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U.S. Senate approves compensation for St. Louis nuclear waste exposures • Missouri Independent [1]
['Allison Kite', 'More From Author', '- March']
Date: 2024-03-07
The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted again in favor of legislation that would compensate those who developed cancer following exposure to World War II-era radioactive waste in St. Louis.
The legislation, sponsored by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, extends the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which is set to expire, and expands it to cover individuals who were exposed to the radioactive waste that remains scattered across the St. Louis region.
It would also expand coverage to those who were exposed to atomic bomb testing in the southwest.
“The United States Senate has the opportunity to do its part — its small part — to continue to make this nation what it could be, what we promised it will be, and to put right things that have been wrong,” Hawley said just before senators voted 69-30 in favor of his bill.
The legislation, which is backed by President Joe Biden, would represent a federal recognition of — and apology for — St. Louis’ decades-long struggle with radioactive waste.
The St. Louis area was instrumental to the Manhattan Project, the name given to the World War II-era effort to build the world’s first atomic bomb. Mallinckrodt Chemical Works refined uranium in downtown St. Louis during the war that was used in the first sustained nuclear chain reaction in Chicago, a key breakthrough in the bomb’s development.
After the war, radioactive waste from Mallinckrodt’s downtown facilities was trucked to St. Louis County — falling into the road along the way — and dumped at the airport. The material, which was left open to the elements, contaminated Coldwater Creek, which flows by the airport and through the county’s busy suburban neighborhoods.
The material was sold and moved to another site next to Coldwater Creek where it continued to pollute the water. Eventually, the material that couldn’t be further refined to extract valuable metals was illegally dumped at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, where it remains today.
“We have not done right by those good people,” Hawley said. “We have turned our back on them.”
Hawley added: “The government exposed them over a period of decades to nuclear radiation and waste, and in almost every case, did nothing about it — in many cases, lied to them about it.”
The Senate last summer voted 61-37 in favor of Hawley’s update to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. But the expansion was included as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act and stripped out by a conference committee of senators and representatives.
Hawley has criticized Senate Republican leaders, particularly Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, for allowing the expansion to be removed from the defense bill.
McConnell voted in favor of the bill senators passed Thursday, which was a standalone expansion of RECA. It still needs approval by the House of Representatives.
The White House announced its endorsement of the legislation Wednesday evening, saying in a statement that the administration looks forward to working with legislators to ensure funding for the program.
“The president believes we have a solemn obligation to address toxic exposure, especially among those who have been placed in harm’s way by the government’s actions,” the statement says.
Joining Hawley in sponsoring the legislation were Missouri’s junior Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican, and Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a New Mexico Democrat.
Luján urged senators to support the legislation, noting that when the Senate attempted to expand RECA last summer, the movie Oppenheimer — about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb” — was hitting theaters.
The movie, Luján said, left out the important stories of the families who lived near the site where the Manhattan Project tested atomic bombs and suffered cancers and other diseases.
“Generations of families wiped out by lung, stomach, prostate, thyroid, skin, breast and tongue cancer didn’t get the glossy Hollywood treatment, and the United States Congress has not made any significant progress in correcting these injustices since 2000,” Luján said.
He added: “Shame on us.”
Hawley said on a conference call Monday that the standalone RECA expansion bill was expected to cost only about one-third as much as the version senators approved last summer. The legislation still covers the same geographic areas, he said.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has not released an independent analysis of the new legislation. It estimated the previous version would have cost $147 billion.
The standalone RECA legislation would offer coverage for individuals who were exposed to radioactive waste in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska or Kentucky and were diagnosed with multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and cancer of the thyroid, breast, esophagus, stomach, pharynx, small intestine, pancreas, bile ducts, gallbladder, salivary gland, urinary bladder, brain, colon, ovary, bone, kidney or lung. It covers liver cancer as long as the patient doesn’t have cirrhosis or hepatitis B.
Surviving spouses and children could also seek compensation if the individual exposed to the radioactive waste has died.
The legislation senators considered last summer would have also covered diabetes, systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis or Hashimoto’s disease. Those conditions are not in the new version of the bill.
Under the bill, the fund for uranium workers and miners would be extended for six years. Last summer’s bill would have extended it by 19.
In urging his colleagues to vote for the bill, Hawley noted the federal government is now testing underneath homes in the St. Louis area to determine whether a subdivision built in the 1990s was constructed on top of radioactive contamination.
“Today we say enough,” Hawley said. “Today we turn the page. Today we begin something new.”
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[1] Url:
https://missouriindependent.com/2024/03/07/u-s-senate-approves-compensation-for-st-louis-nuclear-waste-exposures/
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