Rural groups are suing the state, saying meatpacking sludge spread on farmland as free fertilizer contains PFAS (USGAO/Wikipedia).

Industrial sludge often offered to Missouri farms as free fertilizer contains “forever chemicals,” several groups threatening to sue the state allege.

Two advocacy groups along with a mid-Missouri farmer notified several sludge providers and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources of their intent to sue in a letter dated Wednesday, saying the waste presents “an imminent and substantial endangerment to the environment and public health.” 

Rural neighbors have reached out to lawyers and state lawmakers in recent months, looking to halt the use of industrial sludge as fertilizer, saying its stench is unbearable and it puts waterways at risk of contamination. 

“It smells like guts and sh*t,” said Donald Craig, a Randolph County farmer, “and it’s just disgusting. It’s horrid.” 

Now, Craig and two rural advocacy groups argue application of the sludge, which typically includes animal residuals from meatpacking, violates the environmental laws because of the PFAS. He said that’s what worries him — the PFAS seeping into the soil and groundwater.

“That’s where we get our water from,” he said, “and I just know it’s not a good thing for our environment.” 

Craig’s fellow plaintiffs are Stop Land Use Damaging Our Ground and Environment — or S.L.U.D.G.E. — and Citizens of Randolph County Against Pollution, known as C.R.A.P.

They say the sludge contains polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS — also known as forever chemicals — which are a class of synthetic substances that don’t break down easily and, as a result, linger in the environment. 

The chemicals — used for years in nonstick cookware, cleaning products, waterproof fabrics and firefighting foams, among other applications — can increase the risk of cancer, increased cholesterol and immune system damage.

According to the notice of intent to sue, two companies that apply industrial sludge — Arkansas-based Denali Water Solutions and Maryland-based Synagro — have both admitted there may be PFAS in the sludge they provide. 

The notice cites minutes from a McDonald County Commission meeting in July 2022 when a Denali representative said their sludge may include PFAS.

“However, from the same testimony, it appears Denali has not been testing the industrial wastes it is disposing of through land application,” the notice says. 

Denali declined to comment.

Synagro, in a report posted to its website in August, called itself a “passive receiver” of PFAS when it collects waste. In the same report, it says it’s partnering with a company to test its PFAS-destroying technology and expanding service offerings to remove PFAS and other contaminants. 

Synagro did not immediately return a request for comment.

The notice of intent to sue also takes the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to task for proposed regulations that will require sludge companies to test their material for PFAS. If the chemicals are found, the report says, the companies will be allowed to apply the material but must test the soil twice a year. Soil concentrations, it says, must not exceed federal standards.

“DNR has knowingly allowed,” the notice says, “and will apparently continue to allow the foregoing companies to land-apply industrial wastes containing PFAS in Missouri.”

DNR said it does not comment on pending litigation.

The notice of intent to sue requests that the state prohibit land application of industrial waste and that the companies stop spreading the sludge. If they do not comply by Dec. 12, attorneys for S.L.U.D.G.E., C.R.A.P. and Craig say they will seek a court order.

The Rush Island Energy Center on the Mississippi River will close following a federal court ruling (photo courtesy of Ameren Missouri).

One of Ameren Missouri’s largest coal plants will shut down Tuesday after more than 13 years of litigation over its failure to comply with federal clean air regulations. 

The St. Louis-based electric utility will retire the Rush Island Energy Center, a two-unit 1,178-megawatt coal plant on the banks of the Mississippi River in Jefferson County, which operated for years in violation of the Clean Air Act. 

Ameren, which serves 1.2 million customers in Missouri, announced in 2021 it would retire the plant 15 years early rather than install pollution controls ordered by a federal court.

Once the plant shuts down, the company will start disconnecting the plant from power, move equipment out to Ameren’s other coal plants and ready it for demolition, said Tim Lafser, Ameren’s vice president of power operations and engineering.

“We’re guessing three to six months of activity there before we would be to the point where we could turn it over to a demolition contractor to knock the plant down,” Lafser said.

But knocking down Rush Island doesn’t mark the end of the litigation over its clean air violations. Ameren is still negotiating with federal prosecutors and environmental advocates over how to make up for more than a decade of illegal sulfur dioxide pollution. 

Gretchen Waddell Barwick, director of the Missouri chapter of the environmental nonprofit Sierra Club, said simply retiring Rush Island doesn’t resolve the injustices suffered by communities downwind of the coal plant.

“I don’t think that justice has been served here,” Waddell Barwick said, “but I am pleased for the people in the community that will see their suffering (lessen).” 

Lafser declined to comment on the litigation, saying it would be inappropriate to comment on an ongoing case. 

Rush Island, built in the mid-1970s, narrowly avoided a 1977 update to the Clean Air Act requiring pollution controls at newly-constructed coal plants. Older plants were grandfathered into the rule unless they made upgrades beyond routine maintenance.

Ameren updated Rush Island’s two units in 2007 and 2010 but didn’t install pollution controls, violating the 1977 Clean Air Act update and sparking a lawsuit by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

In 2019, U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of MIssouri Rodney Sippel ordered Ameren to obtain a permit, install scrubbers and lower its sulfur dioxide emissions. Sippel also ordered Ameren to install scrubbers to temporarily lower sulfur dioxide emissions at its larger Labadie Energy Center in Franklin County to make up for the excess emissions at Rush Island.

The 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in 2021 upheld Sippel’s order requiring Ameren to install scrubbers, but struck down the requirement at Labadie.

Later in 2021, Ameren announced it would retire Rush Island. It argued the retirement should mark the resolution of the lawsuit. But Sippel ordered Ameren and prosecutors to negotiate potential mitigation measures to make up for the sulfur dioxide emissions, which he said “harm public health and the environment, contribute to premature deaths, asthma attacks, acid rain and other adverse effects in downwind communities, including the St. Louis Metropolitan Area.”

Sippel’s order, issued in June, said over the 14 years since Rush Island’s second unit was updated without scrubbers installed, it has released 275,000 tons of sulfur dioxide. Ameren argues the figure is closer to 256,000 tons. 

According to Sippel’s order, Ameren has repeatedly resisted further mitigation beyond retiring Rush Island. It argued there was “no equitable remedy” to the unpermitted pollution and that retiring Rush Island mitigates the harm from its emissions.

“Ameren’s position that an equitable remedy is not available for its unlawful pollution has already been rejected three times,” Sippel wrote. “And, over the course of several hearings, I have informed Ameren that its retirement of Rush Island does not mitigate the massive pollution it released into the atmosphere.”

Correction: This story has been updated to accurately reflect the date of the closure. 

U.S. Senator Josh Hawley speaks to reporters after joining challenger Lucas Kunce in the middle of the floor of the governor's ham breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia on Aug. 15 (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley’s failure as a legislator is most glaringly obvious in the demise of a bill providing coverage to Missourians exposed to radiation from nuclear weapons development, former U.S Sen. Jack Danforth said Thursday.

Danforth gave his grade on Hawley’s legislative career during a Thursday tour of the state with Joplin businessman Jared Young, who created a new political party for his bid for the seat Danforth held from 1977 to 1994. Young is trying to draw disaffected Republicans, independents and moderate Democrats to his banner of the Better Party.

Danforth is a Republican who was once considered Hawley’s political mentor, having encouraged him to run for the Senate after less than a year as Missouri’s attorney general.

He later denounced Hawley for his role in objecting to the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, saying he regretted his support of Hawley and that he understands “what Dr. Frankenstein must have felt.” 

On Thursday, Danforth said Hawley’s political style as an antagonistic, camera-seeking populist is the reason the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act renewal bill failed to get to a vote before Congress recessed for the election.

That cost not only Missourians but residents of New Mexico and every other state already covered by the law, Danforth said. Advocates from Missouri and New Mexico, along with other areas where federal weapons work contaminated the land, worked for more than a year to expand the program as it neared a renewal vote.

“He became so obnoxious in his public attacks of the Republican Speaker of the House, the Republican Leader of the Senate, the Republican congressperson from that district, he came away with nothing and ended up killing the whole bill for the rest of the country,” Danforth said.

The law expired Sept. 30. Originally passed in 1990, while Danforth was in office, it provided one-time cash payments to uranium miners who worked in 11 states between 1947 and 1971 and people in parts of Nevada, Arizona and Utah exposed to fallout from nuclear bomb tests.

To obtain compensation, claimants must prove a diagnosis of particular cancers or other illnesses.

The exposure of Missourians to radioactive waste came from uranium processing in St. Louis for the World War II Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb. 

While the presence of radioactive contamination in suburban St. Louis was known for years, an investigation by The Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press revealed in 2023 that the federal government and companies handling the waste were aware of the threat to the public long before informing residents.

Two weeks after The Independent published its findings, the U.S. Senate approved an amendment from Hawley renewing the law and adding Missouri and New Mexico to the list of states where residents are eligible for compensation due to bomb waste and exposure.

The Missouri House established a new committee Thursday that will study the impact of nuclear weapons programs in the state. Its job is to hold hearings and report on any state legislation needed to assist victims.

Dawn Chapman, co-founder of Just Moms STL, which has advocated for expanding the law known as RECA, defended Hawley’s work and called Danforth’s comments “petty.”

“What I’d like is for people like Jack Danforth to shut up so that they don’t create another barrier that I have to jump over,” Chapman said.

Chapman said Hawley brought the coalition trying to expand RECA closer than it has gotten before and comments like Danforth’s undermine advocates pushing for the program’s expansion.

As the Congressional session closed in late September, Chapman was in Washington lobbying for the bill and appeared at a news conference with Hawley. At that time, she blamed House Speaker Mike Johnson for refusing to allow a vote on the bill.

She said Johnson was the “only reason these people are suffering right now in this room.”  

Chapman also questioned why Danforth didn’t expand the program to Missouri while in office or lend a hand to advocates since then.

“You’re making poisoned people work twice as hard, Mr. Danforth,” Chapman said, “because you want to take a cheap swing at somebody and play Monday morning quarterback without lifting a finger in the decade-plus I’ve been doing this.”

The Hawley campaign blamed Danforth for not obtaining relief for Missourians when he was a senator.

“Jack Danforth betrayed hardworking Missourians who were poisoned by nuclear radiation when he left them out of the original RECA law,” said Abigail Jackson, spokesperson for Hawley’s campaign. “Josh worked across the aisle to pass his RECA expansion twice in the Senate with huge bipartisan support. Josh’s proposal is currently being negotiated with House leaders. And Missouri hasn’t forgotten how Danforth failed.” 

Danforth said Hawley’s political persona isn’t likely to help get any legislation passed.

“Politics now in the U.S. Senate is largely performative,” Danforth said. “It’s not serious. Hawley is not a serious legislator. He goes to committee hearings and belittles and badgers witnesses. That gets him on the air, and then he gets on Fox News, but he does not legislate.”

People may disagree with Hawley on other matters, Chapman said, but “he’s right” on the RECA bill.

“We have a right to be emotional that our kids are sick,” she said. “And I expect my Senator and electeds to echo that emotion and passion.”

This article has been updated to clarify comments from Dawn Chapman.

A photo taken in 1960 of deteriorating steel drums containing radioactive residues near Coldwater Creek, by the Mallinckrodt-St. Louis Sites Task Force Working Group (State Historical Society of Missouri, Kay Drey Mallinckrodt Collection, 1943-2006).

Missouri lawmakers will convene a special committee to study the consequences of nuclear weapons production in the St. Louis area and recommend legislation for next year, House Speaker Dean Plocher announced Thursday. 

In a press release, Plocher said the Special Interim Committee on the Impact of U.S. Nuclear Weapon Programs on Missouri will allow “policymakers, health professionals, environmental experts and affected community members to document their concerns and develop legislative solutions.”

“Missouri has long felt the effects of nuclear weapons production, and it’s our responsibility to address the consequences head-on,” said Plocher, who represents part of St. Louis County.

The St. Louis area has struggled with the ramifications of nuclear weapons production since the development of the first atomic bomb. Workers refined uranium in downtown St. Louis as part of the Manhattan Project, which was used in the first successful nuclear chain reaction, which took place in Chicago.

But after the end of World War II, the waste from the bomb development was allowed to spread and pollute sites in St. Louis and St. Charles counties. 

Immediately after the war, the waste was transported haphazardly — with waste falling off trucks — to St. Louis County and dumped at the airport. Deteriorating barrels of radioactive waste polluted the site and leaked into Coldwater Creek. 

Heaps of radioactive material and debris were also dumped in a quarry in Weldon Spring, adjacent to the Missouri River. 

The waste was then taken to a nearby site — also along Coldwater Creek — where it remained exposed to the elements and continued to pollute the creek. It was sold so another company could extract precious metals from the waste, and the remaining radioactive material was dumped in the West Lake Landfill where it remains today.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing the cleanup of Coldwater Creek, which is expected to last until 2038. The Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing the development of a plan to remediate the West Lake Landfill.

In the meantime, generations of St. Louis-area residents have been exposed to radioactivity from Coldwater Creek and the quarry where state Rep. Tricia Byrnes has said she would sneak in and swim as a teen. 

Byrnes will chair the interim committee. In the release, she said the committee will listen to “survivors, production workers and remediation workers to understand the real-world impact on their health and financial stability.” 

