ST. LOUIS—With less than a month left before a program that pays radiation victims connected to the U.S. nuclear weapons program goes dark, advocates from St. Louis are back in Washington D.C. again trying to pressure House leaders to put a bill extending and expanding the program up for a vote.
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act would make impacted residents in more than 20 St. Louis area ZIP codes eligible for payments through a federal trust fund that has been in place since the early 1990s.
The bill, authored by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., has already passed the Senate. Efforts to get it added to other legislation that would get a House vote, including the National Defense Authorization Act, foreign military aid bills, and more recently the F.A.A. reauthorization, have failed despite bipartisan support from unlikely allies, including U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo, U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo. and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Az.
On Wednesday, advocates from around the country were back at the Capitol and were scheduled to meet with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-NY, but have so far been unable to secure a meeting with House Speaker Mike Johnson. A Johnson spokesperson said Wednesday afternoon that his staff would meet with advocates Thursday.
A prayer vigil Wednesday night in Washington brought advocates from different parts of the country together to share stories of loved ones.
"All these different communities are tied together with a common bond of suffering and that common bond of suffering across all of these communities from the mining to the invention to the testing to the first explosion to the ongoing testing that common bond, that common bond of suffering is what brings us together today and it is with both sadness of heart but also fullness of possibility," said Rep.Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M.
Nuclear contamination issues have plagued the St. Louis region since the 1940s, impacting the city of St. Louis, North St. Louis County and St. Charles County, where uranium for nuclear weapons was processed, stored or dumped in several areas.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that work to remediate the Coldwater Creek watershed in North St. Louis County will last until the late 2030s.
The existing trust fund has made payments to 40,000 victims, primarily in the western U.S. since the program began in 1990. Another bill that has yet to pass the Senate or make it to the House would simply extend the current program. In an interview Wednesday, Hawley called that bill, sponsored by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, "dead".
The Hawley legislation, with an estimated price tag of $50 billion, would add claimants in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Guam and New Mexico among others.
Other advocates, including State Rep. Tricia Byrnes, R-Wentzville, plan to head to the U.S. Capitol next week.