"It’s been over 75 years—we can’t wait anymore,” states Tina Cordova, cofounder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. The group, which came together in 2005, is seeking environmental justice for the victims and survivors, called Downwinders, who were contaminated by the testing of the world’s first nuclear bomb on July 16, 1945. Its goal is to extend and expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).
The RECA, which passed in 1990, will sunset in July of 2022. The act provides compensation and health benefits to uranium miners who worked in the industry prior to 1971 and former residents in parts of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona who lived downwind of the Nevada Test Site. However, even though the Trinity site—adjacent to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico—was the first test of a nuclear bomb, the contamination of New Mexicans has never been recognized. The expansion of RECA would include New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Guam, as well as the post-1971 uranium workers.
...The Tularosa Basin in south central New Mexico lies between several mountain ranges to the east and west. It is an endorheic basin—meaning very little water flows out of it. For decades, residents in the area had traditionally harvested water in outdoor cisterns that they used for their animals as well as their daily needs.
...The scientists working on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, N.M., including their scientific leader Robert Oppenheimer, had underestimated the power they had created until after its detonation at the test site. The contamination from overexposure to the high levels of ionizing radiation has resulted in multigenerational cancers in the surrounding ranching families and residents of Carrizozo, Socorro, San Antonio, Tularosa, Roswell, and the broader Tularosa Basin...MORE
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