“We must take a comprehensive approach to address the lasting impact of nuclear weapons production in Missouri,” Byrnes said. “The health and well-being of our residents and the environment are at stake.”

The first meeting of the committee will take place Oct. 15 at from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Spencer Creek Library in St. Peters. 

Rep. Mark Matthiesen, a Republican from O’Fallon, will serve as vice chair of the committee, and Rep. Raychel Proudie, a Ferguson Democrat, will be ranking member.

The remaining members are Republican Reps. Don Mayhew, Renee Reuter and Richard West and Democratic Reps. Aaron Crossley and Ian Mackey.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks at a press conference in the Missouri House Lounge, flanked by House Speaker Dean Plocher, left, and state Rep. Justin Sparks (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

The Missouri Supreme Court declined to force an investigation into donations to Attorney General Andrew Bailey connected to a witness in a case his office was handling.

In a filing Tuesday evening, the judges denied a request from Lucas Cierpiot — son of state Sen. Mike Cierpiot — to require the disciplinary arm of the court to investigate donations from Micheal Ketchmark and his law firm to a political action committee supporting Bailey. 

Ketchmark, a prominent attorney and large political donor, was called as a witness in a disability discrimination case filed by Lucas Cierpiot’s brother, Patrick, against the Missouri Department of Economic Development. Bailey’s office was defending the state.

After Ketchmark’s law firm donated to the pro-Bailey Liberty and Justice PAC, Lucas Cierpiot filed a complaint with the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel, accusing Bailey of using his position as attorney general for personal political gain.

“No attorney can ever collect money from a case witness,” Cierpiot’s filing says. “The fact that there is not a rule spelling this out in-letter is due to the fact that it is so obvious.”

GOP legislator’s son asks Supreme Court to order inquiry into donations to Missouri AG

Cierpiot’s complaint was dismissed in March. He asked for further review, but it was dismissed again in May. He then sought an order from the state Supreme Court to force an investigation.

In an email, Bailey’s spokeswoman, Madeline Sieren, said the court “rightfully denied the frivolous petition” and that Bailey had not violated the rules of professional conduct for attorneys.

Cierpiot said in a text message that he was “very disappointed” by the court’s decision. 

“Missouri really is the ‘Show Me State,’ Cierpiot said. “Isn’t it? ‘Show Me’ just how unethical the Missouri courts can be.”

Cierpiot’s was one of several accusations of unethical behavior by Bailey, who took office last year after being appointed by Gov. Mike Parson. Bailey is now running for a full term. 

This summer, he narrowly avoided being questioned under oath about his contact with a defendant in his own case against Jackson County. One of Bailey’s deputies lost his license because of the meetings, according to a filing from the county’s attorneys.

Last year, Bailey withdrew from defending the Missouri State Highway Patrol in a lawsuit filed by Warrenton Oil and Torch Electronics regarding video game machines that offer cash prizes. The attorney general’s office bowed out of the case following donations from PACs connected to the companies’ lobbyist. The patrol investigated the machines, believing that they were illegal means of gambling. 

Bailey was also the focus of a formal complaint about the behavior of his office after he falsely blamed the Hazelwood School District’s diversity, equity and inclusion program for the off-campus assault of a student.

Patrick Cierpiot named Ketchmark as a witness in the underlying lawsuit in May 2022, saying he had urged a Parson staffer not to fire Cierpiot, who was recovering from a bicycle wreck and struggling to keep up with his workload.

The following January, Ketchmark donated $2,825, the maximum that an individual can give, to Bailey’s campaign. Bailey received a combined $16,950 from individuals with the last name Ketchmark or employed by the law firm Ketchmark & McCreight P.C. by the end of the month.

Later in the spring of 2023, Ketchmark’s firm donated $125,000 to the pro-Bailey Liberty and Justice PAC. The firm then gave an in-kind donation of $9,216.53.

In August 2023, Bailey’s office withdrew from defending the Department of Economic Development and allowed the agency to hire a private law firm to handle the case. At the time, Sieren told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the office was looking to outside firms to handle “complex litigation.” She said Bailey didn’t have a conflict of interest in the case.

In rejecting Lucas Cierpiot’s ethics complaint, the Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel said he failed to allege any violation of the rules of professional conduct. The complaint only outlined the donations from Ketchmark’s law firm to the pro-Bailey PAC, not the donation from Ketchmark to Bailey’s campaign committee. The ethics office drew a distinction between those.

“Corporations are legal entities separate and distinct from their officers and shareholders,” the office said in a court filing responding to Cierpiot’s petition to the Missouri Supreme Court.

The Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel said that before declining to investigate, officials verified that Ketchmark hadn’t contributed to Bailey’s campaign committee, apparently missing the January 2023 donations.

The Supreme Court’s order did not say why it was denying Cierpiot’s request. 

This story was updated at 12:25 p.m. to include comments from Bailey’s office and Cierpiot received after its initial publication.

Corn sprouts in long rows in Wichita County, Kansas. With farm incomes on the decline, agricultural groups say a new federal Farm Bill is a must. (Allison Kite/Kansas Reflector)

The cost of fertilizer is up; crop prices are down. Farmers have struggled through drought, and ranchers sold off huge swaths of their herd. 

To top it all off, Congress has yet to pass a new iteration of the Farm Bill, which expires in a matter of days. And it likely won’t take action on the wide-ranging legislation, which offers everything from nutritional assistance to farm disaster recovery aid, until late this year.

The slow action on the legislation isn’t unusual, but as farm income continues to slide, producers are struggling to make ends meet. Tim Gibbons, communications director for the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, noted it currently costs more to raise a bushel of corn than farmers make when they sell it.

The prices farmers receive for major grain crops such as corn and soybeans are down 20 to 40% from highs set in 2022 in the months after Russia invaded Ukraine, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. But that spike was an aberration, Gibbons said.

“We haven’t had really high prices for decades … that really support farmers over the long term,” Gibbons said, “so that not only can they stay on the farm, but pass that farm on to the next generations.” 

Researchers at the University of Missouri expect farm income to drop by 35% by next year, compared to a high in 2022. While they still expect income to remain above what farmers saw between 2015 and 2020, it’s a steep drop. 

“Farmers will have a tighter situation … than they experienced in the last three years, and they’ll have to be much more cognizant about having a very strategic marketing plan in order to make a good cash flow,” said Bob Maltsburger, a senior research economist at the Food & Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the university. 

The “bleak” state of the farm economy — as U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, put it — has agricultural groups and heartland lawmakers clamoring for an updated Farm Bill. But partisan gridlock in Washington, D.C., and tension over what programs to prioritize in the enormous bill have made it difficult for lawmakers to find common ground. 

“We need a Farm Bill in place,” Moran said on the Senate floor earlier this month, “even if it’s the current one, but the current one is insufficient to meet the needs of the disaster that is occurring in the incomes of farmers across the country.”

The Farm Bill, the primary vehicle for food and agriculture policy in the U.S., expires Monday. While some of its banner programs — including crop insurance and nutrition assistance — will continue even if the legislation lapses, lawmakers and farm groups have said it’s essential to get assistance to struggling farmers. Moran urged colleagues to extend the existing Farm Bill while a more thorough rewrite is still pending.

Competing for funds

The Farm Bill’s single largest chunk of spending — about 75% — supports a variety of programs to combat food insecurity, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, commonly known as “food stamps.” Its other banner programs include crop insurance and support for farmers when crop prices are low. The legislation also provides funds to encourage conservation and more sustainable farming. 

Prominent in this year’s debate is how to permanently increase spending on conservation and climate-friendly practices. Congress previously provided $20 billion through the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2023, to help farmers plant cover crops and trees; alternate grazing and resting grassland and restore wetlands. 

Andrew Lentz, who leads agriculture policy for the Environmental Defense Fund, said that funding helped more farmers participate in historically underfunded conservation programs. He said his organization hopes Congress takes advantage of the “huge opportunity” to make those funding levels permanent. 

While Democrats want to ensure those funds are spent on practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, those requirements weren’t supported in the Republican-controlled U.S. House committee. 

“If Congress is able to do that,” Lentz said, “they’ll be able to maintain these elevated funding levels and also maintain the climate focus of those funds in order to address the root causes of climate change and…help farmers tap new markets for lower carbon agricultural goods.” 

But Jennifer Ifft, an associate professor at Kansas State University, said Congress can’t increase the federal deficit when it passes a new Farm Bill, creating tension between lawmakers over how to prioritize programs. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives supported increasing funding for the farm safety net, which supports farmers when crop prices are low.

That’s hard enough to do this year, Ifft said, but it will be even more difficult to pull off next year with crop prices projected to keep declining, increasing the cost of the safety net.

“It’s probably not going to get easier to compromise,” Ifft said.

The House Republican version of the bill also cuts $30 billion from nutrition assistance, a nonstarter with Democrats. 

U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat and chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, called that bill and Senate Republicans’ “framework” for a Farm Bill “flawed,” noting it cuts the nutrition budget and “walks away from the progress we have made to address the climate crisis.”

Gibbons said the conversation is missing better options to help with crop prices. He argues managing supply and adjusting decisions to meet market needs is a lower-cost alternative to ensure farmers get a fair price for their crops. But that’s not part of the policy discussions, he said. 

“The fight,” Gibbons said, “is once again over, ‘How hard are we going to make it for hungry people in need to get food,’”

The Trinity explosion, 16 milliseconds after the atomic bomb test detonation on July 16, 1945. The viewed hemisphere’s highest point in this image is about 660 ft. (Berlyn Brixner / Los Alamos National Laboratory / Public Domain)

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson is holding up compensation for generations of Americans who developed cancer after exposure to the nation’s nuclear weapons program, several members of Congress said Tuesday. 

At a news conference in Washington, D.C, U.S. House members and Senators stood beside advocates from Missouri and tribal nations in the southwest who have — for months, or even years — cried out for help from the government as they and their loved ones suffered from cancer because of exposure to radiation.

Dawn Chapman, who lives near the contaminated West Lake Landfill in suburban St. Louis, said Johnson was the “only reason these people are suffering right now in this room.” 

“He can fix it,” Chapman said. “There are a lot of things in this world that you cannot fix. This one can be fixed. This one can pass.”

Fred Vallo, who endured a 37-hour bus ride from New Mexico., said his community can’t keep coming to the nation’s capital “begging” for help. He urged Johnson to visit New Mexico and see where the contamination originated for himself. 

“I’ll even take you with my own truck if you don’t believe us,” Vallo said.

Vallo and fellow advocates called on Johnson to bring the stalled Radiation Exposure Compensation Act up for a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. The legislation has twice passed the U.S. Senate and would offer compensation to individuals suffering from certain cancers after exposure to improperly stored radioactive waste, uranium ore or bomb tests.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, who — along with New Mexico Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján — championed the legislation in the Senate, said he’d spoken with Johnson. But the House leader hadn’t committed to taking action on RECA. 

Luján encouraged advocates to pray for Johnson “to give him the strength and the wisdom to allow this legislation to the House floor, to be voted on, and to work to earn Republican and Democratic votes to get this to the President of the United States.”

Johnson’s office declined to comment.

Congress first passed RECA in the 1990s to compensate uranium miners and individuals exposed to bomb testing, known as “downwinders,” but the program only covered bomb testing victims in parts of Nevada, Arizona and Utah. 

Since the original RECA legislation passed, Hawley said, the radiation was found to have traveled further than the government originally thought. And communities that were known to be affected at the time were left out.

The expansion would offer coverage to downwinders in the remaining parts of Nevada, Arizona and Utah and expand coverage to Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Guam. It would also offer new coverage for residents exposed to radioactive waste in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska and Kentucky. 

In Missouri, uranium refining and improper storage of radioactive waste has affected residents for decades. Coldwater Creek, which runs for miles through busy St. Louis suburbs, is contaminated with radioactive material, and exposure to its waters increased the risk of cancer for generations of residents — primarily children. 

Waste was haphazardly trucked from site to site in St. Louis county before being dumped at the West Lake Landfill where it remains today. 

Hawley said he was confident there was enough support in the House of Representatives to pass RECA. 

“The wait has been too long,” Hawley said, “and it has been too cruel. And there is no need to wait any longer.” 

One family still suffering the effects of the bomb is Carol Rogers’. 

Rogers, of Shiprock, New Mexico, said her father was a miner. She and her mother could see the gold-hued uranium ore falling from his clothes as they scrubbed them and wrung them out. At the time, she didn’t know helping wash her father’s clothes would cause her to develop cancer decades later. 

When she was diagnosed, Rogers said, her doctor asked if she had worked with uranium. She said she hadn’t.

“Who did?” she said he asked. 

“He said, ‘Yes, it’s uranium,’” Rogers said.

After treatment, she said, she was in remission from cancer for three or four years. It came back, affecting her eye. She’s currently undergoing radiation treatment.

“It’s painful,” Rogers said. “I have to take pain medicine almost every day, sometimes twice a day.”

Rogers said her father died of lung cancer. Her grandson was diagnosed with cancer at 19. Now 20, he’s going through testing again along with his one-year-old baby. Doctors have recommended, she said, everyone in her family get tested, even infants. 

