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March 21, 2024 |  By: Allison Kite - Missouri Independent

Compensation for St. Louis victims of radioactive waste left out of federal budget bill

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By Allison Kite - Missouri Independent

Legislation that would compensate victims of radioactive waste and U.S. nuclear bomb tests faces an uncertain future after it was left out of a federal appropriations bill Thursday, outraging members of Missouri’s Congressional delegation. 

But advocates for St. Louis-area residents exposed to World War II-era radioactive waste remain “extremely hopeful” as compensation remains closer than ever to passage.

“We feel like we’re going to get RECA, guys,” Dawn Chapman, co-founder of Just Moms STL, said in a live video on Facebook. “…I’m not going to just take it for granted and stop pushing. We’re going to push even harder. It’s just unfortunate how hard we have to fight and up to the bitter end.”

Members of Missouri’s Congressional delegation, however, were irate that the legislation won’t be considered as part of the budget process and demanded the House take action quickly.

“This is an insult to our communities who continue to be harmed by the radioactive waste dumped and left for decades by the federal government,” U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat representing St. Louis and north St. Louis County, said in a statement.

U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, a Republican representing St. Louis suburbs and parts of adjacent counties, said in a statement that she was “extremely disappointed” in House and Senate leaders for not including the legislation in the budget bill released Thursday. 

The legislation — an expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act — has twice passed the U.S. Senate but has yet to be taken up by the House of Representatives.

Expanding the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act would extend coverage to current and former Missouri residents who were exposed to radioactive waste left over from the Manhattan Project, the name given to the effort to develop the world’s first atomic bomb.

The St. Louis metro has struggled for decades with a radioactive waste problem. Material from uranium-refining efforts were trucked from downtown to surrounding counties after World War II where it polluted Coldwater Creek and a quarry and groundwater in Weldon Spring. Remaining waste was dumped at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, where it still remains.

Generations of St. Louis-area families lived in homes surrounded by radioactive waste without warning from the federal government. An investigation this summer by The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and the Associated Press found the government and companies that handled the waste knew of the dangerous contamination decades before they informed the public.

“The federal government wronged our communities — and they now have an obligation to make it right,” Bush said. 

RECA was first passed in the 1990s and covered some western states where residents — or “downwinders” — were exposed to radiation from atomic bomb tests during World War II. But several states, including New Mexico, where the first bombs were tested, were left out. The existing program is also set to expire this summer. 

Right now, downwinders are covered in parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona. The expansion would reauthorize the program in those areas and expand coverage to the rest of those states. It would offer coverage for the first time to downwinders in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Guam and individuals exposed to radioactive waste in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska and Kentucky.

Advocates for RECA’s expansion had hoped it would be included in budget legislation Congress must pass by Friday night to avoid a partial government shutdown. But the language wasn’t in the bill unveiled Thursday morning. 

Wagner in a speech on the House floor called on House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, to bring the bill up for a vote. 

“These innocent victims of the U.S. nuclear weapons program are relying on Congress for restitution,” Wagner said. “I am outraged.” 

In a statement released to St. Louis Public Radio, Johnson praised Wagner, calling her a “relentless fighter for over a decade on nuclear waste issues” and said he looked forward to working with her “as we chart a path together for the House to move forward with evaluating and acting on a reauthorization measure.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who has championed expanding RECA and twice guided it through the Senate, called that a “total failure” in a social media post.

“Politicians have talked like this for decades,” Hawley said of Johnson’s statement. “While doing nothing. The time to talk is over. The time to ACT is now.”