being just a way for me to acknowledge—to bear witness—to the tragedy suffered by Charlotte and by the Spokane people. I ended up not attempting to disseminate the image at all, uncertain that those who I depicted (and the Spokane/nuclear-affected community) would support the effort, and not wanting to use Charlotte and Sandra’s likeness in a way to which they had not explicitly consented.

My next venture into grappling with the Nuclear West through art was in the creation of a “tunnel book,” featuring a Native American young woman in the foreground of the tableau gazing at the mushroom cloud of a nuclear test in the background. Between her and the cloud is a flock of sheep, representing the livestock herds devastated by nuclear fallout from atmospheric testing, and a uranium mine representing any of the 10,000+ that still dot the Western landscape. On the panels of the book flanking this scene, I include quotations from Professor Fox’s Downwind: A People’s History of the Nuclear West, with uranium-mining related excerpts on the left-hand panel and atmospheric-testing related excerpts on the right-hand panel.

The painting now hangs in my room and the book sits on my desk, offering small reminders of the necessity of continuing to bear witness to environmental injustices, particularly those faced in particular by nuclear-affected communities. It also reminds me to stay vigilant and informed about new threats, new additions to the legacy of the Nuclear West. The current administration’s marked preference for extraction industries and profit over the wishes and best interests of the American people is epitomized in the downsizing of the Bears Ears National Monument, despite 96% of public comments to the Department of the Interior supporting the monument’s status. This downsizing of the monument seems indicative of the administration’s support for the expansion of the Daneros uranium mine at the expense of the rich cultural and historical legacies of the site, and at the potential danger of repeating our country’s history of foisting environmental injustice on marginalized communities.

I affirm that I see the brutality of what Downwind and uranium-affected communities have endured. I believe them, and I believe what happened to them was profoundly unjust. I would be honored to use my opportunities as a scholar, as a person of privilege, and as an artist to help these communities heal and to tell their stories. We must work together to oppose the repetition of history—the repetition of the unacceptable devastation of the Nuclear West.

If you are part of a community (or know of one) interested in collaborating with me to have its story told artistically, please email me at emma.art.mcallister@gmail.com.

If you are interested in learning more about Midnite Mine and its ongoing reclamation efforts, check out the links below:

SHAWL (Sovereignty, Health, Air, Water, Land) Society: http://shawlsociety.blogspot.com

EPA Superfund Entry: https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=1001070

News Coverage: http://www.spokesman.com/tags/midnite-mine/hg.    k54`