U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, a Democrat from New Mexico, said the detonation of the world’s first atomic bomb at the Trinity Test site made it look like the sun rose over New Mexico at 3 a.m. one day in July 1945. And almost 80 years later, it’s still affecting New Mexican families. 

“For too many decades, New Mexicans have suffered generational impacts,” Vasquez said, “while being gaslighted…for having intergenerational disease, cancer, gastrointestinal issues, tumors, so much more.”

An undated photo from the 1980s, of two teenagers stepping on rocks and wooden planks on Coldwater Creek. The photo is from a scrapbook kept by Sandy Delcoure, who lived on Willow Creek in Florissant and donated the scrapbook to the Kay Drey Mallinckrodt Collection (State Historical Society of Missouri, Kay Drey Mallinckrodt Collection, 1943-2006).

Federal officials plan to post warning signs along a contaminated suburban St. Louis creek where generations of children were exposed to radioactive material.

Coldwater Creek, which winds between homes and parks in St. Louis County for 14 miles before meeting the Missouri River, is plagued with nuclear waste left over from World War II. For decades, families had no idea the danger it posed to the children who played along its banks and swam in its waters. 

More than six years ago, a federal study found residents who live near the creek or regularly came in contact with its waters faced a higher risk of certain cancers. 

Still, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is cleaning up the creek, did not post signs warning visitors of its danger. 

But this fall, the Corps plans to post signs along Coldwater Creek, warning of the “low-level radioactive materials present.” In a Facebook post, the Corps’ St. Louis branch said the first of the signs will be placed in mid or late November. 

The signs, marked with an eye-catching cautionary yellow border, instruct readers not to dig near the creek but say the waste doesn’t pose a health threat as long as the ground is left undisturbed. Corps officials had previously released a draft of a warning sign with a blue banner that said there “may” be radioactive materials near. 

Dawn Chapman, who co-founded Just Moms STL to advocate for St. Louis-area families harmed by radioactive waste, said the group was happy with the new signs and thinks they’ll save lives. 

“But also, we’re so sad because we know people that are hurt that probably wouldn’t have been if they were up a long time ago,” Chapman said. 

The Missouri Coalition for the Environment, which has advocated for signs along Coldwater Creek for more than 25 years, said in a press release that the signs mark a “step in the right direction,” but don’t fully acknowledge the danger present along the creek.

The sign doesn’t acknowledge areas where contamination may be at the surface, doesn’t use the universal symbol for radioactive material and may confuse visitors by referring to the material as “low-level,” the Missouri Coalition for the Environment said. 

St. Louis has struggled with radioactive contamination since World War II. Uranium used in the development of the atomic bomb was refined in downtown St. Louis. After the war, the waste was dumped at the airport and, later, a nearby property — both along Coldwater Creek. The waste was further refined to extract valuable metals and the remaining material illegally dumped in the West Lake Landfill, where it remains today. 

The Corps is leading the cleanup of Coldwater Creek and the Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing work at the West Lake Landfill.

Last summer, The Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press found that, for decades, federal officials and companies handling the waste downplayed or failed to investigate the true danger of the material. Since the revelation, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and members of Congress from Missouri — along with southwestern states affected by nuclear weapons testing — have been fighting for compensation for victims of radioactive waste exposure.

To do so, Hawley and U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a Democrat from New Mexico, proposed expanding the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, originally passed in 1990 to compensate uranium miners and those who were exposed to atomic bomb testing in parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona. 

Hawley and Luján’s bill would expand the program to remaining parts of Arizona, Nevada and Utah and provide coverage for the first time in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Guam, where residents were exposed to radiation from weapons tests. It would also expand coverage to those exposed in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska and Kentucky. 

The legislation twice passed the Senate, but was never heard on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. When the House failed to pass a RECA expansion or extension in June, the legislation expired. 

Hawley said on the U.S. Senate floor last week that the legislation is being “attacked” and exposure victims labeled as “greedy and unthankful and ungrateful and undeserving of any help or recognition or thanks from this country.” 

Hawley called on members of Congress to “stand up and be counted” and support the legislation.

“We will not stop fighting,” he said. “We will not stop working until every nuclear radiation victim who has given their life and health for the support of this nation is thanked and compensated.”

Chapman said RECA advocates are returning to Washington, D.C., next week to advocate for the expansion. She said she believes Congress will act on RECA sometime in the coming months. 

“I feel very close,” Chapman said. “We feel like this could be it for us next week.”

Researchers at Kansas State University found certain fertilizers can help improve soil health and store carbon to help combat climate change (Jill Hummels for Kansas Reflector).

Farmers can help combat climate change and improve the health of their soil by switching to natural fertilizers and minimizing tilling, new research from Kansas State University shows.

According to a paper published in June in the Soil Science Society of America Journal, analysis from a no-till cornfield in Kansas showed that manure or compost fertilizer stored more atmospheric carbon and improved microbial diversity compared with commercial fertilizers.

In a news release about the study, Ganga Hettiarachchi, one of the lead researchers, said the results were — as far as she knows — the first evidence of the mechanisms through which the addition of natural fertilizers “improve soil health, microbial diversity and carbon sequestration.”

“Collectively, studies like this are going to help us to move forward to more sustainable, more regenerative agriculture practices that will protect our soils and environment as well as help feed growing populations,” said Hettiarachchi, professor of soil and environmental chemistry at K-State.

Sequestering carbon in soil is a significant way the agriculture sector can help lower global greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, agriculture was responsible for just more than 10% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2021.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps heat, creating a greenhouse effect and contributing to the overall warming of the planet. Last year was the warmest since recordkeeping began in 1880, making efforts to combat climate change increasingly urgent. According to NASA, the past 10 years have been the hottest ever.

“If we find ways to enhance carbon storage in soil, then that will help us to mitigate climate change,” Hettiarachchi said.

As part of the study, Hettiarachchi and fellow researchers looked at a Kansas cornfield that had no crop rotation and had grown corn for 22 years. Rather than breaking up soil clumps, researchers cut samples from the soil and took them to specialized laboratories where they could study how carbon and other minerals were distributed in the soil.

Not only does using manure or compost fertilizer — rather than commercial chemical fertilizers — help improve carbon sequestration, Hettiarachchi said, but it improves the health of the soil and helps it retain nutrients. Runoff of nutrients — typically nitrogen and phosphorus — through rain and irrigation pollutes streams, rivers and lakes and contributes to toxic algae blooms.

University of Kansas researchers last year predicted that climate change will result in more frequent algae blooms.

Researchers from K-State partnered on the study with Canadian Light Source and Advanced Light Source, research facilities that use synchrotron lights for scientific research.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey meets with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Kansas City (Photo provided by Andrew Bailey's campaign).

Eight months into his term as Missouri’s attorney general, Andrew Bailey withdrew his office from defending a state agency being sued by a legislator’s son for disability discrimination.

A few months earlier, his campaign and an affiliated political action committee accepted more than $150,000 in donations connected to a witness in the case.

Incensed by what he saw as the state’s top attorney using his office for political benefit, Lucas Cierpiot — whose brother Patrick filed the original lawsuit and whose father is GOP Sen. Mike Cierpiot — filed a formal complaint accusing Bailey of violating attorney conduct rules.

Bailey’s spokeswoman, Madeline Sieren, noted in an email that the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel dismissed Cierpiot’s complaint without investigating. And legal experts interviewed by The Independent aren’t so sure taking money from a witness would warrant sanctions. 

But Cierpiot remains convinced the attorney general violated ethics rules. He’s now asking the Missouri Supreme Court to intervene and order an investigation. 

“No attorney can ever collect money from a case witness,” Cierpiot’s filing says. “The fact that there is not a rule spelling this out in-letter is due to the fact that it is so obvious.”

While Bailey’s office was still in charge of the case, his campaign for reelection launched. 

The first donor to his fledgling campaign committee was Michael Ketchmark, who gave $2,825, the maximum that an individual can donate. By the end of January 2023, Bailey would receive a combined $16,950 from individuals with the last name Ketchmark or employed by the law firm Ketchmark & McCreight P.C.

According to Patrick Cierpiot’s lawsuit, Ketchmark is a material witness in his case because he spoke to Gov. Mike Parson’s chief of staff in an attempt to keep Cierpiot from being fired from the Missouri Department of Economic Development. 

Ketchmark is a prominent attorney and donor in Missouri politics, including giving huge contributions to Parson. Patrick Cierpiot said he has known Ketchmark for 30 years.

In an email, Ketchmark said he has not been called as a witness by the state in Patrick Cierpiot’s or any other case. Court records in Kansas show Cierpiot called Ketchmark as a witness. Ketchmark did not respond to a question about whether he spoke to the governor’s staff on Cierpiot’s behalf. 

“I have no idea why Patrick was fired, and the fact that Patrick listed me as a witness does not stop me from supporting a political candidate,” said Ketchmark, whose law firm this year alone gave the PAC supporting Bailey $1.1 million.

Todd Graves gets high-powered help lobbying for University of Missouri curator position

Attorneys contacted by The Independent said there is not a specific rule in Missouri barring Bailey from accepting donations from a witness. But Peter Joy, who teaches legal ethics at Washington University in St. Louis, said it creates a public confidence issue.

“In terms of public perception,” Joy said, “it raises a lot of questions.”

When someone is running for prosecutor or attorney general, Joy said, it’s a “delicate balance” between being a lawyer and a politician.

“They still owe their primary obligation to the oath that they took to fulfill their elected office,” Joy said, “but…they have a campaign committee that’s soliciting people for contributions and they’re attending fundraisers and they’re speaking before groups where they’re hoping to generate funds to run their campaign and get votes, eventually, to retain their office.”  

Lucas Cierpiot’s filing is the latest in a series of accusations of unethical behavior by Bailey, who narrowly avoided being questioned under oath last month about his contact with a defendant in the state’s case against Jackson County. One of Bailey’s deputies lost his law license in that dispute, according to a filing from Jackson County’s attorneys. 

Last year, Bailey’s office withdrew from defending the Missouri State Highway Patrol in a lawsuit filed by companies that operate video game machines that offer cash prizes. The patrol investigated the machines, believing that they were illegal means of gambling. 

The withdrawal came after Bailey’s PAC accepted large campaign contributions from political action committees linked to a lobbyist for the two companies that brought the lawsuit against the state — Torch Electronics and Warrenton Oil.

It’s also the second time Bailey has been the focus of a formal complaint about the behavior of his office. Earlier this year, the Hazelwood School District lodged a formal complaint about Bailey after his office falsely blamed the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion program for the off-campus assault of a student. 

Patrick Cierpiot sued the Missouri Department of Economic Development two years after he was fired from the department. He said he requested accommodations after breaking his wrist in a bicycle wreck because he was struggling to write and type to keep up with his workload but was fired instead. In its response, the state accused Cierpiot of fraud.

In Cierpiot’s amended lawsuit in May 2022, he named Ketchmark as having urged a Parson staffer not to fire him. 

The following January brought the Ketchmark-affiliated donations to Bailey’s campaign. Later in the spring of 2023, Ketchmark’s law firm donated $125,000 to the pro-Bailey Liberty and Justice PAC. 

A few weeks after that, Liberty and Justice received an in-kind donation from the firm totaling $9,216.53. Bailey helped raise money for Liberty and Justice PAC, which, in turn, supported his successful GOP primary run for a full term as attorney general. 

Bailey’s campaign and the PAC received a combined $151,166.53 in cash and in-kind donations from Ketchmark, his relatives and his law firm and associates while Bailey was defending the state in the Cierpiot lawsuit.

Missouri AG drops out of gambling case after taking donations from companies suing state

In August 2023, Bailey’s office withdrew from the case and allowed the department to hire a private law firm to handle it. At that time, Sieren told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Bailey didn’t have a conflict of interest and his office was looking to outside firms to handle “complex cases.” 

Lucas Cierpiot filed his complaint four months later in December 2023. It was dismissed by the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel in March. Cierpiot asked for further review, but the case was dismissed again in May.

In response, Cierpiot filed a motion with the state Supreme Court last month asking that it order an investigation. 

The Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel responded to Lucas Cierpiot’s filing with the Missouri Supreme Court, saying he could not insist on an investigation. It went on to say Cierpiot’s complaint didn’t allege a violation of the rules of professional conduct because it outlined donations from Ketchmark’s firm to the PAC, not from Ketchmark himself to Bailey’s campaign committee.

“Corporations are legal entities separate and distinct from their officers and shareholders,” the response filing says. 

The filing, signed by Chief Disciplinary Counsel Laura Elsbury, claims that before declining to investigate Cierpiot’s allegations, officials “independently verified that (Ketchmark) had not contributed to (Bailey’s) campaign committee.”

But that was wrong. Ketchmark did contribute to Bailey’s campaign committee.

Elsbury said in an email she could not comment on the pending issue. Lucas Cierpiot did not immediately return a  request for comment.

In an interview, Patrick Cierpiot said he doesn’t think it is right for an attorney to take money from a witness.

“If it’s okay for Andrew Bailey to solicit and accept money from a case witness,” Patrick Cierpiot said, “then the Missouri courts are completely blown open for corruption.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (photo submitted).

Jackson County officials said Monday they are evaluating potential legal challenges to an order by the State Tax Commission they argue was only issued to cover for Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

The Missouri State Tax Commission last week ordered the county to roll back most of its 2023 property valuations, finding that they had been performed illegally, resulting in huge increases in property values.

