FLORISSANT, Mo. – The Army Corps of Engineers held a public meeting in Florissant to discuss nuclear waste cleanup Wednesday evening. Residents have expressed their concerns over the waste for years and feel the cleanup process has gone too slowly and lacks transparency.
Before the meeting was underway, affected residents gathered with politicians and other activists for a press conference outside. The group called for the Army Corps of Engineers to be more transparent and to spend more time listening to the concerns of the community.
Col. Andy Pannier, the Army Corps Commander for the St. Louis District, made a concession during Wednesday night’s meeting.
“First off, yes, we were wrong in some of the things we communicated, and I do apologize for that,” he said. “Let’s stand up if we did something wrong and say it, and move on.”
In the last 10 years, they’ve gone from $11 million to $40 million for the St. Louis cleanup, according to Pannier.
Cleanup of nuclear waste in the area comes with several limiting factors. Pannier said one of them is that all the contaminated material from across the area goes to one location near the St. Louis Airport before being shipped off on railcars.
There are currently 700 employees working on remediation across the St. Louis area at different sites and the cleanup is extremely technical work.
The other issue at play is the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA. Funding for St. Louisans affected by these toxic materials recently expired. Missouri U.S. Senator Josh Hawley passed a bill in the Senate to reinstate those funds, but it has not made it to the floor of the house for a vote. Hawley calls it “unacceptable.”
“They have got to get off their backside and do something. The senate now has twice passed my bill with huge bipartisan majorities,” Hawley said. “The house needs to pass it. That’s the long and the short of it. It’s not complicated.”
