Years of advocacy by New Mexico downwinders down to the wire

Arlene Juanico grew up in Paguate Village on the Pueblo of Laguna, about a mile from a uranium mine where she worked as a truck driver from 1975 to 1982.

Over the years, Juanico lost her grandmother, father and brother to cancer. She and her husband, Lawrence, who also worked in the mine, have been diagnosed with lung disease.

She said to this day, cancer rates in the small village are high, and many people need oxygen tanks to get around because of diseases that are likely linked to the village’s long history with uranium mining.

Juanico and her husband were just some of the dozens of people who attended a roundtable discussion held by Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., who is trying to raise awareness about an amendment in a pending defense bill that would extend and enhance who qualifies for the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

“Let’s make noise,” she said. “Let’s make noise about how we’re dying.”

Many New Mexico uranium workers and families who lived near the Trinity site, where the first atomic bomb was detonated in 1945, never have been eligible for health care and compensation under RECA. Luján sponsored an amendment to a defense bill that would expand the compensation to more families in New Mexico and elsewhere.

Tina Cordova, co-founder of the Tularoosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, an advocacy group for families seeking compensation, said it’s now or never. RECA will sunset in June next year unless it is extended and expanded.

As the law was originally written, only people who lived near nuclear bomb testing sites in Nevada, Utah and Arizona are eligible for compensation. The original law also covered uranium workers from 1942 to 1971, but the amendment would expand that beyond the 1971 cutoff.

The U.S. Senate last month voted to expand eligibility to New Mexico residents as part of an amendment to a national defense bill. It isn’t clear if the amendment will make it into the final version of the bill, which is now being negotiated by the House and Senate.

Cordova said five generations of her family have suffered rare cancers, which are believed to have been caused because of the family’s proximity to the Trinity bomb test. Cordova’s family lived just 45 from the site, and no warning was given before the bomb was detonated.

Just recently, her 23-year-old niece was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, which Cordova herself has had.

“It has been very devastating for our family,” she said. “We don’t wonder if we’re going to get cancer; it’s who is next.”

At the Thursday discussion at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, Luján’s office recorded testimony from participants — many of whom traveled hours from the Navajo Nation and other places where uranium mining was prevalent — about how their families continue to be affected to this day.

He said he plans to take the recorded testimony to the Capitol and enter it into the congressional record.

“I’ve learned it’s very important to educate colleagues that don’t have the honor of representing downwind communities, or uranium mine workers themselves, so that they can see from the families themselves that are leading this fight, that will be able to benefit from this package,” he said, “which would offer justice where injustice has lived for almost eight decades.”

Phil Harrison, who is part of the Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims Committee, said he and the majority of his family members worked in uranium mines.

He worked at a uranium mine for four months with his father, who then became ill. Harrison said within a year, his father died of lung cancer at age 43. Over the years, he said he has lost 14 uncles who worked in uranium mines. He said his hometown of Cove and Red Valley in Arizona have lost hundreds of uranium workers to various diseases linked to the work.

“I worked (in a uranium mine) and was given a shovel and no warning,” he said. “We found out later. There was no warning, no safety equipment, no ventilation, hardly any training. The government was negligent.

“We’re asking Congress to correct these wrongs.”