“It’s unconstitutional. It’s unprecedented. And it has no evidence to even prove it,” County Counselor Bryan Covinsky said at a press conference in Kansas City about the commission’s order.

Covinsky said the county will work with school districts and other taxing jurisdictions to find the best path forward to overturn the order.

The commission’s order came eight months into a lawsuit against Jackson County filed by Bailey, who accused officials of failing to follow proper procedures when it assessed property values last year. According to Bailey’s lawsuit, the county saw an average 30% jump in property values. Bailey claims the county failed to offer physical inspections to property owners facing a value increase of 15% or more. 

But with only one day of trial left in Bailey’s case against the county, the commission ordered the assessments rolled back and Bailey asked for the case to be dismissed. 

Missouri attorney general asks to dismiss lawsuit a day before scheduled deposition

Both the order and the motion to dismiss came a day before Bailey was expected to sit for a deposition regarding his contact with Sean Smith, a Jackson County official, which appeared to violate legal ethics rules. They also came a day after Bailey won the GOP primary for a full term as attorney general.

The judge in the case granted Bailey’s motion to dismiss on Thursday, ending the possibility that Bailey would be questioned under oath in the case. 

Covinsky and County Executive Frank White Jr., claimed Bailey’s office was losing and knew it. 

“Attorney General Bailey dismissed a case that he himself called the most important in the history of his office,” White said. “Let’s not forget, Attorney General Bailey dismissed the lawsuit the day after his election because he was afraid to answer questions under oath.” 

Assistant Attorney General Jay Atkins said in an email that the goal of Bailey’s lawsuit was to provide relief to Jackson County taxpayers.

“The tax commission’s order does just that,” Atkins said. “(Attorney) General Bailey was proud to stand with the state tax commission as we worked together to hold Jackson County accountable and bring taxpayers the relief they deserve. We look forward to defending the state tax commission’s lawful order.” 

The commission could not immediately be reached for comment. 

In a legal memo to White, Covinsky recommended the county keep operating as they were before the tax commission order “unless and until such time that a court of competent jurisdiction orders otherwise.” He argued “no government entity is required to comply with an unlawful order.” 

Both Bailey and one of his deputies met with Smith while the litigation was ongoing in apparent violation of Missouri Supreme Court rules, which prohibit attorneys from communicating about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case by another attorney without the consent of the other lawyer. 

Bailey and Smith maintained the meeting was nothing more than a campaign event.

But his deputy, Travis Woods, also spoke with Smith without permission. The judge found Woods in violation of the rules of conduct and Bailey was ordered to sit for the deposition as a form of sanction.

Now, Jackson County and taxing jurisdictions in the county — including school and fire districts and law enforcement — face a budget quandary. 

The State Tax Commission order instructs Jackson County to roll back property assessments that had increased more than 15% since its last assessment.

Rather than provide refunds to homeowners who saw a large increase in property value, officials said, the order will simply redistribute who pays the most. County Assessor Gail McCann Beatty said poorer communities could wind up paying disproportionately high tax bills compared to enormous, stately homes in the city’s Country Club District.

That’s because of a provision of the Missouri Constitution that caps revenue increases for local governments. The Hancock Amendment instructs local governments to adjust their property tax rates to avoid a windfall. When property values rise, the tax rate falls. 

If assessments are rolled back, taxing jurisdictions will raise their rates to provide funds for schools, firefighting and other services, Jackson County officials said. But they face an Oct. 1 deadline to do so, creating a scramble for the county and taxing districts to determine how to move forward.

“If they don’t get it through property values, they’re going to get it through property tax rates. They’re going to adjust it up,” said County Administrator Troy Schulte, “so I don’t see a scenario where taxpayers don’t get hit significantly.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks on the floor of the Missouri House of Representatives in 2023. Bailey was granted a motion to dismiss in his lawsuit against Jackson County before he was expected to sit for a scheduled deposition in the case. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey narrowly avoided being questioned under oath about his contact with a Jackson County official when he was granted a motion to dismiss his lawsuit against the county on Thursday. 

Bailey, who filed suit against the county late last year over its property tax assessment process, was ordered by the judge in the case to sit for a deposition regarding communication with Jackson County Legislator Sean Smith which appeared to violate legal ethics rules. 

According to court filings, the deposition was set for Thursday morning. 

But after a series of legal maneuvers to avoid the deposition failed, Bailey asked the judge to dismiss the entire case. In the filing, he said it was no longer necessary because the State Tax Commission issued an order instructing Jackson County to roll back the property assessments.

Jackson County officials cried foul Thursday, arguing in a press release that the tax commission “is being used as a shield for Attorney General Bailey, who is trying to escape accountability after lying and realizing he was losing the case.”

Jackson County noted Bailey less than a month ago called the case “one of the most important pieces of litigation to reach a Missouri courtroom in decades.”

“Yet after only three days of trial, he chose to drop the case entirely,” the county said. “This abrupt reversal exposes the lawsuit for what it truly was: a politically motivated tactic that has cost Missouri taxpayers countless dollars and eroded public trust.”

Missouri attorney general asks to dismiss lawsuit a day before scheduled deposition

Bailey’s spokeswoman, Madeline Sieren, said were it not for the commission’s order, the attorney general “would have pushed the lawsuit forward…and we would have won.” 

“Pushing the lawsuit forward could have jeopardized the much needed relief offered in the Tax Commission’s order and would be counterproductive for Jackson County taxpayers,” Sieren said in an email. 

At issue in the case was Jackson County’s 2023 property assessment process, which, according to Bailey’s original lawsuit, resulted in an average 30% increase in values across hundreds of thousands of properties. The higher property values mean some homeowners will see their property tax bill increase.

Bailey’s lawsuit accused the county of violating a law requiring it to offer physical inspections before increasing a property’s value by more than 15%.

The county argued Bailey waited too long to file the lawsuit as property tax bills had been paid and money distributed to government departments. And, the county said, the attorney general couldn’t file a case unless the State Tax Commission had first attempted to resolve the issue. 

Bailey and a deputy then came under scrutiny for meeting with Smith. Under Missouri Supreme Court rules, attorneys are not to communicate about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case by another lawyer without the consent of the other lawyer.

Bailey maintained that his meeting with Smith amounted to nothing more than a campaign meeting with little discussion of the lawsuit. On Tuesday, Bailey won the GOP primary for attorney general. Smith ran unopposed in the Republican primary for 5th District Congressional seat and will face incumbent U.S. Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, II in the general election in November. 

Jackson County attorneys sought sanctions against Bailey, and Clay County Circuit Judge Karen Krauser granted them permission to take his deposition.

Bailey’s office tried several times in July to get out of the deposition. Then on Tuesday, Bailey appealed the judge’s decision. A Missouri Court of Appeals judge denied that on Wednesday.

Later on Wednesday, Bailey filed a motion to dismiss the case outright, citing the Missouri State Tax Commission order.

Krauser granted that motion Thursday morning and dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning Bailey can’t refile it.

Bailey said the State Tax Commission used information his office gathered in the discovery process for the lawsuit.

Jackson County’s press release called officials’ estimate of what rolling back the property assessments would cost “devastating.” The county said schools and libraries would lose $86.3 million in funds they’ve already “received, budgeted and spent.” Cities and fire districts, the county said, would lose almost $20 million. 

“Jackson County firmly believes that fairness will prevail once again,” the county said, “and we will not allow our community to be sacrificed for political gain.”  

This story was updated at 2:45 p.m. with reaction from Jackson County officials and a response from Bailey’s office. 

Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks at a press conference in the Missouri House Lounge, flanked by House Speaker Dean Plocher, left, and state Rep. Justin Sparks (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey wants to dismiss his lawsuit against Jackson County a day before he was set to answer questions under oath about a potential ethical breach in the case. 

Bailey, who is suing the county over its property assessment process, on Tuesday asked the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District to overturn a circuit court order in the case allowing Jackson County attorneys to take his deposition. 

The appeal was denied Wednesday morning. 

Hours later, Bailey filed a motion in Jackson County Circuit Court to dismiss the entire case.

In the motion, Bailey says the litigation is no longer needed after the Missouri State Tax Commission issued an order on Wednesday rolling back most property value increases. In a press release, Bailey said the order relied on information obtained through the discovery process in his lawsuits against the county.

“This is a huge win for every property owner in Missouri, but especially in Jackson County,” said Bailey, who on Tuesday won the GOP primary for a full term as attorney general.

Bailey was scheduled to sit for a deposition Thursday to be questioned by Jackson County’s attorneys about his meetings with a county official that they argued violated ethical rules for lawyers. The trial over the property assessment process was expected to resume Friday.

At issue were meetings that both Bailey and a deputy had with Jackson County Legislator Sean Smith. Under Missouri Supreme Court rules, attorneys are not to communicate about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case by another lawyer without the consent of the other lawyer.

Judge orders Missouri AG Andrew Bailey to sit for deposition over possible ethics breach

Bailey’s office maintained his meeting with Smith amounted to nothing more than a campaign meeting with little discussion of the lawsuit. But Jackson County attorneys filed a motion for sanctions, and Clay County Circuit Judge Karen Krauser gave the county permission to question Bailey as a form of sanction.

“Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and his office have exhibited a blatant disregard for the Rules of Professional Conduct in this case,” the motion filed by Jackson County says, “and their actions are sanctionable. Based on what we know so far, their actions were not innocent mistakes.” 

Bailey’s office tried to persuade Krauser to reconsider, but she declined.

The ethics dispute comes in Bailey’s case accusing Jackson County of failing to comply with the law when it assessed properties in 2023, resulting in an average 30% increase in value across hundreds of thousands of properties. The lawsuit says more than 90% of residential properties saw an increase in property value, and values increased by at least 15% for three-quarters of properties in the county. 

The increase in property value means some owners will have to pay more in property taxes each year.

In defending the case, Jackson County said Bailey had waited too long to file the lawsuit since tax bills have already been paid and money distributed. Beyond that, the county argued, the attorney general can’t file a case unless the State Tax Commission attempted to first resolve the issue.

The State Tax Commission weighed in Wednesday, saying the county had failed to follow proper procedures, including performing physical inspections, before increasing property values more than 15%.

The commission issued an order claiming “widespread and systemic” failures by Jackson County and ordered officials to roll back the assessments on 75% of properties.  

In a statement, Jackson County called the State Tax Commission’s order “inaccurate and dangerously politicized,” arguing that it was a “desperate, last-minute maneuver” before Bailey’s litigation concludes. 

“This reckless order is harmful to not only taxing jurisdictions, but also taxpayers,” said Jackson County Executive Frank White, Jr. “While fixing decades of mismanagement hasn’t been easy, we are committed to fairness and will continue working every day to achieve it. Actions like this do immense harm to our communities.”

A Kansas City police van sits outside a patrol station on Linwood Boulevard (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent).

Missourians on Tuesday voted to require Kansas City to spend more of its municipal budget on policing, reinstating a policy that had been overturned by the state supreme court. 

The race was called by the Associated Press at 11:30 p.m., with the amendment winning 51% to 48%. That means the Missouri Constitution will be amended to require Kansas City to spend at least 25% of its general revenue on police, amounting to tens of millions of dollars per year.

While it provides funding for the department, Kansas City is the only major city in the U.S. that doesn’t have local control of its police. The Kansas City Police Department is governed by the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, which includes the mayor and four members appointed by the Missouri governor. That means while the City Council writes the checks for the Kansas City police, they have no control over how funds are spent.

Between the 1950s and 2022, Kansas City was required to spend at least 20% of its general revenue on police and often exceeded that. But in 2020, as racial justice protesters pushed for police reform across the nation, Kansas City sought to exert more influence over the police budget.

Following the protests, sparked by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Kansas City officials attempted to set aside $42 million in police funding — above its obligatory 20% spending — for “community engagement, outreach, prevention, intervention and other public services” in an attempt to increase police accountability.

But the move was lambasted by Missouri Republicans, who claimed City Hall was trying to “defund” the police.

Missouri lawmakers responded with legislation requiring Kansas City to spend at least 25% of its revenue on police, which passed in the spring of 2022 on a largely party-line vote with Republicans supporting increased police spending. 

Voters then, in the fall of 2022, approved the legislation with 63% of the vote. The policy was unpopular, however, in the Jackson County portion of Kansas City where 61% of voters rejected it. It passed in Platte and Clay counties, which include suburban parts of Kansas City.

After the vote, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas challenged the election in court, saying a summary printed on voters’ ballots “materially misstated” the cost of the proposal.

The fiscal note summary accompanying the 2022 amendment said the requirement that Kansas City spend at least 25% of its revenue on police would result in “no additional costs or savings.” The state argued that because the city had voluntarily granted that much in the past, the amendment simply removed the city’s discretion rather than imposing a new cost.

City Hall, however, argued the mandate could potentially cost other departments up to $38.7 million in budget cuts.

The Missouri Supreme Court agreed with the city and ordered the results of that election be tossed and a new vote be held, paving the way for Tuesday’s vote. 

Photo credit: Getty Images

Missouri voters on Tuesday rejected an attempt by lawmakers to exempt child care facilities from paying property taxes, an incentive supporters hoped would help with the state’s day care shortage.

