It’s been one year since a key federal program supporting victims of nuclear exposure expired, and New Mexico lawmakers are once again calling for action.
In a press call yesterday, Senators Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich, along with Representatives Teresa Leger Fernández and Gabe Vasquez, marked the anniversary of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA, ending without renewal.
They’re urging Congress to restore and expand the program.
RECA provided financial compensation to individuals affected by government-run nuclear testing and uranium mining.
Although the Senate passed a reauthorization bill twice with bipartisan support, the House did not take up the measure during the last Congress.
Senator Luján has played a lead role in crafting RECA legislation since he was first elected to the House in 2008.
He says letting the law lapse has denied justice to people who are sick and dying from radiation exposure.
“ Letting RECA expire is a disgrace to these families and victims who still struggle to this very day to get help, get the medicine they need, get the treatments for the conditions caused by the negligence of the federal government,” Luján said.
Senator Heinrich says thousands lost eligibility for compensation over the past year, including many who were never covered under the original law.
Representative Leger Fernández criticized House leadership for not allowing a vote, and said the Senate-passed version already includes key affected communities, from uranium miners to New Mexico downwinders.
But when the measure arrived in the other chamber in the past, U.S. House speaker Mike Johnson cited questions about the financial impact for not bringing it to the floor.
Tina Cordova, co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, said her family and others continue to lose loved ones to radiation-related illness and have received little acknowledgment from the government.
“ Putting a face on this is so important. My family has five generations of cancer now since 1945. My family's not unique. We've documented thousands of families like mine exhibiting four and five generations of cancer," Cordova said.
"That's the face of the legacy that we've been left to deal with. It's our government's primary function. To look after the health and wellbeing of its citizenship."
Luján reintroduced a new reauthorization bill in January along with Heinrich and republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.
