In a new letter released today, organizations representing victims of radiation exposure from nuclear testing fallout and production are calling on Utah’s congressional delegation to support the reauthorization and expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).
Signed by groups representing physicians, members of the Church of Latter-day Saints, environmental health advocates and victims of testing known as “downwinders,” the letter specifically asks Utah’s representatives to endorse the Radiation Exposure Compensation Reauthorization Act, S. 3853, which passed the Senate in March with a bipartisan supermajority but without the support of Utah Senators Mike Lee and Mitt Romney. The legislation has spent more than seven months awaiting action in the House of Representatives. House leadership has so far refused to bring S. 3853 up for a vote and allowed RECA to expire in June.
“So far, none of Utah’s congressional delegation supports expanding federal benefits in the RECA Act, claiming the ‘data doesn’t support it.’ Their claim is either disingenuous or borne of ignorance,” said Dr. Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. “The only country that has ever detonated nuclear bombs over American citizens is our own. That moral failure has been compounded by the indifference and cruelty of Utah’s Congressional delegation’s turning their backs on their own constituents. We all deserve better.”
RECA advocates met with the offices of all four Utah representatives in September, but none of these offices have followed up to express support for the bill or offer plans to pass legislation before the end of the year. This month marked the 34th anniversary of RECA’s passage in 1990. Over RECA’s three decades, more than 8,000 people in Utah sickened by the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons program have benefited from health screenings or financial compensation through RECA to assist with medical bills and other costs associated with their illnesses.
“We do our family reunions at the cemetery,” said Claudia Peterson, a downwinder and resident of St. George, Utah. Peterson lost her young daughter, Bethany Peterson, and her sister to cancer. “My friends have died, my neighbors have died, their children are getting sick and dying now. This is the legacy that they’ve left us. It's hell watching a loved one die. It’s hell having to ask or beg for recognition of what your own government did to you and then to have [the people] you elect deny, or say ‘it’s too expensive,’ when your military complex, the money is just there for them. You can’t put a price on someone’s life or someone’s suffering, so don’t go there with me with the money. And I think that it’s really important that Celeste Maloy take a leadership role here in Utah to get our elected officials to push this and step up to the plate. Our past representatives have fought for us and how they’re not fighting for us now is unbelievable.”
The letter comes on the heels of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Japanese Nihon Hidankyo grassroots advocacy movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While the international community is honoring the experience and activism of nuclear weapons victims in Japan, many U.S. victims of nuclear weapons are still fighting for recognition from their government.
“Latter-day Saints support our communities who became sick with cancers and other ailments as a result of uranium mining and nuclear testing. These brothers and sisters and their families are truly worthy recipients of our care and compassion,” said Mike Maxwell, chair of the LDS Earth Stewardship Salt Lake Area chapter. “For many years the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has operated a program to support those who have applied for benefits under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. Their work has enabled hundreds of residents of the American West to receive much needed benefits for the severe price they paid as the result of exposure. However, there are many, many more families that have not received any benefits for the sicknesses and afflictions that they have suffered. If the church has the data to support this program, our elected Utah representatives can support it as well.”
Competing RECA bills proposed by Lee and Rep. Celeste Maloy have been rejected by Utah downwinders and other frontline communities as “half-baked” for their continued exclusion of other impacted communities, including uranium workers.
“My grandpa was a uranium miner. He was compensated but he had to jump through hoops to get compensated and a lot of the uranium miners weren’t able to get that compensation,” said Councilman Conrad Jacket of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Council. “They passed, during that time, of cancer, of their body just failing them after working in the mine. Not just working there but sleeping there, drinking the water. They had their families there – my grandpa had my grandma there and my uncles. They all passed away before the age of 60 from cancer. It’s there and it’s documented. I wish the leaders of Utah would take this into consideration.”