Survivors of radiation exposure and advocates made an impassioned plea for expanding the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act during a press conference in Washington D.C. on Tuesday.

They called for Speaker Mike Johnson to bring the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to the floor for a vote. The legislation, which already passed the Senate on a bipartisan vote, would make it possible for downwinders in New Mexico and people who worked in uranium mining and milling after 1971 to receive compensation from the federal government.

Native American advocates from New Mexico were among the people who made the journey to Washington D.C. to push for these benefits. Additionally, some of the people who attended traveled for more than 30 hours to get there shortly after receiving cancer treatments.

The original RECA funding expired in June.

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“RECA has expired because of Speaker Johnson,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-New Mexico, said, pointing to the widespread support that the legislation received in the Senate.

Luján has been pushing for RECA expansion for more than a decade and previously secured extensions to the program. The most recent extension came in 2022. However, getting the legislation passed in the Senate is the closest that legislation to expand RECA has ever come to the president’s desk.

After the Senate passed RECA expansion, Johnson refused to bring it to the House floor for a vote. 

“We’re here because this is about justice,” Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, said. “It’s about justice for the downwinders. It’s about justice for the post-’71 miners. It’s about justice for your constituents who were exposed to improperly stored nuclear materials.” 

Lawmakers including U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, a Democrat representing New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District, say that if the bill reaches the House floor, it will pass. President Joe Biden has said he will sign the legislation if it makes it to his desk.

“You gave your lives, you gave your bodies, you gave your families to the United States security,” Leger Fernández told the survivors who attended the press conference.

She said the illnesses associated with radiation exposure are complex and complicated.

“They’re not easy. It’s renal disease, it’s cancers, it’s lung issues,” she said. “They are difficult medical issues, and we’ve left you alone to fight them without the support that you deserve.”

She brought Shiprock resident Carol Etcitty-Roger to the podium to share about her struggles with cancer. Etcitty-Roger’s father Roy Etcitty was a miner in Cove, Arizona.

“My mom and I, we went and washed his clothes, his work clothes. and I could see the gold coming off of his clothes,” she said, referring to the color of the uranium, which is sometimes referred to as yellowcake.

She said when she was washing the clothes and ringing them out, she did not know that years later she would be diagnosed with cancer. 

Etcitty-Roger is not the first person in her family to develop cancer because of radiation exposure. Her father died of lung cancer.

Etcitty-Roger underwent two years of chemotherapy, but the cancer eventually returned. The cancer affected her eye. She recalled crying with her children. Etcitty-Roger takes pain medication sometimes twice a day.

Now her grandson who is 20 years old has been diagnosed with cancer. He was diagnosed at 19 years old.

Etcitty-Roger said her grandson now has a baby that is being tested for cancer. She said doctors have encouraged the entire family to get tested.

She said her sister also has been diagnosed with cancer and relies on oxygen tanks to breathe.

“We don’t know how long she is going to live,” Etcitty-Roger said tearfully.

Later she said she doesn’t even know how much time she has left.

“I never thought I was going to be like this in my life,” she said.

RECA originally passed in 1990 and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, spoke about why the expansion is needed. He also said that future expansion may also be needed.

“What’s happened since 1990 is we found that the government’s nuclear program was broader than we thought,” he said. “We found that radiation was broader than we thought and we learned that communities that should have been included the first time never were. So there will doubtless be in the future, as we learn more, we’ll probably find that there was more waste…improperly disposed of than we thought.”

That is what happened in Missouri and prompted Hawley to join New Mexico’s senators in pushing for RECA expansion. Improper disposal of radioactive waste in the St. Louis, Missouri area, has even led to an elementary school being closed.

The need for RECA expansion has been apparent in New Mexico for decades as Pueblo and Navajo communities where mining and milling occurred have buried family members sickened by radiation exposure and those living in the Tularosa Basin have faced generations of cancer due to the Trinity Test. Leger Fernández said she doesn’t understand why the downwinders in New Mexico and the post-1971 uranium workers were excluded from the original legislation in 1990.

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren attended the press conference and spoke on behalf of his people. He spoke about Navajo miners who worked without knowing about the dangers they faced. Nygren said those miners knew that what they were doing would help national security and he said that it is time that the country repay those who worked in the uranium mines and mills after 1971 for their sacrifices.

“This is a small token that we can do for their sacrifices for this country,” he said.

One of those miners was Phil Harrison, who started working in uranium mines when he was 18 years old.

“I was told to just clear tracks, grease the fan, help the driller. There was never a time where somebody said that this is dangerous work for you,” Harrison said.

He recalled drinking the water in the mine and wearing his street shoes inside.

Eventually, Harrison developed a rash on his body. He learned that his kidneys were failing. He now lives with one kidney and has gone through multiple surgeries in the past few years. Harrison said he doesn’t know how long he has left.

“I used to sit in that chair going through therapy asking myself, ‘what am I doing here? You know, why did I go to work? Why did I mess with this radioactive dust, soil, surveying a contaminated area?’” he said. 

Harrison said he did the work to provide for his family.

In his community, hundreds of people have died due to radiation exposure and that death toll continues to rise.

“This work was done for national security to create America’s nuclear weapons program,” Harrison said.