Missouri environmental regulators warned the federal government in 2021 that radioactive contamination of groundwater from a uranium processing site near St. Louis wasn’t improving despite cleanup efforts, according to documents reviewed by The Independent and MuckRock.
Officials with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Energy in May 2021, responding to the agency’s five-year review of its cleanup efforts at a Weldon Spring site where uranium was refined during the Cold War.
While the radioactive waste and contaminated debris from the processing site have been contained, Missouri regulators noted that contamination to the surrounding groundwater wasn’t getting better.
“The (state) disagrees that the remedy is functioning as intended,” wrote Taylor Grabner, who at the time was serving in the federal facilities section of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.
The letter, which has not been reported publicly, is the latest example of Missouri officials pushing the federal government to do more to protect the health of St. Louis-area residents near the litany of World War II and Cold War-era nuclear sites in the region.
A six-month investigation by The Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press found that federal agencies and private companies, for decades, downplayed concerns about radiological contamination or failed to investigate it fully at sites in St. Louis and St. Charles counties.
The state’s dour opinion of the federal cleanup in Weldon Spring was revealed in a document obtained by state Rep. Tricia Byrnes through Missouri’s Sunshine Law and provided to the newsrooms. Byrnes plans to hold a town hall meeting next month so the community can learn about cleanup efforts.
St. Louis and surrounding areas played a key role in the development of the first atomic bomb during World War II. Uranium processed in downtown St. Louis was used in the first sustained nuclear reaction in Chicago. After the war, Mallinckrodt, which operated the downtown plant, started similar operations at a new facility on Missouri Highway 94 just north of the Missouri River.
Source: missouriindependent.com
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Categories: Missouri, General, Government & Policy