Trinity Site nuke test exposed New Mexicans to radiation. Senate votes to compensate them

“Oppenheimer” recently dramatized in cinema what many New Mexicans see as a tragedy rippling through generations, and one the federal government this week took a step to address.

The movie released nationwide on July 21 acts out the first atomic bomb test in the U.S. held in 1945 at the Trinity Site in central New Mexico, an event that left people living nearby struggling with the impacts of radiation for decades since.

And as moviegoers enjoyed the more-than-three-hour epic, New Mexico’s downwinders continued the fight to be compensated by the federal government for what they called generations of suffering caused by the events depicted on screen.

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Those efforts appeared closer to fruition, after the U.S. Senate passed an expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) Thursday, sending the measure to the U.S. House of Representatives for consideration.

The (RECA) program provides payments for Americans in multiple states affected by nuclear tests at the Nevada Test Site, but New Mexico groups for years argued they should be included in the payments after generations of cancers and other ailments they said were caused by the test at Trinity.

The expansion, which would extend payments to New Mexicans and other downwinders in affected states, came as an amendment cosponsored by U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) to the $886.3 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which the Senate voted to approve on an 86-11 vote.

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This will mean the GOP-led House will next vote on the bill used to fund national defense and military initiatives nationwide, potentially amending or even removing Lujan’s amendment.

“While this important vote passed, this fight is not over,” Lujan said. “I will continue working with my colleagues and advocates to ensure that the House follows our lead and does what is right by Downwinders and uranium mine workers.”

Tina Cordova is one of those who said she can quantify the tragic impact by counting the multitude of cancer diagnosis and deceased family members in her community of Tularosa about 50 miles from the Trinity Site.

She's a cofounder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders which has advocated for expanding RECA for years, and said the measure was now the "furthest its ever gotten" to becoming law.

"It's not a partisan issue," Cordova said. "Radiation exposure affects Republicans and Democrats alike. People in the West have been horribly harmed by the nuclear testing that took place."

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If it’s passed, the RECA program, which sunsets next year, would offer reparations to communities near the Trinity Site around south-central New Mexico in small towns like Tularosa and Carrizozo.

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It would also offer payments to downwinders in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Utah, and expand eligibility to more uranium mine workers exposed after 1971.

The amendment also sought to extend the RECA program by 19 years, much longer than previously-passed bills that have extended it in two-year increments, and increase the dollar amount of payments.

“Nearly eight decades after the Trinity Test in New Mexico, many New Mexicans are still left out of the original RECA program,” Lujan continued. “This is unacceptable given the number of New Mexicans who have gotten sick and died from radiation exposure. The federal government must do right by these communities, and today’s Senate vote is a step in the right direction toward justice.”

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The amendment was a bipartisan effort, sponsored by Lujan and Republicans Sens. Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Mike Crapo of Idaho, along with Democrat Sens. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Michael Bennet of Colorado and Jon Tester of Montana.

Independent U.S. Sen. Krysten Sinema of Arizona also served as a cosponsor.

“I was proud to work across the aisle to build support for this historic RECA expansion. The support of my colleagues, and the many advocates engaged on this issue, helped bring attention to the injustice faced by New Mexicans,” Lujan said. “Today, the Senate took the most significant vote on RECA since the program was first adopted.”

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'Oppenheimer' ignores, exploits New Mexico's plight, group says

Amid the theatrical release of Oppenheimer, Cordova said she expected the issue to get more attention from the national press and others as the New Mexicans impacted by the nuclear test featured in the film were conspicuously "left out" of the movie.

"We're going to continue to receive a lot of attention from the film and the fact that the people of New Mexico were completely left out of it," she said. "There would be no Manhattan Project without New Mexico."

She said the downwinders group attempt a dialogue with the makers of the film, helmed by renowned Director Christopher Nolan, but was ignored, their stories of the human cost of the test excluded.

"They have basically looked away from us," Cordova said. "Shame on them. They were filming in our state. They came here and used our tax incentives, used our landscape and they walked away. That's exploitation. There's no excuse for that."

U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, who introduced a separate bill July 13, along with several measures in the past to extend RECA’s lifetime, said in a statement the legislation was essential to righting the wrongs of the past and present, as in Nolan's film, in ignoring New Mexico's downwinders in the nuclear conversation.

“Imagine having radioactive waste fall down like dirty snow on your homes and communities causing cancer and disease,” she said in a statement. “Then think about the despair when you learn that the U.S. government compensated other communities exposed to radiation during the nuclear testing program but not yours.”

Cordova called on the GOP-led House to push the NDAA, with the RECA amendment, forward and to the desk of President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

"We know it's not a done deal. Of course we're concerned," she said. "We hate the idea of making it this far and not getting there."

Lilly Adams, outreach coordinator for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Global Security Program advocated for the RECA expansion, arguing the federal government unfairly denied support for downwinders from New Mexico and other states for years.

“RECA is a valuable program, but it does not go far enough to support the veterans, Indigenous communities, miners, farmers, and our neighbors who were exposed to radiation, but have been denied the support they deserve from the government,” she said.

Adrian Hedden can be reached at 575-628-5516, achedden@currentargus.com or @AdrianHedden on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: US Senate votes to compensate New Mexicans exposed to radiation