Missouri Senate advances KC weapons facility tax break without aid for nuclear waste victims

The National Nuclear Safety Administration plans to expand its Kansas City facility, which develops and manufactures the non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons. Missouri lawmakers are hoping to approve a sales tax exemption on construction materials for the private developer building the expansion (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent).

An effort to create a program for St. Louis-area residents affected by radioactive waste nearly derailed a Missouri Senate bill backed by the Kansas City delegation to help expand a facility manufacturing components of nuclear weapons. 

But after defeating the proposed amendment pertaining to St. Louis on Tuesday, senators approved the bill on a first-round vote Wednesday with only the Kansas City provisions. It still faces a final Senate vote before it moves to the Missouri House.

The bill offers a sales tax exemption on construction material to help finance an expansion of a National Nuclear Security Administration campus, operated by Honeywell International Inc., in south Kansas City. Workers there produce non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons.

State Sen. Nick Schroer — a Republican from the outer suburbs of St. Louis, where the federal government once had a uranium-processing facility — tried to add an amendment to create a tax credit for residents to have soil and water tested or remediated. 

But while the Honeywell bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Greg Razer, a Kansas City Democrat, said he believed St. Louis’ radioactive waste struggle needs to be addressed, he wanted to pass the bill as it was. 

“This is too important to my community,” Razer said. “I’d rather not have hiccups along the way, especially when I’m not here, hopefully, to shepherd it through the last few weeks.” 

Razer has been nominated by Gov. Mike Parson to the State Tax Commission and will leave the legislature if he’s confirmed by the Senate. He asked Schroer to let his Honeywell legislation go through and find another bill to amend and create the St. Louis tax credit.

Razer told a Missouri Senate committee earlier this year that the National Nuclear Security Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Energy, plans to add 2.5 million square feet of new facilities and hire thousands of new employees.

To expedite the expansion, the federal government plans to acquire the facilities from a private developer who can build them more quickly. If the federal government built the facilities itself, it would not pay sales tax, so supporters of the legislation argue exempting the private developer allows it to keep its costs on par with what the federal government’s would be.

According to a fiscal analysis on Razer’s bill, the National Nuclear Security Administration plans to spend more than $3 billion on Kansas City facilities. Razer’s bill would divert almost $61 million in state revenue over 10 years, which he said the construction job creation alone would offset. Jackson County, the city of Kansas City and the Kansas City Zoo would see a combined $81 million diverted from their budgets over 10 years.

Similar legislation has passed the Missouri House and awaits action in the Senate.

Schroer’s amendment, which had not been heard by any Senate committee, is the latest in a series of efforts by state and federal lawmakers and activists to bring some form of relief to St. Louis-area residents who have lived for decades in close proximity to radioactive waste.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and Reps. Cori Bush and Ann Wagner have been trying to pass legislation to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which provides payments to people who were exposed to nuclear weapons development and developed certain cancers. It has twice passed the U.S. Senate but has yet to be taken up by the House of Representatives. 

“People in my community, St. Louis County, St. Louis City who are still impacted by this — they want to see action, they want, they need something to be done,” Schroer said Wednesday. 

Schroer told his Senate colleagues  that “time is of the essence” to do something to help St. Louis residents harmed by radioactive waste, citing an investigation published last summer by The Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press documenting the area’s long history with the contamination.

“We have three weeks to address something — at least put a bandaid on it and encourage the federal government to get off their behinds and actually do the same thing of putting the people first,” Schroer said. 

Starting during World War II and for much of the Cold War, plants in St. Louis and its suburbs processed uranium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program. The waste created from those efforts was haphazardly trucked to storage sites where it sat unprotected and polluted Coldwater Creek, bringing generations of children into contact with radioactive waste when they played in the creek waters. 

A 2019 study found that residents who lived near Coldwater Creek or played in its waters faced an elevated risk of developing certain cancers.

Anecdotally, residents of the area have blamed a bevy of mysterious illnesses and autoimmune disorders on the waste. 

Coldwater Creek won’t be fully remediated until 2038. The Environmental Protection Agency is designing a cleanup efforts for the West Lake Landfill, where radioactive waste from the World War II-era refining efforts was dumped in the 1970s.

Schroer implored several Kansas City-area lawmakers to support the legislation, including Sens. Mike Cierpiot and Rick Brattin, both Republicans from the suburbs of Kansas City near the Honeywell site. 

Cierpiot said he respected the long Senate tradition of deferring to other senators on issues that solely impacted their communities, but he was uncomfortable with the fact that Schroer’s amendment hadn’t been vetted by a committee.

Brattin said he recognized that “life is so much more important than even potential jobs.”

“I’m behind you 100% of how we can fix your situation,” Brattin said, “but I appreciate you being willing to work with our situation as well.”

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