NM House, Senate memorials pass in support of uranium miners

By Frances Madeson Special to the Navajo Times 

March 9, 2017

SANTA FE — Due to urgent business in Window Rock, Navajo Nation president Russell Begaye was unable to address the overflow crowd in the rotunda of the Roundhouse in Santa Fe on Uranium Workers Day as scheduled on Feb. 27. Consequently, he missed the celebratory feeling in the air as first the New Mexico Senate and then the House passed memorials urging that the New Mexico Congressional delegation “be requested to continue to support proposed federal legislation to expand and improve compensation under the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.”

With 20 “whereas” clauses, the memorials themselves recite the decades-long struggle to extend compensation to uranium workers and those who were downwind of the Trinity test site previously omitted from RECA when it was passed in 1990.

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Photo courtesy of Anna Hanson