Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) Wednesday urged President Joe Biden to declare a federal emergency after the Hazelwood, Mo., school board voted to stop using a local elementary school near which radioactive contamination has been found from a Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program cleanup site.
The Hazelwood Board of Education acted Tuesday night to close Jana Elementary School and have its students switch to virtual learning, Hawley said in a Wednesday press release. The board is temporarily moving most Jana pupils online for the rest of the semester, although two pre-kindergarten classes will move to another school starting next week.
Hawley asked Biden to approve immediate federal relief for all families affected by closure of the school building in the vicinity of the Coldwater Creek Superfund site near the St. Louis airport.
The senator also sent a letter to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lieutenant General Scott Spellmon seeking a detailed investigation. “I urge you and your team to review the results of the recent private testing immediately, and also immediately to conduct further appropriate testing of the Jana Elementary area— and make the results public,” Hawley wrote.
The Corps oversees the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP). Jana Elementary School property has FUSRAP contamination near the bank of Coldwater Creek, a Corps official told Exchange Monitor by email this week but added that contamination is concentrated below ground in a wooded area.
“The Boston Chemical Data Corp. report is not consistent with our accepted evaluation techniques and must be thoroughly vetted to ensure accuracy,” said Phil Moser, program manager for the Army Corps St. Louis District’s FUSRAP work. In an emailed statement to Exchange Monitor, Moser said the Corps remains committed to cleaning up the sites around North St. Louis.
In the letter to Spellmon, Hawley said the Corps must make the grade school situation a priority.
Boston Chemical Data found radioactive contamination above Environmental Protection Agency cleanup standards, according to the report posted on the Missouri Coalition for the Environment website. The Boston Chemical Data work was led by civil engineer Marco Kaltofen, PhD, and geologist Brian Moore of Carriage House Consulting.
The Associated Press reported Wednesday the study was funded by law firms seeking to bring a class action suit over the contamination.
“The federal government bears ultimate responsibility for this situation, and it is your administration’s obligation to remedy it,” Hawley said in the letter to Biden. “The contamination at the school likely stems from federal activity in decades past.”
The Atomic Energy Commission and the Manhattan Engineer District bought a 22-acre site nearby that was used in the 1940s and 1950s to hold scrap and residues from uranium processing at the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in downtown St. Louis, according to an Army Corps fact sheet.
Local residents have been concerned about Coldwater Creek area contamination for years. “The Army Corps first detected radioactive thorium near the school in 2018,” and that finding was backed up by subsequent tests in 2019-2021, according to the report.
The Jana Elementary School situation bears some resemblance to the public disclosure of radioactive contamination found at a middle school bordering the Department of Energy’s Piketon Site in Ohio in May 2019.
Zahn’s Corner Middle School remains closed, there has been litigation filed by local residents and Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), now a candidate for U.S. Senate, has pressed DOE for more funding around Piketon, Ohio. The Zahn’s school closure is different in that it came before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made online schooling more common.
