Advocates push for radiation payments, Moylan works negotiations

Three months after Congress allowed a program compensating survivors of nuclear weapons testing to expire, indigenous radiation victims from Guam and around the nation are calling for an extension and expansion of the payouts.

Over 50 members from the Navajo, Laguna, Pueblo, Acoma Pueblo and Hopi Tribes are headed to the U.S. Capitol this week to push the issue, according to Robert Celestial, president of Guam's Pacific Association of Radiation Survivors, PARS.

"They're leaving New Mexico right now on a bus," said Celestial, with plans for a "powwow" on the front steps of the Capitol building.

Tribal members on Sunday left New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, for a 30-hour bus ride to Washington, D.C.

Though PARS members won't be able to make the trip to the other side of the globe this time, they will be joining in a prayer vigil Tuesday while their counterparts are in Washington, D.C., Celestial said.

Del. James Moylan this week is working on negotiations between House leadership and the Senate, to get some extension to the program back on the table, according to Moylan's chief of staff Bobby Shringi.

In the past year, Guam and other jurisdictions have come closer than ever to being included in the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, RECA, but efforts to expand and extend the program have died in the Republican-led House.

RECA ultimately expired in June, without ever compensating survivors from Guam, New Mexico, Missouri, and other jurisdictions affected by nuclear weapons testing and uranium mining.

Payouts went up to $100,000, depending on the illness.

Shringi said Moylan is set to meet Tuesday with Sen. Josh Hawley, a key advocate for RECA expansion in the Senate, to work out a "counter offer" to keep the program alive.

Though House Speaker Johnson supports RECA in principle, funding the program is the main obstacle, Shringi said, with estimates for expanding it to Guam and other states estimated at $50 billion at one time.

It's possible an expanded program with a lower maximum payout could be tacked on to the continuing budget resolution that lawmakers have to pass by the end of this week, Shringi said.

How long the extension would be is up for debate, but Guam is included in the options that are being floated, he said.

Leadership in the House and Senate will have to come to terms on the matter, according to Shringi.

If that doesn't happen, there are two bills "on the table" to expand the program — one from Hawley and another from Moylan, he said.

Hawley's measure was passed by the Senate early this year, though it's never gone up for a vote in the Senate, the Associated Press reports.

The senator from Missouri called on House Speaker Johnson last week to put the measure to a vote.

"We have some of the highest rates of cancer in the nation, the St. Louis area, the highest rates of breast cancer. Why is that? Because there is so much nuclear radiation in the area that is still not cleaned up," Hawley said.

A press release from PARS notes it's been 15 years since the National Academies of Science acknowledged that Guam residents were exposed to nuclear fallout from the Pacific Proving Grounds nuclear testing between 1946 and 1962.

Celestial, who helped clean up radioactive test sites in the Marshall Islands while in the Army, believes Guam residents should be compensated all the way out to 1992 because of the 30-year half-life on fallout that reached the island.

Along with the Union of Concerned Scientists, advocates will be delivering a list of medical costs incurred to treat radiation-related illnesses to the House speaker this week, according to information shared by Celestial.

Many of the survivors who would qualify by the 1962 cutoff of the program have now died.

"They're all dying," and those that remain are getting older, Celestial noted.

Celestial said advocates are now looking to legislation that would extend payouts down to children and grandchildren.

"We deserve to be in it. If it dies out this year, they don't pass it, then we'll reintroduce it next year," he added.