House passes bill expanding payments for Cold War radiation exposure

WASHINGTON - The House voted Tuesday to expand a federal program that pays up to $100,000 to Westerners sickened by Cold War uranium mining and nuclear weapons tests.

The bill adds to the list of cancers and other diseases that make former miners or nuclear test ''downwinders'' eligible for payments under the 1990 law. The measure also expands the sites where miners and downwinders can seek compensation and adds open pit uranium miners and those who transported or milled uranium.

The expansion will provide compensation to about 9,600 people ''who lost their health and in many cases their lives working for this country's nuclear defense program,'' said Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah.

''We as a nation owe these people,'' Cannon said before the House approved the bill on a voice vote.

The measure now goes to the White House for President Clinton's signature. The Senate approved it in December.

Some former miners have said the latest bill does not go far enough because it does not increase the compensation amount, cover miners who worked after 1971 or include all illnesses miners say radiation caused.

The law was meant to help Westerners who became ill because of their involvement in Cold War nuclear weapons production. Much of the uranium used in nuclear weapons was mined in the Four Corners area of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, and above-ground nuclear tests were detonated in New Mexico and Nevada.

The congressional sponsors of the 1990 law sought the changes, saying the original law was too narrow and too many people with legitimate claims are being denied. As of March 1, the Justice Department had paid 3,302 claims worth $244 million and denied another 3,500 claims.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the proposed changes would cost about $750 million during the next five years.

Among other things, the bill would extend eligibility to uranium workers from South Dakota, North Dakota, Idaho, Oregon and Texas. The current law covers Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Washington state.

Other specific changes in the bill:

- Authorize spending up to $20 million a year on community health centers and state health departments for screening those with possible claims.

- Add leukemia and cancers of the lung, thyroid, brain, kidney, esophagus and stomach to the list of cancers that make miners eligible for compensation. Kidney disease and two lung ailments also would be added to the list.

For downwinders - people who lived in areas of Nevada, Utah and Arizona most affected by nuclear fallout from tests - the added cancers include leukemia and those of the brain, bladder, colon, ovaries and salivary glands.

- Eliminate provisions that give less money to downwinders or miners who smoked.

- Cut the amount of time an eligible miner had to work in uranium mines from an average of just under 20 years to less than four years.

- Require the Justice Department to take American Indian law and custom into account when processing applications. Navajo officials have complained that widows of dead miners have been denied compensation because they were married in traditional Indian ceremonies and do not have marriage certificates.