When the Associated Press called the race at 10:30 p.m., more than 54% of Missourians had voted against amending the Missouri Constitution to offer the property tax exemption. It’s one of several attempts by lawmakers in recent years to take action on the state’s shortage of child care facilities.

“This is just one incentive to try to make that easier for the facilities,” state Sen. Travis Fitzwater said during a committee hearing on the bill last year.

According to the language on voters’ ballots, the exemption was “intended to make child care more available, which would support the well-being of children, families, the workforce and society as a whole.” 

An investigation by The Independent and Muckrock found nearly one in five Missouri children lives in a “child care desert,” where there are more than three children under the age of six for every licensed child care slot. Some areas have more than 20 children per licensed seat or no daycare access at all. 

Even in areas with plenty of licensed child care seats, staffing shortages mean facilities can’t operate at full capacity. It can be difficult to hire for child care jobs, which paid, on average, less than $12 an hour in 2021. 

And while COVID relief funding poured into Missouri to help with the shortage, it largely went to ZIP codes that weren’t child care deserts, The Independent and MuckRock found. 

It’s unclear how much money child care providers might have saved statewide if the property tax exemption had passed. Voters’ ballots said local governments were unsure what the fiscal impact might be to their budgets.

But the hope for supporters was that saving child care providers money might help with the shortage.  

“It’s going to take an all-of-the-above approach to tackling the child care crisis,” Heidi Geisbuhler Sutherland, a lobbyist for the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said in a hearing last year. 

When the legislation came before Missouri lawmakers, it had support from an array of child care and economic development organizations, including the chamber. Geisbuhler Sutherland said business owners have told the chamber that the lack of child care makes it difficult for companies to find workers.

Missouri lawmakers have considered an array of options to deal with the child care shortage. This spring, Gov. Mike Parson pushed a package of child care tax credits, but the legislation stalled in the Senate because of ultra-conservative opposition to “welfare” or the attempt to “give away free child care.”

Parson called for the tax credits in his State of the State speech in January, noting Missouri had enough licensed facilities to serve just 39% of children, and proposed a budget that increased child care subsidies by $51.7 million.

He said: “It’s time for change.”

Nina Hampton of Columbia voted at American Legion Post 202 and opposed the child care property tax amendment. 

“Corporations are paying off the politicians,” she said. “The poor guy keeps paying and paying but the corporations get everything.”

The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed to this story. 

Crystal Quade greets supporters in Springfield after winning the Democratic nomination for Missouri Governor (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent).

SPRINGFIELD — Southwest Missouri native and House Democratic Leader Crystal Quade won her party’s nomination for governor Tuesday in a primary race she said shows the power of grassroots campaigning.

Quade, who has represented Springfield in the Missouri House for eight years, defeated Mike Hamra, a businessman also from Springfield. She’ll face Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe in the general election in November in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2018.

The crowd at Quade’s watch party at Big Momma’s Coffee & Espresso Bar let out a cheer just before 9:45 p.m. when the Associated Press called the race in her favor. She took the stage as her supporters chanted, “Crystal.” 

“Tonight’s results show us that, regardless of party, regardless of where folks live in the state of Missouri, they want something different,” Quade said.

She added: “We are ready for a governor who gets rid of partisan politics and stops the infighting and the flamethrowers and the disgusting TV ads and puts Missouri people first,” Quade said.

As “a kid who grew up in rural southwest Missouri,” winning the Democratic nomination for governor meant a lot, Quade told supporters. In an interview, she said her humble background as the daughter of a waitress and a factory worker in rural southwest Missouri made her an ideal candidate for Missouri governor.

Quade was the first in her family to graduate high school and graduated from Missouri State University in 2008 with a degree in social work. She worked for former U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill as a legislative aid as her first foray into politics. 

She said it’s important to have elected leaders who “understand the debate between paying your mortgage or your utility bill” or who have struggled to afford childcare. 

“These are real issues that are deeply impacting every Missourian regardless of where they’re from,” Quade said, “and I think it’s so deeply important that we elect leaders who understand that.”

If Quade wins in November, she said she would put issues like affordable child care and health care at the forefront along with “making sure that every single person in this state — regardless of who they are or where they’re from — can thrive and live and be happy to live in the state of Missouri.”

And in November, Quade said Missouri voters will “take our rights back,” referring to the proposed constitutional amendment legalizing abortion that will likely appear on voters’ general election ballots. 

Quade believes the ballot question on abortion will help her campaign overcome Missouri’s tilt toward the Republican Party over the last two decades.

Since June 2022, nearly every abortion has been illegal in the state with the exception of medical emergencies.

Hamra released a statement endorsing Quade shortly after the race was called. He said Missouri has a bright future “but we must move beyond the dysfunctional politics in Jefferson City.”

“This doesn’t end with one campaign or one election,” he said. “Missouri’s future is on the line in November, and we must all work together to restore abortion rights and make sure Crystal Quade is Missouri’s next governor.”

Quade’s distaste for divisive politics was echoed by Grant Haverly, 40, who voted for her Tuesday evening at Woodland Heights Presbyterian Church in Springfield. He said fiery messaging and advertising weren’t helpful in politics. He had stopped paying attention to the onslaught of political ads as the primary election drew near.

“It’s like noise in the background that you don’t even hear anymore,” he said. 

Haverly said Quade’s service as a Missouri House member from Springfield drew him to her campaign. He said she’s “someone I can relate to and know a little bit more about.” 

Rebecca Yang, 28, cast her vote at the Kansas City Urban Youth Academy Tuesday. Before she voted, Yang made a list of candidates’ positions on health care access, education and community health.

A few months ago, Yang, who is a medical resident in the area, went to the Missouri Capitol with her colleagues to sit in on committee hearings and meet with lawmakers. 

“What was very surprising to us was that a lot of them didn’t seem to be informed on a lot of the issues, especially health care issues.”

She said it was eye-opening how politics can affect her industry and communities she serves.

“When it comes to women’s rights, especially when it comes to abortion issues, I think there are a lot of misunderstandings.”

Nina Hampton of Columbia took a Democratic ballot at American Legion Post 202 and voted for Quade for governor.

Abortion rights is an important issue for Hampton.

“I am in favor of women’s rights to decide what to do with their own bodies,” she said. 

John Elder of Columbia also voted for Quade.

“I just felt she had the overall experience,” Elder said, “and the qualifications.”

The Independent’s Rebecca Rivas contributed to this story. 

A regal fritillary butterfly lands on milkweed. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing the butterfly as threatened (Jill Haukos/Konza Prairie Biological Station).

Federal wildlife officials on Monday proposed listing a large butterfly once prevalent in the grasslands of Kansas and Missouri as threatened.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would seek protections for the regal fritillary, large non-migratory butterfly with orange and black markings. It exists in an eastern and western subspecies. 

The service is recommending the western regal fritillary — found in 14 states in the Midwest and Great Plains — be listed as a threatened species. It’s not at immediate risk of extinction, but is suffering from habitat loss because of agricultural and urban development, pesticides and climate change, among other issues. 

In its eastern territory, the butterfly could once be found anywhere from New Jersey to North Carolina. Now, it persists in one National Guard installation in Pennsylvania. Federal officials are recommending that the eastern regal fritillary be listed as endangered. 

Regal fritillaries dwell primarily in grasslands with native violets, the butterfly’s primary food source. The presence of fritillaries can indicate the health of native prairie as the butterflies rely on “relatively non-degraded” prairie, according to a report accompanying the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announcement. The insects can’t survive in agricultural fields, non-native pastures or developed areas around prairie remnants, the report says. 

Across its range, the species’ prevalence has declined as much as 99.9%, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report. 

In Kansas and Missouri, the number of counties with regal fritillaries still in existence has dropped by more than half. 

But the Great Plains are a “stronghold” for the butterfly compared to the upper Midwest. The Kansas-Missouri border is “relatively stable” with plenty of regal fritillary populations compared to other parts of the butterfly’s historic range. 

While the butterfly isn’t currently endangered in the western stretches of its territory, the wildlife service’s report says it’s “likely to become in danger of extinction within the foreseeable future.” 

The service is seeking protections for the species, including prohibiting anyone from importing or exporting; harming, killing or trapping; possessing or transporting; or selling the butterflies.

Wildlife officials proposed an exception to the rule for livestock operations that may unintentionally kill the butterflies, including grazing, controlling weeds, mowing and prescribed burning. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposal triggers a 60-day public comment period on the proposed listing of the butterfly. Those who wish to provide comments can do so at regulations.gov.

A general view of pre-game ceremonies for the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Detroit Lions at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on Sept. 7, 2023 in Kansas City (Jamie Squire/Getty Images).

For decades, academic research has been clear: Taxpayers almost never get their money back on subsidized sports stadiums.

And yet, over and over again, U.S. cities and states find themselves locked in lopsided negotiations with beloved football, baseball and basketball teams, hoping to keep them from jumping to a new market.

In the newest bidding war, Kansas aims to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to lure the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs or MLB’s Royals from their side-by-side stadiums in Missouri just a few miles away. It could be one of the most expensive stadium deals yet, according to Victor Matheson, a researcher who studies stadium subsidies.

“This is wildly destructive,” he said. “This is in some ways significantly worse than intercity competition, because you’re just spending billions of dollars to just move economic activity from one point in the metro area to another.”

Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, watched closely in June as lawmakers in Topeka, Kansas, approved an expansion of an often-criticized tax incentive program with the aim of subsidizing a new stadium for one or both teams.

The bidding war for the teams is being viewed as particularly irresponsible by those who hailed a 2019 compact between Kansas and Missouri that some had hoped would set a new model for states across the country to curb corporate tax incentives.

Five years ago, the Democratic governor of Kansas and the Republican governor of Missouri celebrated an end to the so-called economic Border War, a long-standing practice in which governments would offer lucrative subsidies to lure companies back and forth across state lines in the Kansas City area. People saw the practice as wasteful, since it paid companies to relocate without spurring new growth for the regional economy.

The truce was momentous for Kansas and Missouri, two states whose rivalry traces back to bloody Civil War days. But it also garnered national acclaim from both liberals and conservatives who saw the move as a blow to corporate welfare and the cynical practice of companies pitting governments against each other.

But more powerful than the bipartisan cross-border cease-fire, apparently, is the allure of a new professional sports venue.

“Literally every piece of public policy that people said was bad before is being seen here,” said Kansas City, Missouri, Democratic Mayor Quinton Lucas.

Across the country, professional sports teams are playing various local and state governments against each other — a trend that will likely accelerate as a wave of existing stadium leases begin to expire across the country.

It’s a page from the pro sports playbook: Teams often threaten to move to other markets — one without an NFL or NBA franchise, for example. But when those efforts don’t work, team owners often seek to spark competition among local jurisdictions, Matheson said.

New Jersey officials are currently in talks with the owner of the Philadelphia 76ers to get that NBA franchise to hop over to Camden, New Jersey. And the NFL’s Washington Commanders, whose current stadium is in Maryland, are in talks with officials in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia as they look to build a new facility.

“If there’s not a credible threat to relocate,” Matheson said, “the only way to really get the money out of people’s hands is to play localities against one another.”

Lucas said the bidding war between Kansas and Missouri — and local governments in each — gives more leverage to the Chiefs and Royals in negotiations. But it’s up to elected officials to keep from being outmatched.

“I do think some support is important,” Lucas said. “Giving away the farm is not.”

In Topeka, the GOP-controlled legislature expanded Kansas’ Sales Tax and Revenue Bond program, known as STAR, which would redirect sales tax generated at the stadiums and surrounding areas to pay off construction debt. If the teams were to hop the state line, they could benefit from an unprecedented level of taxpayer support: as much as 70% of the costs of two stadiums, which could amount to billions.

The law allows the state to strike stadium deals with little to no public involvement, doubles down on a state incentive program with a spotty track record of success and potentially puts the state’s finances at risk — all for the prospect of luring a sports team a few miles away.

“I do not like this. It feels gross,” Kansas state Rep. Jason Probst said during a caucus meeting of House Democrats in June. “This whole show that’s going on feels disgusting to me. And it’s still the right thing to do.”

In an interview, Probst, who is from Hutchinson in central Kansas, said the reality of professional sports requires governments “to play the game” and offer public assistance, lest they risk losing teams altogether.

“You can stand on your principles. … But if another state isn’t playing by the same set of rules you are, then they’re going to make that investment and they’re going to take that away,” he said.

Reigniting the Border War

On a hot summer day in 2019, hundreds of people gathered to celebrate an end to Missouri’s and Kansas’ practice of offering tax incentives to move companies and jobs from one state to the other.

By one estimate, the practice cost taxpayers more than $300 million over a decade and created almost no new jobs for the Kansas City metro area, which straddles both states.

“Sometimes common sense does prevail,” Missouri’s Republican Gov. Mike Parson said at the time. “Because you don’t have to be a scientist to figure out this was a bad deal for both states.”

Parson’s office did not respond to requests for comment for this story. But in July, the governor said he was confident the NFL team would stay put at Arrowhead Stadium in Missouri.

“I’m not too worried about Kansas at this point,” Parson said.

