West Lake Landfill

Missouri U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley brought EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to the St. Louis region on Monday to hear from residents and tour sites contaminated with Manhattan Project-era radioactive waste.

Dawn Chapman is frustrated that it’s taken decades for the agency to announce what community members — many of whom have died or suffered illness from the exposure — knew for years.

The landfill is a prioritized superfund site that is overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency. It contains radioactive waste left over from St. Louis’ role in the Manhattan project.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources asked that the EPA assume oversight of the Bridgeton Landfill, arguing it may contain nuclear waste like the adjacent West Lake Landfill.

Federal officials discovered the contamination was far more widespread than previously known, the EPA announced Friday.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley said concerns about cost killed earlier efforts to renew a program for people exposed to radioactive waste. Hawley hopes a new compromise with a lower mandatory spending price tag will finally break through.

Lawmakers formed a new committee to document the effects of radioactive waste in the St. Louis region and other Missouri sites and to search for policy solutions.

And how a federal agency with a history of “faulty research” became “a shield for polluters.”

The landfill contains thousands of tons of nuclear waste and byproducts from World War II-era atomic bomb development efforts.

An amendment to the annual defense spending bill fell along party lines in the House Rules Committee. The legislation would have added Missouri ZIP codes to the RECA program.