HAZELWOOD, Mo.—After years of holding press conferences at St. Cin Park in Hazelwood to raise awareness about the need to expand and extend the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include parts of the St. Louis region impacted by Manhattan Project-era nuclear waste, advocates returned there Tuesday one more time to celebrate the fact that the legislation is now law.
The measure was included in the reconciliation bill which passed Congress last week and signed by President Donald Trump Friday.
The measure means people who can prove they or an authorized representative were present in one of 21 St. Louis area ZIP codes for two years and suffered qualifying illnesses including more than 15 types of cancer after Jan. 1 1949, will be eligible to apply for compensation through a trust fund managed by the Justice Department. Qualified recipients will be able to choose between a $50,000 lump sum or reimbursement of medical expenses.
“It wasn’t just the people of Missouri who had waited for 70 years to have justice done. It was the people of The Navajo Nation, it was the people of Utah, it was the people of New Mexico, it was the people of Idaho, it was the uranium miners and atomic veterans from all over the country who had been waiting for decades for the federal government to finally own up to what it had done,” said U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., the Republican who took up the cause as a legislative priority two years ago, working with New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat as co-sponsor
The new law also makes victims eligible in parts of Tennessee, Kentucky, Utah, New Mexico and Alaska and in the case of uranium miners, allows victims or their survivors to petition for inclusion without the need for additional legislation.
Tuesday’s event drew impacted people from across the country to the St. Louis region, which has had a complicated relationship with its legacy as a uranium processing area dating back to the post-World War II era. It’s impacted neighborhoods stretching from the city of St. Louis to Weldon Spring in St. Charles County.
In a picnic area feet away from the Coldwater Creek that is still contaminated and not scheduled to be fully remediated until nearly 2040, advocates described “victory wrapped in grief.”
“We are here in the very park that made me sick,” said Karen Nickel, who grew up near the park and started advocating for victims as she herself fought autoimmune disorders that are not covered by the legislation. “This land holds memories of my childhood but it also was the start of a long painful journey of illnesses and loss, not just mine but my family, neighbors friends and so many others.”
Nickel said the legislation will also mean access to health screenings that will lead to earlier detection of illnesses.
Advocates say it will likely be months until the Justice Department has set up applications for the the expanded law.
That hasn’t stopped third parties from contacting potential claimants. Hawley warned that people looking to scam recipients out of their benefits should expect to face prosecution. He and Rep. Wesley Bell said their offices would help applicants once the process is ready.
The other next steps include working to pass new legislation that would expand coverage locally. Two ZIP codes in north St. Louis covering neighborhoods including Old North St. Louis, Carr Square, Jeff Vander Lou and Fairground neighborhoods were not part of the legislation.
