“The shared stories here are harrowing. Uranium workers from Laguna and Acoma Pueblos and the Seboyeta and Cubero land grants who toiled in mines after 1971 and the Tularosa Basin Downwinders are among the participants: One after another, they come to the podium or comment from the audience. Others nod, shake their heads and wipe away tears.”
[W]ith RECA in political limbo…If the extension isn’t passed by June, hopes will be dashed. “Once that statute is gone, it’s forgotten,” says Kevin Martinez, a local lawyer who’s represented thousands of miners and nuclear lab workers for radiation-related claims. “You can’t recreate that baby.”
By Alicia Inez Guzmán, Searchlight New Mexico “High Beam” Issue #111 | May 7, 2024 Searchlight NM
Saturday begins early, first with a stop at the grocery store to buy snacks and then a three-hour haul west to Gallup. The winds kick up enough to make the horizon look smudgy until finally I arrive at noon at the Playground of Dreams, where Maggie Billiman has organized the first of two gatherings about the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. The bill would give people more time to file claims for health afflictions linked to uranium mining, atmospheric tests and toxic Manhattan Project waste, including here in New Mexico, home of the world’s first atomic detonation at the Trinity Site.
The original version of RECA was passed in 1990, recognizing the federal government’s responsibility “to compensate individuals who were harmed by the mining of radioactive materials or fallout from nuclear arms testing.” But that bill is set to expire on June 7. Its reauthorization would add another six years to file RECA claims and cover New Mexico for the first time, along with other states. It would also allow families like the Billimans — from Sawmill, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation — to navigate the medical system, get properly diagnosed for health problems they attribute to living downwind of the Nevada Test Site, and then apply for restitution.
The Senate handily passed this latest bill in March. It’s been stalled since then by Republican Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House.
When I arrive, nearly everyone is writing a message with black Sharpies on crisp white T-shirts. “Seek Justice,” one says. “Extend Expand RECA,” reads another. Maggie Billiman’s says “SAVE RECA” in big, cut-out letters. Her father, Howard Billiman, was a Navajo Code Talker and Marine in World War II. In 2001, he died of stomach cancer. His wife died of a respiratory-related illness in 2006.
Howard’s sister, Elvina Billiman Carl, weeps as she tells me stories about their growing up together. Daniel and Janice Billiman, Maggie Billiman’s siblings, recount over and over the many obstacles the family has faced to get proper diagnoses for their illnesses. While Howard Billiman received RECA compensation, the rest of the family has not.
“Nobody’s gotten RECA,” Janice says of her siblings.
As the winds calm and a rainstorm rolls in, I hop back onto I-40 east toward Cubero, population 289, where the Southwest Uranium Miners’ Coalition Post ’71 is hosting a gathering at the parish hall of Our Lady of Light church. As I walk in, a woman hands me a lime green slip of paper with Mike Johnson’s phone number and a call to action: “Ask him to support the RECA bill and put it to a vote in the House!!”
The shared stories here are harrowing. Uranium workers from Laguna and Acoma Pueblos and the Seboyeta and Cubero land grants who toiled in mines after 1971 and the Tularosa Basin Downwinders are among the participants: One after another, they come to the podium or comment from the audience. Others nod, shake their heads and wipe away tears.
Currently, RECA only covers uranium miners from 1942 through December 1971, leaving out scores of people who were harmed in later years. Meanwhile, downwinders in New Mexico are completely excluded.
A local sheriff tells of the Homestake Mining Company, which left two nearby communities riddled with 22 tons of uranium waste and a string of illnesses. A woman from Laguna Pueblo laments the death of her husband, a former miner, and the giant void left behind by the Jackpile-Paguate mine, once the largest open-pit mine in the world and now a Superfund site. Tina Cordova, cofounder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, recalls stories about ash raining from the sky after the Trinity detonation and about the babies that died after the “dirtiest test our government ever conducted.”
Now, with RECA in political limbo, a distinct mix of hope and desperation fills the room.
If the extension isn’t passed by June, hopes will be dashed. “Once that statute is gone, it’s forgotten,” says Kevin Martinez, a local lawyer who’s represented thousands of miners and nuclear lab workers for radiation-related claims. “You can’t recreate that baby.”