Pictured above: Dawn Chapman (Left) and Karen Nickel, co-founders of Just Moms STL.
By Don Corrigan
St. Louis residents have joined the rest of the nation in flocking to see the blockbuster, “Oppenheimer,” a movie about the making of the atomic bomb. Radioactive fallout from the new bomb descended over an area 250 miles by 200 miles in New Mexico.
The movie about the first atomic bomb brought renewed attention to Southwest U.S. residents downwind from the blast. Many are members of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, a group that feels they were poisoned by the explosion.
You don’t have to have seen the bright light, and felt the incredible rumble, however, to feel you have been affected by the bomb and the program for America’s nuclear arsenal. Just ask members of St. Louis County’s “Just Moms St. Louis.”
The Moms group has been fighting for the cleanup of radioactive waste in streams, creek beds, dumps and landfills near their homes. The huge amounts of waste are from the uranium processing that was necessary for making the bomb – and which was processed in St. Louis.
Instead of disposing of the waste in a responsible manner, chemical companies used careless contractors that dumped tons of radioactive waste throughout St. Louis County. Two radioactive dumping areas, which St. Louisans are familiar with from news coverage, are West Lake landfill and Coldwater Creek.
In the case of the radioactivity that contaminated New Mexico, Lily Adams, senior outreach coordinator for the Union of Concerned Scientists, has said it’s part of the untold story of the terrible price many Americans paid for the making of the bomb.
As the “Oppenheimer” movie opened in American cinemas recently, Adams told the Associated Press that the atomic bomb story needed a follow-up.
“The human cost of Oppenheimer’s Trinity Test, and all nuclear weapons activities, is a crucial part of the conversation around the U.S. nuclear legacy,” said Adams. “We have to reckon with this human cost to fully understand Oppenheimer’s legacy and the harm caused by nuclear weapons.
In processing uranium and developing nuclear weapons, Adams said the U.S government effectively “poisoned its own people, many of whom are still waiting for recognition and justice.”
Waiting For Justice
Dawn Chapman and Karen Nickel, who head “Just Moms St. Louis,” know in their bones that the Manhattan Project to make the bomb poisoned people in St. Louis. They are still waiting for appropriate recognition and justice after a decade of activism.
West Lake Landfill
Recent events make them feel they might actually be getting closer to justice – and a cleanup, with a mitigation of contaminants at West Lake and Coldwater Creek.
Chapman and Nickel feel hopeful, because:
First, newly-found federal documents show U.S. officials knew that dangerous material was being spread in the north St. Louis area. This information increases culpability and responsibility for mitigating the atomic mess.
Second, a development that makes “Just Moms St. Louis,” feel they are getting closer to justice is a vote in the U.S. Senate the last week of July. The U.S. Senate voted 61-37 in favor of expanding a federal radiation exposure survivor program to include eastern Missouri residents.
As many as 80,000 people in the St. Louis area have been sickened by exposure to radioactive materials from the atomic bomb program.
Chapman and Nickel founded “Just Moms St. Louis” in the spring of 2014 to educate citizens about toxic waste left in St. Louis from the Manhattan Project. Another mission of Moms is to find ways to cleanup the deadly material dating from World War II.
“Unfortunately, we have witnessed a pattern with this dangerous radioactive waste,” said Chapman. “Wherever it has been allowed to sit, people’s lives have literally been devastated. It has literally left a path of heartbreak, illness and destruction.
“It does not discriminate,” added Chapman. “It has proven deadly to whoever encounters it – not only for them, but for generation after generation of their families. It’s like some biblical curse – popping up in children, their grandchildren and great grandchildren.”
(Some information for this story adapted from previous EE stories by the author.)
Environmental Echo 