Time’s run out for the Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act

A sign warns of radioactive material at the West Lake Landfill. Thousands of tons of nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project were dumped there in the 1970s (Theo Welling/Riverfront Times).

A federal program to apologize and acknowledge the harms of radiation exposure is out of time, and for those looking for justice from the federal government, the window for inclusion is getting smaller.

The Radiation Exposure and Compensation Act begins to expire Friday, with the U.S. Department of Justice accepting applications postmarked June 10.

The fund was created in 1990 in response to growing lawsuits from communities around nuclear test sites, as well as from uranium miners and their families about the cancers, diseases, and other harms.

RECA pays lump sum compensations for people who lived and worked in the nuclear program and  developed cancers or diseases linked to radiation exposure. It is only limited to civilians living in specific counties in Arizona, Utah and Nevada, uranium miners, millers and transporters before 1971 and federal workers on above ground nuclear test sites.

The Senate passed a bill 69-30 in March, which would broaden the program for downwinders across states and territories, increase protection for uranium workers through 1990 and increase the amount of money paid to families. That proposal would keep the program alive for another six years.

For the people and families left out of RECA, they say Congressional inaction on RECA is further injustice.

“It’s been a lot of stress, and just such an enormous disappointment,” said Tina Cordova, a founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium.

The group has long fought for inclusion of people and families who lived around the Trinity Test Site in the Jornada Del Muerto, who have never been compensated.

U.S. House speaker reverses on radiation compensation bill that excluded Missouri

Last week, Republican House leadership had a reversal on their recent RECA position, first saying they would only bring a vote to extend the current program, and then  walking the vote back later in the day.

Objections from GOP leadership start and end with concerns about the costs of expanding the program .

Since the move last week, there has been no support for RECA mentioned by House leaders, despite calls from their Missouri Republican colleagues asking for a standalone vote to keep the program.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, decried House Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision not to extend RECA before the deadline.

“RECA expires today because the House has done nothing,” Hawley posted on social media. “I hope when Speaker Johnson gets back from Europe he will get focused on America — and make time to meet with radiation survivors, like he promised.”

Parts of the St. Louis area have been contaminated for 75 years with radioactive waste left over from the effort to build the world’s first atomic bomb during World War II. Uranium refined in downtown St. Louis was used in the first sustained nuclear chain reaction in Chicago, a breakthrough in the Manhattan Project, the name given to the effort to develop the bomb.

After the war, waste from uranium refining efforts was trucked from St. Louis to surrounding counties and dumped near Coldwater Creek and in a quarry in Weldon Spring, polluting surface and groundwater. Remaining waste was dumped at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, where it remains today.

Generations of St. Louis-area families lived in homes near contaminated sites without warning from the federal government. A study by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found exposure to the creek elevated residents’ risk of cancer. Residents of nearby communities suffer higher-than-normal rates of breast, colon, prostate, kidney and bladder cancers and leukemia. Childhood brain and nervous system cancers are also higher.

This story was originally published by Source New Mexico , a States Newsroom affiliate.

The Independent’s Jason Hancock contributed to this story.

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