Oversight Democrats, GAO call for improved outreach in radioactive waste cleanup

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report Tuesday called for improved Army Corps of Engineers remediation in areas contaminated by radioactive waste.

The Corps reported more than $2.5 billion in environmental liabilities for nuclear waste in the last fiscal year. Nineteen sites have been deemed contaminated under the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program, which manages cleanup of areas contaminated by the Manhattan Project and similar early U.S. atomic energy activities. Of these sites, the GAO report found eight are located near disadvantaged communities.

The report further found that six of those eight sites were located in majority-minority areas, including two in the St. Louis area. St. Louis was the site of uranium refinement for the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, including waste produced by Mallinckrodt Chemical Works that was dumped into Coldwater Creek. 

Since fiscal 2016, the GAO estimates that the program’s liability costs have grown more than 60 percent, with half the increase due to unreliable estimates of how contaminated individual sites are, as well as physical and legal access barriers.

The GAO recommends the Corps address these issues by improving communication with affected communities — and in particular to expand outreach beyond property owners. 

In a statement following the report, House Oversight and Accountability Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) called the findings “not a surprise to the residents of St. Louis who have been asking for help for decades.”

“These findings must immediately catalyze remediation efforts to cleanup and decontaminate these neighborhoods in underserved communities—and incorporate the voices of those living on the frontline of this nuclear contamination,” he added.

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), whose district includes the two St. Louis sites identified in the report, said that she would “continue to fight to hold the relevant agencies accountable and won’t stop until this waste is cleaned up for good and individuals harmed by it are rightfully compensated.”  

Bush, along with then-Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), initially requested the GAO review in 2021.

A separate effort is underway in Congress to make residents of both St. Louis and New Mexico, the site of the 1945 Trinity test of the atomic bomb, eligible for compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. A bipartisan amendment sponsored by Sens. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) cleared the Senate earlier this year with a filibuster-proof majority of 61 votes.