HAZELWOOD, Mo. — Wins beget victory laps, and U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley led one Tuesday to celebrate passage of legislation that could help St. Louis-area residents.

Hawley, a Republican, and a host of other elected officials, many of them Democrats, gathered at St. Cin Park in Hazelwood to mark the passage of a new Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA).

Hawley said it was a special day for those “who have been waiting for decades for the federal government to finally own up to what it had done.”

The RECA expansion bill was part of a sweeping tax and spending bill signed into law on July 4 by President Donald Trump.

Specifically, it grants eligibility to those who may have been affected by Mallinckrodt Chemical Works’ processing of uranium ore at its downtown St. Louis plant, which was contracted under the Manhattan Project to help develop the atomic bomb.

Some of Mallinckrodt’s waste was stored at sites near the airport in north St. Louis County, where it eventually contaminated areas along the Coldwater Creek watershed; some of that waste was later taken to and buried at West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton.

In Weldon Spring, some people who developed cancers blamed exposure to Mallinckrodt’s uranium processing there from 1957 to 1966.

While some states were eligible for RECA compensation under a past version of the law, others — most notably Missouri and New Mexico — had been excluded.

The new law includes those states, as well as sites in Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Kentucky, Nevada, Tennessee and Utah. It also offers compensation to workers in uranium mines and processing plants.

For more than two years, Hawley ran point in the Senate for legislation aimed at helping residents affected by contamination.

But after twice shepherding RECA amendments through the Senate, Hawley watched the bills die in the U.S. House.

Hawley said it was those setbacks that spurred him to include this successful RECA bill in the massive spending bill.

“I wanted to get RECA put on any (bill) that was moving,” Hawley said.

Hawley also took time to recognize, and embrace, former U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, D-St. Louis, who attended the event but did not speak.

He said it was Bush’s rallying of Democrats in the U.S. House two years ago that kept the RECA bill from getting erased completely by political maneuvering from opponents of the bill.

“She got Democrats to oppose it, I called some Republicans in the House and we stopped it,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Wesley Bell, D-St. Louis, also joined Tuesday’s crowd and called the expansion of RECA “a defining moment” — even though he opposed the overall spending bill that included RECA.

“We’re all grownups here. You’re not always going to get everything you want,” Bell said. “But on the things we agree on, we’re going to work together.”

Bell said he wants to make sure that other areas of St. Louis, such as the old Pruitt-Igoe housing complex site, eventually get included in the bill.

Ben Phillips of St. Louis attended the event on behalf of a group of former Pruitt-Igoe residents pushing for inclusion.

The group argues they should be eligible for compensation because the complex was sprayed with a substance produced by Mallinckrodt but not as part of the Manhattan Project.

Government records show the Army sprayed zinc cadmium sulfide at Pruitt-Igoe, a compound the Army still maintains is nontoxic.

Hawley said that because the new RECA bill is now law, it can be expanded. He said he hopes in the near future that “other communities and other regions” get included in RECA to qualify for compensation.

As for applying for compensation, Hawley said the program will be administered by the U.S. Department of Justice, which is in the process of creating new applications and will soon have them available through its website.

Hawley said his office also will set up a hotline and web page to help constituents navigate the application process.

St. Louis County Executive Sam Page, who was at Tuesday’s event and called RECA expansion “an important milestone,” said the county would work to make access to property and residency records easier for those applying for aid.

The most emotional moments of Tuesday’s event were short speeches from those affected by radiation exposure.

Sen. Hawley celebrates expansion of Radiation Exposure Compensation Act

One special guest was Buu Nygren of Arizona, president of the Navajo Nation. He said the RECA passage could help the approximately 4,000 mine workers who worked in the 1,000 or so mines on Navajo land.

“And more than 500 of them still need to be cleaned up,” he added.

After thanking local officials for their help in passing the new RECA, Hawley saved his strongest praise for two founding members of Just Moms STL — Dawn Chapman and Karen Nichols.

Calling them “tireless advocates” for more than 13 years, Hawley said their key to success was basic: “What they did, above all, was they told the truth.”

Noting that she grew up playing in park where the press conference was being held, which is near Coldwater Creek, Nichols called the day “bittersweet.”

She said her deepest hope is that passage of the new RECA means “that no other community has to wait this long to be heard.”

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