Thank you Mr. Chairman for holding this hearing on the possibility of amending the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990. As you may know, on March 24, 1998 I introduced H.R. 3539, the Radiation Workers Justice Act of 1998, in the House of Representatives to address the injustices endured by the uranium workers in the Four Corners area of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. Nearly three months later, I was happy to see my fellow New Mexican, Senator Jeff Bingaman, introduce companion legislation in the Senate.

I became intimately involved in this issue in November of 1997 when Mr. Paul Hicks, whose written testimony you have here today, passionately informed me of the dire circumstances many of the miners and millers, and the survivors of deceased miners and millers, face today because of our government’s neglect of their pleas for justice. After many meetings, conversations, and phone calls with the miners and millers of the Four Corners region, including a town hall meeting attended by 1500 affected parties, legislation was drafted to confront the glaring inadequacies of the 1990 legislation, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).

Prior to Mr. Hick’s information, I had no real knowledge of this issue. But as I talked with Mr. Hicks and other miners and millers and villagers, on and off the Navajo reservation and the Acoma and Laguna Pueblos, I became shocked at what I was being told.

As Governor Roland Johnson, Governor of the Pueblo of Laguna, stated in his June 25, 1998, testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee of Immigration and Claims, “ . . . radioactive dust pervaded the environment of the inhabitants of Paguate Village, spreading over the water supply, clothes drying outdoors, and food which was being dried in the sun in the traditional manner.” When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) , at the Governor’s request, conducted a study of uranium mining’s effect on the area they found that the Rio Paguate was being contaminated by runoff and the water was no longer fit for domestic, livestock or irrigation use.

In the statement of the Navajo Nation on June 25, they cited a 1997 National Cancer Institute report on radioactive fallout that said, “Navajo children in the path of the fallout from the 1950’s atmospheric testing would have received thyrouid doses of 200 rads or more, due to the fact that the children mostly drank goat milk, not cow milk, and that goat milk results in thyroid exposures of 10 times or more the radiation dose that would result from drinking cow’s milk.”

I was appalled and ashamed to find out that these American citizens were not told that they were being studied by our government as they mined uranium for weapons manufacturing in the interest of national security. I was appalled and ashamed to find out that our government failed to act to require the reduction of the uranium hazard, both from mining and fallout of weapons testing, when it could have easily been accomplished. I was appalled and ashamed to find out that medical studies failed to take into account simple lifestyle differences of the tribal people who made up a huge portion of the miners, millers and villagers affected by the radiation exposure. I was appalled and ashamed to find out that on top of ALL OF THIS, the U.S. Government did nothing to warn the miners and millers of the potentially disastrous affect their jobs could have on their health.

50 years later, these miners, millers, villagers, and their descendants have still not been properly compensated for their injuries. At least several hundred of them have lost their lives to the hideous diseases that result from radiation exposure that they endured, unwittingly, in service to their country.

After learning all of this, you can see that I had no choice but to introduce legislation to right the wrongs our government incurred.

H.R. 3539, represents input from virtually every impacted party in the Four Corners region including: the Acoma and Laguna Pueblos; the Navajo Nation; most of the counties and cities in the Four Corners Region of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado; and all of the miners and millers advocacy groups in the area.

If this bill passes Congress ALL uranium miners, including above-ground miners, and uranium millers will be eligible for compensation under RECA. Coverage will be extended to any miner or miller who worked in the mines and mills between the years 1942 and 1990. Currently, only individuals employed at the mines between 1947 and 1971 are eligible.

H.R. 3539 will expand current compensation coverage, which is presently limited to lung cancer and nonmalignant respiratory diseases, to include compensation for all medical conditions associated with uranium mining and milling. The compensation award would increase from $100,000 to as much as $200,000, and will reduce the radiation exposure requirement for claimants to 40 Working Level Months from its present 200 Working Level Months requirement. It will also expand the geographical area identified under RECA as eligible for fallout compensation coverage to include the Navajo Reservation.

H.R. 3539 calls for implementation of the RECA compensation claims process for Native American claimants to be consistent with Native American law, tradition, and custom. The current statute does not recognize the right of our native tribes to have their customs and traditions respected in the American Court of Law, as well as on the reservations.

Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, H.R. 3539 will provide compensation to uranium miners and millers, whose constitutional rights were violated as a result of the mining, regardless of whether he or she suffers a radiation-related medical condition. The President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments fully acknowledged that “[t]he grave injustice that the government did to the uranium miners, by failing to take action to control the hazard and by failing to warn the miners of the hazard, should not be compounded by unreasonable barriers to receiving the compensation the miners deserve for the wrongs and harms inflicted upon them as they served their country.”

I now ask this committee and my colleagues elsewhere in Congress to accept this challenge and move towards the appropriate amendment of RECA, by ultimately passing H.R. 3539. In the words of Reginald Pasqual, Governor of the Acoma Pueblo, “In the end it is a simple matter of justice.”

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman and members of this committee.