This spring, voters’ rejection of a 40-year sales tax to help finance a new Royals stadium — and upgrades for Arrowhead — sparked a fear that the teams might leave if they don’t get new facilities. Claiming voters in the Chiefs’ and Royals’ home county had “dropped the ball,” Republican leaders in Kansas pushed to offer the teams a deal, worried they could leave the region altogether.

That fear was enough to reignite the dormant competition between officials in the two states.

“And then they said, ‘Oh, but this is sports, that doesn’t count,’” Matheson said. “Bad economics with sports teams seems to have few boundaries.”

While some Missouri officials have criticized Kansas’ overtures to the teams, Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly said in June she made no promises about leaving the teams alone when she signed the Border War truce.

This week, Kelly’s office declined to comment on the legislation, referring questions to the Kansas Department of Commerce, which would oversee any stadium deals. That agency did not answer questions but provided a statement saying such projects “require discretion and confidentiality.”

“The department will not disclose any details regarding the activity surrounding negotiations or future agreements,” department spokesperson Patrick Lowry wrote in an email.

Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, a Republican from Lee’s Summit in suburban Kansas City, likewise said the truce wasn’t meant to cover sports teams — and he wants his state to keep the teams. He expects the state to respond with an offer of its own.

“The sports teams are sort of in a special category of their own. I don’t think that’s what that legislation really was meant for,” Patterson said of the truce.

Kansas’ offer to the Chiefs and Royals enhances an often-criticized program meant to bring major tourist attractions to the state.

But in most cases, the STAR bond program, according to a state audit, failed at its goal of increasing tourism. There may have been some cases, the audit said, where certain projects kept Kansans spending money in Kansas rather than going to Missouri.

“But we think it’s more often that local visitors simply move existing economic activity from one part of Kansas to another,” the audit said.

Prairiefire, a sprawling development in the Kansas suburb of Overland Park, defaulted on its STAR construction bonds earlier this year because sales tax revenues from its restaurants, movie theater and museum came in far below projections.

The proposal for the stadiums would allow the Chiefs or Royals to pay off construction loans using the increased sales and liquor tax collections at the stadium. In pushing for the legislation, lawmakers noted that the money for the stadium would come from spending in and around the stadiums, not general taxpayers.

And they claimed that bond investors would be on the hook — not the state — if sales tax collections come up short.

But Geoffrey Propheter, an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver, said it’s unclear how interested investors will be in loaning huge sums for stadium projects, which typically do not create enough revenue to cover costs.

And if those state-issued bonds were ever at risk of failure, he said, lawmakers would feel implicit pressure to bail out the stadium.

“In the real world, there’s a huge risk to Kansas state taxpayers,” he said. “They’re going to have to decide to either bail out the project or do nothing. And if they do nothing, their credit, the state’s credit worthiness, will take a hit. And that will make all future borrowing more expensive.”

‘Zero-sum’ game between states

Experts viewed the Kansas-Missouri truce as a model that other states and cities could emulate.

“We were very interested in the Kansas and Missouri situation, because it gives a test as to whether this will work,” said Marc Joffe, a state policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute think tank. “And there have been some encouraging results since 2019 … but I think sports teams are just too big of a war, and they weren’t able to avoid the temptation.”

The institute is studying the Kansas-Missouri truce, in its larger effort to end bidding wars for factories and other major employers.

Joffe criticized such competition as wasteful, and said bidding for stadiums was no exception.

“It is at best a zero-sum game,” Joffe said, “and because of all the waste involved, it’s a really negative-sum game.”

Joffe pointed to the Coalition to Phase Out Corporate Tax Giveaways, a bipartisan group of state lawmakers that sponsored bills in more than a dozen legislatures between 2019 and 2021.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Christopher Rabb, a Democrat, has twice introduced legislation in Harrisburg to end corporate subsidies. He said he was motivated by Amazon’s 2018 announcement that it was seeking a new corporate headquarters, a move that set off a national bidding war among cities.

He broadly believes corporate incentives are wasteful, especially for professional sports teams. Rabb views the Philadelphia 76ers talks of moving across the Delaware River to New Jersey as a ploy for public subsidies.

He noted most average people can’t afford to attend pro games and likened chasing the purported economic benefits of stadiums and arenas to hunting for “fool’s gold.”

“How does this really change the collective quality of opportunity for regular Philadelphians? It doesn’t,” he said. “Let’s be honest: This is the sandbox of billionaires.”

Rabb said elected leaders should be focused on policies that help marginalized people, not the “excessively wealthy,” such as team owners.

After talks stalled over a new arena for the 76ers in Philadelphia, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said he proposed the team relocate just a few miles to Camden.

Murphy’s office declined to comment, but the Democratic governor told a local television station last week that the team’s interest was “legitimate.”

“We think we got an angle here. We’re taking it seriously. Where it lands? I can’t promise you,” he said. “I think they are taking it seriously as well — we shall see. I say this as a Boston Celtics fan — don’t get mad at me.”

But this sort of jockeying between states only benefits team owners, said Neil deMause, a journalist who has written a book about stadium subsidies. Taxpayers and fans, he said, stand to gain little, especially if game tickets become more expensive at new facilities.

“All the economists I know say the best thing you could do is reject it for your state and have the stadiums get built in the other state,” deMause said. “You still get to go drive across the border and see the games the same way as you would otherwise … but you don’t have to pay for building the thing.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks to the Missouri chapter of the Federalist Society in the Missouri House of Representatives last year. Bailey's office on Thursday asked a Clay County Circuit Judge to reverse her decision to let Jackson County attorneys take Bailey's deposition. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office urged a judge on Thursday not to require him to sit for a deposition in his lawsuit against Jackson County, arguing county attorneys want information that “has nothing to do with the case.”

Jason Lewis, general counsel for the Attorney General’s Office, urged Clay County Circuit Judge Karen Krauser to reconsider her decision to allow Bailey to be questioned under oath about his conversation with a Jackson County official. 

Bailey is suing the county over its property assessment process.

Given the Attorney General’s Office’s caseload, Lewis said, requiring Bailey to sit for a deposition could set a troubling precedent.

“The Attorney General’s Office has profound institutional interest that a sitting statewide official cannot be deposed in every case,” Lewis said. 

Judge orders Missouri AG Andrew Bailey to sit for deposition over possible ethics breach

Krauser’s order, issued two weeks ago, came in response to a motion for sanctions Jackson County attorneys filed because of Bailey and a deputy’s conversations with Jackson County Legislator Sean Smith, which appear to have violated the rules of professional conduct set out by the Missouri Supreme Court. 

Under those rules, lawyers are not allowed to communicate with an opposing party in a lawsuit without the consent of that person’s lawyer. While Bailey doesn’t dispute the meetings occurred, he argues they were inconsequential and that the county has to exhaust other options for seeking information about the meetings before questioning a sitting attorney general. 

An outside attorney hired by Smith, also asking Krauser to overturn the order, likened Jackson County attorneys’ efforts to question Bailey over the meeting to an “atomic bomb” compared with less drastic ways to handle the issue. 

“This whole thing really appears to be a distraction from the merits of the case,” said the attorney, Brandon Boulware.

But Ryan Taylor, an attorney for Jackson County, argued the state had not been forthcoming on the issue. He quoted President Harry Truman, who “once said, ‘The buck stops here.’”

“What he meant by that was that anything that happens with his administration, he’s responsible for it,” Taylor said. 

He asked Krauser to stand by her order and allow the deposition to take place.

“If it was an innocent statement, then why can’t (he) just sit down and tell us about it?” Taylor said. 

The dispute stems from Bailey’s lawsuit against Jackson County over its property assessment process. Bailey claims the county’s process was flawed, resulting in an average 30% increase in value across hundreds of thousands of properties. 

Attorneys have argued Bailey waited too long to file the case since tax bills have already been paid and money distributed. 

Bailey’s office has maintained the attorney general did nothing wrong in meeting with Smith and described it as a “brief, casual meeting between two elected officials and their campaign staffs unrelated to the lawsuit.” A filing from Bailey’s office says “at most, a passing remark was made about the lawsuit.”

Lewis, echoing arguments in the state’s court filings, said the county should question other individuals present for the meeting before being granted access to Bailey because of a rule against depositions of top-level agency staff.

But time is short with the trial expected to wrap up in early August. 

“This is about the actions of the attorney general himself, people he was in a room with, people he talked to and what he heard,” Krauser said during Thursday’s hearing. 

Attorneys also argued over whether Jackson County’s counsel represents Smith as an individual or only the Jackson County Legislature as a body. Krauser said she believed Smith to be represented by the county’s attorneys.

Forcing a sitting attorney general to answer questions under oath is highly unusual, but Krauser said in her order that “the Missouri Attorney General’s Office is not exempt from the requirements of the state ethical rules.”

Krauser did not say during the hearing how she would rule on the request to overturn the order granting the deposition. She said she would issue a written decision Friday.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at an event in Philadelphia last year. Harris secured enough support to become the presumptive Democratic nominee for president after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. (Alex Wong/Getty Images).

Kansas and Missouri delegates for the Democratic National Convention endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris Monday night, helping her secure enough support to become the party’s presumptive nominee for president.

The announcement from both states’ Democratic Party leaders came a day after President Joe Biden announced he would withdraw from the race.

According to a press release from the Missouri Democratic Party, delegates previously pledged to Biden decided unanimously to endorse Harris. The party’s chair, Russ Carnahan, called the vice president “exactly the candidate we need at exactly the moment we need her.” 

“President Biden believed that choosing Kamala Harris as vice president was one of the best decisions he made,” Carnahan said in a statement. “His decision to endorse Harris for president has shot a lightning bolt of energy across our country, creating an outpouring of support, volunteers and small dollar donations.”

The Kansas Democratic Party also announced Monday it was endorsing Harris.

“We are excited about the future for our country and unified in our endorsement!” the party said on social media.

In a statement released after she secured enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee, Harris said she intends to “unite our party, unite our nation and defeat Donald Trump in November.”

“I am grateful to President Biden and everyone in the Democratic Party who has already put their faith in me, and I look forward to taking our case directly to the American people.” 

Delegates who had pledged themselves to Biden following Kansas and Missouri’s presidential primary votes were largely united around Harris before they met Monday night to endorse her.

“She seems like the candidate that not only has the experience, but also, she has the backing of … the entire party’s leadership,” said former Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple, one of Kansas’ 39 delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

Fellow delegate and Kansas Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes said she didn’t see a path to victory for other potential candidates for president. 

“I think she is the candidate,” Sykes said, “and I think she is the one who can beat Donald Trump. Kind of letting the dust settle and see, but I support her. I think she would do a great job, and it seems like she is the viable option.” 

In a statement, Gov. Laura Kelly, who will also serve as a Kansas delegate, said she was “proud to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris as our country’s next president of the United States.”

“At a time when our country is desperate to restore reproductive rights, strengthen the middle class, safeguard democracy and bring people together, we need her leadership now more than ever,” Kelly said. 

One of Missouri’s 70 delegates, April Rivera, said while it wasn’t a “done deal,” she was “over the moon” that Biden had endorsed Harris. 

“I am a big fan of the work that she’s done,” Rivera said. “I could not be happier to support her.”

Kenneth Bacchus, another Missouri delegate, said he planned to “wholeheartedly vote for” Harris. 

Missouri delegate Marsha Lerenberg said it wasn’t difficult to decide to support Harris after Biden dropped out.

“I was fully committed to President Biden,” Lerenberg said. “I’ve never wavered from that this entire time. … Now that his chosen successor is Kamala Harris, I am 100% behind her.”

Michael Berg, one of Missouri’s uncommitted delegates, said he was looking for a candidate who would support a ceasefire in Gaza and end the provision of weapons to Israel. He noted children in Gaza had starved to death or been killed by Israeli forces.

“This is behavior that should not stand,” Berg said. “The Israeli military is behaving in a way the American military does not, and our country should not be supporting this behavior, which is plausibly genocide, according to the highest court in the world.”

The three major-party candidates for Missouri attorney general, from left, Will Scharf, Andrew Bailey and Elad Gross (campaign photos).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey insists his office is working to hold the federal government accountable for the decades-old radioactive waste contamination that plagues the St. Louis area.

“We are fighting to ensure that the federal government protects Missourians from the poison that the federal government injected into the streams and creeks there in eastern Missouri,” he told The Independent. 

But the two candidates vying to oust him from the office say Bailey is just the latest in a long line of Missouri officials who have failed the victims who have suffered from the effects of radioactive contamination left in the area since World War II.

Activists tried for months last summer to get Bailey’s help, and “they were met with a closed door,” Will Scharf, who is challenging Bailey in the Aug. 6 GOP primary, told The Independent. 

Both Scharf and Elad Gross, the Democrat running for attorney general, say Bailey could be doing much more.

The St. Louis region was pivotal to the development of the world’s first atomic bomb in the 1940s. Uranium refined downtown was used in experiments in Chicago as part of the Manhattan Project.

After the war, dangerous radioactive waste was dumped at the St. Louis airport right next to Coldwater Creek and contaminated the creek water and banks for miles. Generations of families moved into new suburban homes springing up along the creek without knowing the dangers it posed. A federal study shows children who played in its waters face a higher risk of cancer.

