Law shift needed to aid downwinders

BOISE – The U.S. Department of Justice has told Sen. Larry Craig that without changes in federal law, there’s nothing the agency can do to extend federal compensation to Idaho cancer victims who blame nuclear-bomb fallout during Cold War-era testing for their illness.

Craig inserted language into the Justice Department’s fiscal 2006 spending bill last June directing the agency to find ways to expand eligibility for fallout victims. Currently, eligibility in the program created by the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) is limited to 22 counties in Utah, Arizona and Nevada.

Craig and fellow Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo want the entire state of Idaho declared eligible. Fallout pattern studies have shown portions of Idaho received higher doses of radioactive particles spread by aboveground testing of nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s than some areas covered by the law.

In April 2005, the National Academies of Science recommended the federal government consider fallout-related cancer claims from people across the country, rather than just those in the 22 counties.

But the report also said cancer victims should have to show a scientific link between the fallout and their illness to receive compensation.

Craig’s language in the spending bill asked the Justice Department – which administers the compensation program – to recommend ways to incorporate the academies’ findings into the existing program. But the response delivered to Craig this week said the agency can’t make any changes until Congress amends the law.

Craig’s office said he was not surprised by the conclusion and planned to use the Justice Department report to spur the Senate Judiciary Committee to begin a lengthy overhaul of the RECA program. He also plans to cite the document in pressing for legislation he and Crapo have sponsored that would immediately add Idaho to the list of eligible areas.

“The value of the report is we can now take that to the judiciary committee and show them why we need this legislation and to get them moving forward on RECA reform,” Dan Whiting, Craig’s press secretary, said Friday.

But advocates for Idaho downwinders complained that the year that passed waiting for a federal study that confirmed the obvious is just part of a pattern of neglect by the federal government.

“They are studying it to death and will keep on studying until there’s none of us left to complain anymore,” said Preston Truman of Downwinders, a grass-roots group lobbying for expanded eligibility. “If Craig and the Idaho delegation were serious about getting greater RECA eligibility, they would attach a rider to every bill adding Idaho, Montana, the rest of Utah and Mohave County in Arizona to the program.”

The Craig-Crapo bill to include Idaho was introduced in May 2005 and has not had a hearing nor attracted any co-sponsors.

Another bill, sponsored by Crapo, would add Idaho and Montana. It was introduced in December in the Senate, has attracted Craig and Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., as co-sponsors but is stuck in the Senate Judiciary Committee.