RECA helped their family. Now they ask, what about everyone else?

Over the last three decades, 8,000 Utahns sickened by the U.S. nuclear weapons program have been helped by the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). But too many more in Utah and other states have been left behind. It’s long past time for Congress to fix this mistake. And the Utah delegation should lead the way.

Championed by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch in 1990, RECA offered some measure of recognition and financial assistance to Americans harmed by our government’s nuclear weapons program. My own family lived in the town of Delta in Millard County at the time of testing. After my mother’s death we applied for and received RECA compensation for the breast cancer she was treated for in her 60s. When our sister was diagnosed and died from lung cancer in her early 70s, my brother-in-law also received compensation.

Financial compensation is little comfort when you’ve lost a loved one. It will never make up for the loss, but had we lived a little farther north, in Juab or Sanpete counties, our family would have been denied even basic justice.  RECA should be expanded to include all Utahns sickened by nuclear weapons, including uranium miners who worked after 1971, as well as those in other parts of the country who were similarly harmed and whose suffering mirrors our own.

Utah’s Congressional delegation has the chance to achieve justice for all downwinders and former uranium workers in Utah and across the country by coming to the negotiating table and finding a solution to reauthorize and improve RECA to address the program’s historical shortcomings.

Since RECA’s creation, we have learned much more about who was harmed by our government’s nuclear program.  Radioactive fallout from above-ground testing spread much farther than previously realized – recent research from Princeton suggests it reached every state in the lower 48. In Utah, just 10 counties were originally included in RECA, despite long-standing and growing evidence that radiation spread across the whole state. And we understand better the risks borne by uranium workers and how the industry endangered them.

Since RECA expired in June, some have suggested that it would be easier to simply reinstate the program as is, continuing to arbitrarily exclude many exposed communities. This would simply be an extension of injustice. RECA assistance can mean the difference between getting treatment or not, between bankruptcy and financial stability. The cancer screenings the program funds can be the difference between detecting cancer early enough to treat it and catching it too late.

While I am grateful for the support RECA has provided my family, I have watched friends suffer unimaginable loss with nowhere to turn. We cannot in good conscience once again leave our fellow downwinders and uranium workers, who have suffered as we have, behind.

These excluded communities have waited decades, and we understand the pain they feel of watching their loved ones get sick and die with no help from their government. We stand with them, and we ask Congress: reauthorize an improved, expanded RECA today.