The waste sat at the airport for years before it was sold and moved to a property in Hazelwood also adjacent to the creek. A company bought it to extract valuable metals and trucked the remaining waste to the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton and dumped it illegally. It remains there today.

Officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are working to clean up the creek, and the Environment Protection Agency is overseeing the cleanup of the landfill. 

But after an investigation by The Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press revealed last summer that the federal government knew the waste posed a threat to St. Louis residents years before revealing that to the public, Missouri officials and activists have said the federal government should be held accountable for the damage.

Gross argued Bailey, as the state’s chief attorney, wasn’t doing enough to ensure that happens. 

“Our attorney general can sue Joe Biden for everything under the sun,” Gross said during a candidate forum last month, “but he can’t figure out how to sue him to protect Missouri families when we need him the most.”

Gross, who previously worked in the attorney general’s office, said the state should reinstate the environmental division, which was dissolved when Josh Hawley was attorney general in 2017. Bailey should have more attorneys dedicated to investigating nuclear waste and pushing the federal government for better management of the cleanup, Gross said.

If that’s not enough, Gross said, the state should sue the federal government. He pointed to Washington, where the attorney general’s office sued over the slow cleanup at the Hanford nuclear production facility and inadequate protections for workers.

The state previously sued Republic Services, which owns the West Lake Landfill, under former Attorney General Chris Koster over a subsurface smolder in the adjacent Bridgeton Landfill that emitted a foul odor and risked coming into contact with the radioactive waste. It was settled under Hawley. 

Bailey said his office has reviewed documents the news organizations used in the investigation last summer and found that they “paint a picture of the federal government poisoning Missourians.” But he thinks there are documents missing. 

His office filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the U.S. Department of Energy in March seeking further information. Madeline Sieren, a spokeswoman for Bailey, said the attorney general’s office hasn’t received a response from the Department of Energy.

Those documents, Bailey said, will help determine whether the state should sue the federal government.

Bailey said he’s also supporting Hawley, who now serves in the U.S. Senate, as he seeks compensation for St. Louis residents who have developed cancer following exposure to the radioactive contamination. Hawley sought to add Missouri — along with southwestern states exposed to bomb testing — to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. The 35-year-old federal program, however, expired before the U.S. House of Representatives took a vote on extending and expanding it. 

Last month, Bailey wrote to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, demanding that the agency put up signs along Coldwater Creek, where there is currently no warning that radioactive contamination may be present. 

Gross’ criticism, Bailey said, was “an oversimplification and a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the attorney general’s office.” 

“I’m not withholding any tool at our disposal to ensure transparency, accountability and justice for the victims,” Bailey said. 

Gross said “writing letters is one thing.“Getting results is something entirely different.” 

Scharf called Bailey’s Freedom of Information Act request “a good start” but said he’d like to see if the state could sue the federal government or the private company that dumped waste in the West Lake Landfill.

“My strong suspicion,” Scharf said, “is that there is much more that can be done, from a legal perspective, to vindicate the rights of Missourians…who have been grievously injured by the federal action, federal inaction and the federal cover up here.”

The Independent’s Jason Hancock and Anna Spoerre contributed to this story.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey addresses a crowd at the state Supreme Court Building after being sworn into office on Jan. 3, 2023 (photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's Office).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey doesn’t believe he should have to sit for a deposition over an alleged ethics breach by his office, arguing in a motion filed Thursday that a judge must reverse her “unprecedented order.”

Clay County Circuit Court Judge Karen Krauser issued an order last week allowing attorneys for Jackson County to question Bailey under oath about his interactions with a county official that appeared to have violated rules of professional conduct set by the state Supreme Court.

Bailey’s office is suing Jackson County over its property assessment process. 

Attorneys are not allowed to communicate about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case by another lawyer without consent. Members of the Jackson County Legislature are represented — along with the county executive and other defendants in the case — by the Jackson County Counselor’s Office.

In a motion filed Thursday, Bailey’s office called the judge’s order “incorrect as to the facts and the law” and argued it disregards a rule against depositions of top-level agency officials. Legal experts interviewed by The Independent said forcing a sitting attorney general to sit for a deposition was highly unusual. 

Beyond that, Bailey’s office argues, the attorney general’s interactions with the county official, Sean Smith, amounted to “a brief, casual meeting between two elected officials and their campaign staffs unrelated to the lawsuit but where, at most, a passing remark was made about the lawsuit.”

“This order chills the attorney general’s free-speech rights on the campaign trail and effectively imposes an unconstitutional prior restraint on his speech, as well as on the speech of others that talk to him, which the attorney general cannot control,” Bailey’s motion states. 

Bailey included the motion — along with a motion to disqualify Jackson County’s attorneys from representing the county legislature — in a press release announcing the filing. Neither document shows as having been officially filed on the state courts website.

In the motion to disqualify, Bailey said Jackson County attorneys’ representation of legislators poses an “egregious conflict of interest.” 

Questions about Bailey’s interactions with Smith arose as part of his lawsuit against Jackson County over its property assessment process. 

Bailey’s lawsuit claims Jackson County violated a law requiring it to offer physical inspections to homeowners whose properties had increased in value by more than 15%. 

Jackson County has denied the accusations and argued Bailey waited too long to file the case since tax bills have already been paid and money distributed. Beyond that, the county argues, the attorney general can’t file a case unless the State Tax Commission has attempted to resolve the issue first.

A spokeswoman said the county does not comment on ongoing litigation. 

Krauser’s order came in response to a motion for sanctions filed by attorneys for Jackson County, arguing both Bailey and a deputy violated attorney conduct rules when they discussed the case with Smith. 

But while the county has maintained that it did not violate the law when it reassessed property values, Bailey’s motion says, some members of the legislature have acknowledged problems with the process or called it illegal. He argues that poses a conflict of interest and that attorneys for the county cannot represent both the county and legislators. 

Legislators also passed a resolution calling for the results of the 2023 assessment process to be set aside and that property values be increased by 15% across the board. 

“Even though both the legislature and the other county entities are all defendants in this case, their interests are directly adverse,” Bailey said. “The Jackson County Counselor’s Office’s representation of the legislature while representing these other defendants is, therefore, improper and a conflict of interest.” 

Bailey’s motion cites statements made by only two legislators who took issue with the property assessment process. There are nine members of the Jackson County Legislature.

In his motion to vacate Krauser’s order requiring a deposition, Bailey said attorneys for the county had already been allowed to question staffers from his office over the meetings with Smith. The county attorneys, he said, didn’t present a compelling case about why they need testimony from Bailey himself.

Another staffer in Bailey’s office sat for a deposition about the meeting between Bailey and Smith but gave little information about the conversation beyond that the two discussed the property assessment case and discussed “preparing a joint statement regarding this lawsuit.”

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson in June 2022 holds up a copy of a bill he had just signed to increase the Kansas City Police Department's budget during a ceremony at the department headquarters. (Photo courtesy of the Missouri Governor's Office).

Kansas City officials have another chance next month to fend off an attempt by Missouri lawmakers to force the city to spend more of its revenue on policing. 

But despite opposition from Kansas City leaders and activists, there’s no formal campaign against the ballot initiative, which was previously passed by Missouri voters but later tossed by the Missouri Supreme Court over deceptive ballot language.

Instead, opponents of the proposal will try to get the word out without “gigantic checks,” said Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas.

“But I don’t pretend to think that will necessarily win the day,” Lucas said.

At issue is a question that will appear on Missouri voters’ August 6 primary ballot as “Amendment 4.” It asks whether the Missouri Constitution should be amended to require Kansas City to spend at least one-quarter of its general revenue on policing, an increase of close to $39 million.

Missouri voters previously approved the spending hike with 63% of the vote in 2022. But the measure was unpopular with Kansas Citians. In the Jackson County portion of Kansas City, more than 61% of voters rejected the amendment. It passed in Platte and Clay counties, which include suburban parts of Kansas City.

Lucas sued the state’s auditor and secretary of state, saying a summary printed on voters’ ballots “materially misstated” the cost of the proposal. He prevailed, and the Missouri Supreme Court ordered the election results be tossed out and a new vote be held.

The police funding amendment is one of two questions on Missouri voters’ August primary ballots. The other, passed last year by the Missouri General Assembly and appearing on the ballot as Amendment 1, would exempt child care facilities from paying property taxes in an attempt to “make child care more available” to “support the well-being of children, families, the workforce, and society as a whole.”

“We obviously have a child care facility shortage in our state,” state Sen. Travis Fitzwater said during a hearing on the property tax amendment last year. “We need to provide opportunities for folks that get child care.”

A “yes” vote on Amendment 1 supports amending the Missouri Constitution to allow child care facilities to be exempted from paying property tax. 

On Amendment 4, a “yes” vote supports amending the Missouri Constitution to increase the minimum amount Kansas City must spend on policing from 20% to 25%. A “no” vote would leave Kansas City’s spending obligations at 20%, though city officials could voluntarily spend more.

Police funding campaign

The police funding dispute stems from the Kansas City City Council’s attempt in 2021 to impose some control over the Kansas City Police Department’s Budget.

For more than 80 years, the Kansas City Police Department has been controlled not by the City Council but by a board of commissioners appointed by Missouri’s governor. The only city in the state and one of few in the nation that doesn’t control its police, Kansas City simply provides the funds for the department.

While the city was obligated between 1958 and 2022 to provide the funding requested by the board — up to 20% of the city’s general revenue — it has little control over how it is spent. 

The city has often exceeded its 20% obligation.

But following racial justice protests that took place in Kansas City — and across the nation — in 2020, City Council members attempted to set aside $42 million in police funding above its obligatory spending for “community engagement, outreach, prevention, intervention and other public services.”

The move was criticized by Republicans in the Missouri General Assembly who voted to increase Kansas City’s obligation to 25% of its revenue. 

“Kansas City’s short-sighted move to defund the KCPD, if attempted again, will have lasting and dangerous consequences for our metro area,” state Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer said in a committee hearing in 2022, when the amendment was approved by lawmakers.

Luetkemeyer, who lives in the suburbs of Kansas City, carried the legislation in 2022 to increase the city’s police spending obligations. He did not return a request for comment.

The 2022 legislation passed the Missouri General Assembly on a largely party-line vote with Republicans supporting the increased police spending and Democrats opposing it. 

Lucas said voting no was the “only common sense solution.”

Residents of Kansas City, he said, should be the ones to determine the policy direction of the city by electing local representatives. He said one year the council may need to increase police salaries and the next it may need to spend money on other needs, like firefighting. 

“Who should tell you that, ‘No, you can’t actually take care of your firefighters; you can’t take care of the nurses in your public hospital because you have to live by whatever Jefferson City is doing just for pure political pandering?’” Lucas said. 

Lora McDonald, executive director of the Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity, or MORE2, called the attempt by state lawmakers to force Kansas City to spend 25% of its revenue on policing “a political ploy.”

“Why do you care what our police department has or doesn’t have?” McDonald said. “It’s not your business. It’s not your money.”

Lucas said there was “no organized campaign” to persuade voters to reject the amendment.

Last month, the Missouri Supreme Court allowed the issue to go on the August ballot rather than the November one, giving supporters and opponents just over two months to mobilize voters.

According to Missouri Ethics Commission records, no spending committees have been organized to advocate for or against Amendment 4, and no independent groups have spent money in the race.

Child care tax credit

Along with the Kansas City police question, Missouri voters in August will get to decide whether to amend the state constitution to offer a property tax exemption for child care facilities. 

The proposal, championed during the 2023 legislative session by Fitzwater, is one of several attempts by lawmakers in the last few years to ease the shortage of child care facilities in Missouri. 

This spring, Parson and lawmakers attempted to pass a package of child care tax credits, but the legislation stalled in the Senate because of ultra-conservative opposition to “welfare” or the attempt to “give away free child care.”

An investigation by The Independent and MuckRock found nearly one in five Missouri children lives in a “child care desert,” where there are more than three children under the age of 6 for every licensed child care slot — or no licensed slots at all.

“This is just one incentive to try to make that easier for the facilities,” Fitzwater said during a committee hearing on the property tax exemption last year. Fitzwater did not return a request for comment.

Fitzwater’s proposal was supported by an array of child care and economic development organizations and anti-abortion groups. 

Samuel Lee, a lobbyist for Campaign Life Missouri, said during discussion on the bill last year that the anti-abortion group supported the “pro-life, pro-family, pro-workforce development” legislation.

“The pro-life movement has generally not been involved in areas of childcare,” he said, “although for our maternity homes and pregnancy resource centers, the lack of available childcare, the lack of transportation, the lack of housing have always been the three major issues for their clients.” 

The Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry also supported the measure last year. Its lobbyist Heidi Geisbuhler Sutherland said business owners told the chamber that the lack of child care makes it difficult to find workers. 

“It’s going to take an all-of-the-above approach to tackling the child care crisis,” she said, “but I think this measure is a great way to start.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks to reporters after being sworn into office on Jan. 3. 2023 (photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's Office).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey does not believe it was improper to meet with a Jackson County official as his office sues the county, he told The Independent Thursday. 

Bailey’s comments came after a judge ordered him to sit for a deposition about the meeting, which may have violated legal ethics rules. In an interview, Bailey said his office was “weighing legal options to correct the mistake that we feel like the judge made in that case.”

