Mohave County 'downwinders' see renewed hope after decades of disappointment

So many of Matthew Capalby’s friends, relatives and neighbors in Kingman got cancer. He thought that it was inevitable that by the time he reached 30, he’d get it, too.

Starting in the 1950s, Kingman’s population became decimated by cancers that seemed too common to be "random."

One family he knew in Kingman lost 19 people to various types of cancer all before they turned 50. Another friend had four unrelated cancers before dying from the fifth, he said.

"It just goes on,” he said.

Radiation in Kingman

Kingman is located in northwestern Arizona just under 150 miles away from Mercury, Nevada. It's an agreed-upon fact that this is why many in the community and the entire region in northwestern Arizona still suffer.

From 1945 to 1962, the land 65 miles north of Las Vegas was designated as an underground and atmospheric testing site for nuclear weapons as a part of the Nuclear Testing Age.

People from the area and around the country flocked to spots not far from Kingman, the county seat of Mohave County, to see the explosions of nuclear material.

Today, people are flocking to movie theaters to see Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life and work on the Manhattan Project.

What Oppenheimer didn’t detail was the fallout from the Manhattan Project-related explosions.

After a detonation, the radioactive iodine-131-infested particles spread through the air and into the body via contaminated food, drinks and air, a phenomenon known as nuclear fallout. That's what still plagues generations of families in Mohave County, fewer than 300 miles away from Nevada's testing site.

"If you're within a 300-to-350 mile proximity to nuclear testing, it's like standing in front of an X-ray machine for five minutes," Capalby said.

Why hasn't there been compensation?

While the 58-year-old has not contracted cancer, he's active in the fight for restitution for people who did. His family, and many others in Mohave County, are part of a group known as Downwinders: individuals who lived downwind of nuclear testing sites and have since contracted a radiation-related illness.

In 1990, the federal government created the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to provide compensation for Downwinders who lived in certain areas during specified dates and had certain illnesses.

Individuals and surviving family members of deceased individuals can earn $50,000 settlements, each. Except the majority of Mohave County isn't included, even though its neighbors, who suffered less from exposure according to a 1997 study, are.

Capalby said it's because their leadership didn't fight hard enough for them in the 1990s. Thirty years later, he feels like he and his peers couldn't fight harder for recognition.

“(We’re) always hopeful and trusting that someday, this would be dealt with," Capalby said. "It just hasn't happened."

The group fighting for expansion is called the Downwinders of Mohave County. Eddie Pattillo was one of the founders in 1992. His son, Cullin, has witnessed the fight for recognition and restitution his entire life.

"Nobody's even said so much as, 'We're sorry, we didn't realize this was going on.' The fact that we're not included - they're just ignoring us. There's literally nothing we can do," Pattillo said.

Eddie Pattillo fought three different types of cancer, all of them unrelated to the others. When he died, Cullin took over care for his mother, a role formerly performed by his father.

It cost him around $2 million and his job.

"I've (uprooted) my whole life and (am) taking care of my mom," he said. "The way that (my father's) death from cancer at the hands of our government's negligence has impact me life (is that) I quit my job."

There are different schools of thought surrounding the government's role in the dilemma Mohave residents face today. Some believe that the government didn't know enough about radiation at the time of testing, while others say the government knew what they were doing.

Lilly Adams, a senior outreach coordinator for the Union of Concerned Scientists, cited a 1997 article called "Worse Than We Knew."

It says that in 1948, U.S. Air Force Meteorologist Col. B. G. Holzman told the committee in charge of selecting a nuclear testing site that one in the East was advisable because of the country's wind patterns. In the interest of time, they chose Western sites that were closer to the weapons labs.

Patillo believes he is part of what's known as the Milk Pathway. In 1955, the U.N. Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy was presented with a research paper that argued that radioactive iodine in grazing areas in Nevada became highly concentrated in milk, to the point where the "then-permissible levels of iodine 131 in the air was ten thousand times too high."

In other words, virtually everyone who lived near testing during that time became exposed to iodine through milk. Pattillo was told that his school growing up bought milk that came from farmland near a former testing site.

"About ten years after the last test, I would have been 1-year-old. So conceivably in 1976, they were still getting that milk that potentially had some impacted radioactive substances," he said.

He later had to get about 60% of his thyroid removed, something he believes is related.

"The doctors have no idea, all they want to do is (say), 'You have to monitor your thyroid levels your entire life to make sure they don't dwindle,'" Patillo said.

Is change on the horizon?

Since 2010, there have been efforts in Congress to expand RECA in every Congress, with none succeeding. Pattillo and Capalby both said that unlike their predecessors in decades prior, Arizona's Capitol Hill delegation has made numerous attempts to include Mohave.

Reps. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., and Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., were among the most Mohave friendly lawmakers who came to mind.

This year in the House both Stanton and Gosar introduced bills that would expand RECA to include Mohave County. Senator Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., also introduced legislation. While advocates are appreciative, they're not confident that things will change.

Laura Taylor is a lawyer from Prescott who's been filing claims for Downwinders since 2003. She said that she hopes these new efforts gain traction, but she isn't confident.

Even if efforts to include Mohave County are successful, RECA is on track to end in 2024 unless lawmakers choose to extend it. It is possible; it was done in 2022. But Capalby fears that people's ignorance, though not malicious, is a barrier.

He recalled his conversations with Stanton and Gosar.

"(They said that) when you talk to people from the East, or the upper Midwest, they get a blank stare," he said.

A new ally who could help spread the word for Downwinders introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2024 on July 26.

Co-sponsored by Sens. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., and Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.,'s amendment would expand RECA to all of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Guam and Missouri.

It also would extend RECA past 2024, ups compensation, extends the list of diseases covered and expands rights for Tribal members, among other things.

It passed the Senate July 27, with both of Arizona’s senators voting for it. In a message on the Mohave County Downwinders Facebook page, Pattillo shared the news.

“THIS IS BIG. It still has to pass the house so be ready to fight hard, but this is the biggest step forward to seeing a RECA amendment become reality that we have ever seen taken,” he wrote.

Sinema said she was proud to have voted to pass the Senate bill.

"Arizonans, especially in Mohave County, have long sought justice from the horrific exposure to downwind radiation," she said. "I’m honored to secure the overdue compensation these Arizonans deserve in the Senate-passed bill."

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mohave County downwinders see RECA expansion, first in 30 years