Ready for justice: Idaho downwinders applaud request for oversight hearings

By Blair Koch
Times-News correspondent

TWIN FALLS - Between 1951 and 1962, Idaho and surrounding states were targeted by the federal government to receive radioactive fallout from nuclear test explosions conducted at the Nevada Test Site.

Decades later, people who were exposed to the fallout - called downwinders - are paying the consequences. ~snip~

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), passed in 1990, allows victims in 21 counties in southern Utah, eastern Nevada and northern Arizona who suffer from any of 19 different cancers to receive up to $75,000.

But Idaho's downwinders are optimistic they too will receive compensation from the government. Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson and Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, have requested an oversight hearing on RECA and its July 2000 amendments, with the possibility of expanding legislation to cover individuals exposed to radioactive fallout who are not currently covered. ~snip~

http://www.magicvalley.com/articles/2007/06/10/news/local_state/113966.txt

Why didn't Idaho-an and Utah-an Congressional members do this some time ago?

Time for the RW to pay off someone other-than/in-addition-to their Evangelicals? - their anti-government base perchance?

purely on Democratic support or whether there are some Republicans, at least not opposing it, if not actually helping it, because they can no longer take political survival for granted. I'm sure not all of those Downwinders are Democrats; why were Republican Downwinders ignored for decades and now their issue is suddenly important enough to allow investigations?

Here is a backgrounder on some of the politics, however:

http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A154919

soon. Afterall she's 75 and according to the laws of life expectancy, she's about out of time.

One would not wish to see her die of old age before getting something.