Missouri senators fight for compensation for Missouri nuclear contamination victims

WASHINGTON — Yesterday U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) held a bipartisan rally at the U.S. Capitol with U.S. Senators Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), House lawmakers, and victims of nuclear contamination—from the St. Louis area, St. Charles area, and across America—to demand justice and compensation for those who have been harmed by the federal government’s decades of negligence.

“Dating all the way back to the Manhattan Project, the government used the city of St. Louis as a uranium-processing facility, as a major site, and then when that was over […] it allowed it to seep into the groundwater, it allowed it to get into Coldwater Creek, it allowed it get into the soil. Generations of Missourians—children—were poisoned because of the government’s negligence,” said Senator Hawley.

Senators Hawley and Luján secured funding for victims of nuclear contamination by getting an amendment passed in the Senate version of the FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) over the summer and, with the help of the victims urging Congress to act, are working with their colleagues to keep this amendment in the final package to be voted on later this year.

“If the government is going to expose its own citizens to radioactive material […] for decades,” Senator Hawley continued, “the government ought to pay the bills of the men and women who have gotten sick because of it. They ought to pay for the survivor benefits of those who have been lost.”