“There’s nothing unethical for two Republican candidates for office to meet and talk about politics,” Bailey said.

Judge orders Missouri AG Andrew Bailey to sit for deposition over possible ethics breach

Clay County Circuit Court Judge Karen Krauser ruled Tuesday that Bailey could be questioned under oath as a form of sanction for meeting with Jackson County Legislator Sean Smith.  

The attorney general’s office is suing the county over its property assessment process, and the rules of professional conduct laid out by the Missouri Supreme Court prohibit attorneys from commuting about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case without their lawyer’s consent. 

The judge has already determined that one of Bailey’s deputies violated the rules.

Asked if he would sit for the deposition, Bailey said he was “going to do whatever the law requires.”

“But we don’t think it’s proper for the court to essentially attach a form of liability for two Republican candidates for political office who have a campaign-related meeting,” Bailey said.

Krauser’s order stems from meetings Bailey and one of his deputies, Travis Wood, had with Smith this spring. 

Attorneys representing both the county  and the county legislature said in a motion for sanctions that Bailey’s office showed a “blatant disregard for the Rules of Professional Conduct” in meeting with Smith without their knowledge. They asked for several sanctions, including dismissal of the case, disqualification of Bailey from litigating the case or for permission to take Bailey’s deposition.

“Based on what is known today, it is clear the Attorney General’s Office has been working with Sean Smith on trial strategy against Jackson County,” the county’s filing said.

Krauser, who is handling the case after all of the Jackson County Circuit Court judges recused themselves, ruled on Tuesday that attorneys for the county could require Bailey to sit for a deposition. 

“The Missouri Attorney General’s Office is not exempt from the requirements of the state ethical rules, and this court finds that Travis Woods…violated the Rules of Professional Conduct,” wrote Krauser, who is handling the case after Jackson County judges recused themselves.

The attorney general’s office has been in litigation with the county since December when Bailey sued over Jackson County’s property assessment process. The lawsuit names as defendants Jackson County and its legislature; County Executive Frank White Jr.; director of assessment Gail McCann Beatty; the Jackson County Board of Equalization; and Tyler Technologies, a software company hired by the county. 

The lawsuit claims the county violated the law when it assessed property values last year resulting in an average 30% increase in value across hundreds of thousands of properties. The lawsuit says more than 90% of residential properties saw their values increase, and values increased by at least 15% for three-quarters of properties.

The increase in property values means some owners will have to pay more each year in taxes. 

The attorney general claims Jackson County failed to notify owners of the property value increases and their right to a physical inspection — which is required before the assessor can increase a home’s value by more than 15% — in a timely manner. The county didn’t conduct all the required inspections before hiking values more than 15%, the lawsuit says. 

Jackson County has denied the accusations and accused Bailey of waiting too long to file the case since tax bills have already been paid and money distributed. Beyond that, the county argues, the attorney general can’t file a case unless the State Tax Commission has attempted to resolve the issue first.

Requiring the state’s top lawyer to sit for a deposition is exceedingly rare, according to legal experts. And the admonishment from the judge drew criticism from rivals vying for Bailey’s job.

“It is absolutely outrageous that this important litigation against Jackson County is now imperiled because Andrew Bailey wanted a quick hit for his campaign,” said Will Scharf, who is running in the Republican primary for attorney general against Bailey.

Bailey’s campaign responded with a statement criticizing Scharf for working in the scandal-plagued administration of former Gov. Eric Greitens and accused Jackson County of misleading the judge.

Elad Gross, who is running for attorney general as a Democrat, said on social media “we need to fire our corrupt attorney general.”

“Attorney General Andrew Bailey repeatedly violates Missouri ethics rules,” Gross said. “He takes money from opponents. He makes up facts. He sells out the people of Missouri for campaign cash and uses taxpayer resources to support his campaign.”

This story was updated at 2:55 p.m. to include a statement from Bailey’s campaign and correct a misspelling.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks in January 2023 to the Missouri chapter of the Federalist Society in the Missouri House chamber. A Clay County Circuit Judge ruled Tuesday that Bailey could be deposed over a possible ethics violation in the state's case against Jackson County over its property assessment process. (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey can be questioned under oath about interactions with a Jackson County official that appear to  have violated legal ethics rules, a judge ruled Tuesday. 

The order forcing Bailey to sit for a deposition — which legal experts interviewed by The Independent agreed was highly unusual — stems from meetings he and one of his deputies had with Jackson County Legislator Sean Smith. The attorney general’s office is currently suing the county over its property assessment process.

Under Missouri Supreme Court rules, attorneys are not to communicate about a lawsuit with individuals represented in the case by another lawyer without the consent of the other lawyer. Both Bailey and Travis Woods, an assistant attorney general, discussed the case with Smith, according to Clay County Circuit Judge Karen Krauser’s order.

“The Missouri Attorney General’s Office is not exempt from the requirements of the state ethical rules, and this court finds that Travis Woods…violated the Rules of Professional Conduct,” wrote Krauser, who is handling the case after Jackson County judges recused themselves.

Krauser’s order came in response to a request for sanctions, including the ability to question Bailey, filed by attorneys representing Jackson County. She did not grant other sanctions that were requested, including disqualifying the attorney general’s office from the case.

“Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and his office have exhibited a blatant disregard for the Rules of Professional Conduct in this case,” the motion filed by Jackson County says, “and their actions are sanctionable. Based on what we know so far, their actions were not innocent mistakes.” 

Both Jackson County and Bailey’s office declined comment. Smith did not return a request for comment.

In a filing in opposition to Jackson County’s, Bailey’s office accused the county of grasping for straws and said the rules don’t support “granting these radical requests.”

“This court should reject defendants’ latest attempt to distract from the facts and legal claims brought by the state government,” the state’s filing says.

Chuck Hatfield, a longtime Jefferson City attorney who served as chief of staff to former Democratic Attorney General Jay Nixon, said a lot of judges would be troubled by the meetings between the attorney general and Smith. 

Jackson County’s lawyers, Hatfield said, should have been informed.

“It almost looks like they intentionally kept it from (Jackson County’s lawyers),” Hatfield said, “and that’s quite unprofessional. And the judge appears to think it was unethical, and that seems like a valid judgment to me.” 

Hatfield said he wasn’t aware of a Missouri attorney general being deposed since John Ashcroft, who served in the late 1970s and early 1980s before going on to become Missouri governor, a U.S. senator and finally U.S. attorney general under President George W. Bush. 

“This is really unusual,” Hatfield said of Bailey’s impending deposition. 

Bailey filed a lawsuit in December over Jackson County’s property assessment process. It named as defendants Jackson County and its legislature; County Executive Frank White Jr.; director of assessment Gail McCann Beatty; the Jackson County Board of Equalization; and Tyler Technologies, a software company hired by the county. 

The lawsuit accuses Jackson County of failing to comply with the law when it assessed properties in 2023, resulting in an average 30% increase in value across hundreds of thousands of properties. The lawsuit says more than 90% of residential properties saw an increase in property value, and values increased by at least 15% for three-quarters of properties in the county. 

The increase in property value means owners will have to pay more in property taxes each year.

The attorney general claims Jackson County failed to notify owners of the property value increases and their right to a physical inspection — which is required before the assessor can increase a home’s value by more than 15% — in a timely manner. The county didn’t conduct all the required inspections before hiking values more than 15%, the lawsuit says. 

Jackson County has denied the accusations and accused Bailey of waiting too long to file the case since tax bills have already been paid and money distributed. Beyond that, the county argues, the attorney general can’t file a case unless the State Tax Commission has attempted to resolve the issue first.

Attorneys for Jackson County filed a motion for sanctions against the attorney general last month, citing the meetings Smith had with Bailey in April and Woods in May. 

“Based on what is known today, it is clear the Attorney General’s Office has been working with Sean Smith on trial strategy against Jackson County,” the county’s filing said.

The attorney general’s office filing in response says Smith has made numerous public statements criticizing the property assessment process.

“He has already testified at trial in this case, and in that testimony made clear that he believes Jackson County’s assessment practices were inappropriate,” the filing says. “He has voted on resolutions that are manifestly adverse to the rest of the county’s position in this case.” 

Even so, the filing says, the attorney general’s office has ceased communicating with Smith, who is running for the U.S. House as a Republican.

Krauser agreed with the county, writing in her order that Smith regularly consults with the county’s lawyers regarding issues central to the lawsuit and has power as an elected official to impact the case.

“This court has the authority to impose sanctions for conduct which abuses the judicial process, which includes violations of professional conduct,” Krauser wrote. 

After oral arguments in the case on Monday, the order says, Bailey’s office provided notes from Woods’ meeting with Smith. The notes didn’t include information subject to attorney-client privilege, Krauser wrote.

Another staffer in Bailey’s office sat for a deposition about the meeting between Bailey and Smith and their respective campaigns but gave little information about the conversation beyond that the two discussed the property assessment case and discussed “preparing a joint statement regarding this lawsuit.”

Smith posted to his campaign social media account that his team visited with Bailey. 

“Both of us feeling great about our races,” Smith said. “Thankful for the efforts of the AG in holding those responsible for our property tax debacle accountable.” 

Will Scharf, who is running against Bailey in the Republican primary for attorney general, said in a statement that the dispute was “yet another example of Andrew Bailey putting politics before his duties as attorney general.” 

“It is absolutely outrageous,” Scharf said, “that this important litigation against Jackson County is now imperiled because Andrew Bailey wanted a quick hit for his campaign.”

This story was updated at 5:38 p.m. to include newly-disclosed filings in the lawsuit.

Fireworks go off before a game at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City last year. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said he doesn't think the Kansas City Chiefs want to leave Arrowhead for a new domed stadium in Kansas. (David Eulitt/Getty Images).

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said Monday he doesn’t think the Kansas City Chiefs want to leave Arrowhead Stadium for Kansas, though he acknowledged he hasn’t actually talked to the team’s owners.

Speaking to reporters after a bill signing in Kansas City, Parson said he thought the reigning Super Bowl champion wasn’t that interested in building a new domed football stadium.

“I think they really want Arrowhead to stay,” Parson said. “I think it’s a unique arena.”

Parson’s remarks came after he spent the afternoon meeting with Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and other area officials to discuss how to keep the Chiefs and Kansas City Royals in Missouri.

Both teams have publicly considered the possibility of leaving for Kansas after Jackson County voters rejected a proposal to extend a 3/8-cent sales tax to help finance a downtown Kansas City baseball stadium for the Royals and upgrades to Arrowhead. 

Last month, Kansas lawmakers expanded a state tax incentive program in the hopes of convincing one or both teams to relocate.

“I’m not too worried about Kansas at this point,” Parson said.

Parson, who leaves office in January, said he expected to see Missouri put forward a plan to keep the teams by the end of the year. Missouri’s plan, he said, could be just as good for the teams — if not better.

First, he said, information on the teams’ plans — including location of stadiums, costs of the project and details of any entertainment district or other development planned around it — needs to be made public. 

With Parson’s impending departure from office, Missouri’s next governor could be left to finalize any plan to keep the teams. Two of the three top candidates for the GOP gubernatorial nomination say they would oppose any incentive package for the Chiefs and Royals. 

Asked if that affects negotiations, Parson said the state has tools at its disposal even now while the Missouri General Assembly is not in session “if we knew what the plan was.” 

“The conversation needs to be had with the Royals — where are you going to put a stadium?” Parson said. “How much money do you need? What’s it going to cost for this? How are we going to pay for this? What incentives does the city have?”

Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson — who will likely become the next speaker of the House — told the Kansas City Star Monday that he expects Jackson County residents will wind up voting again over the stadium sales tax. He also told The Star, following conversations with both the Chiefs and Royals, that it was clear both teams wanted to stay in Missouri.

After Kansas lawmakers passed legislation designed to relocate the teams, Patterson told The Star he thought a second Jackson County vote would be successful.

“I think now with the Kansas option staring us, staring us right in the face, I think that changed the dynamic, and it would be a different vote next time around,” he said.

Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr. said in a statement after meetings with Parson that the two had a “productive conversation centered on the pride these teams bring to our community and the importance of developing a fair and sustainable plan for the future.” Before White can support a new stadium proposal, he said, “it must offer clear and significant benefits to the taxpayers of Jackson County,” something he argues the sales tax does not.

White said he’s hopeful that the state will continue to support the effort to keep the teams in Missouri even after Parson leaves office.

“Together, we can find a solution that ensures the Chiefs and Royals remain a proud part of Jackson County without compromising the financial well-being of our community,” White said.

The Royals’ Kauffman Stadium and Arrowhead sit next to each other and share the parking lot of the Truman Sports Complex in east Kansas City.

The teams’ plans for the Jackson County sales tax were criticized by some, including White, as vague and incomplete. 

But Kansas lawmakers saw in the failed Jackson County vote a chance to lure the teams across the state line. They claimed Missouri had “dropped the ball” and it was up to Kansas to keep the teams in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Last month, Kansas lawmakers expanded the state’s Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond to help finance up to 70% of the cost for one or both teams to move to Kansas. The expanded program could yield hundreds of millions of dollars for the stadiums.

STAR Bonds are issued to help pay the construction costs and then repaid by the sales tax collected at the project site. Normally, STAR Bonds, which are meant to help build tourist and entertainment venues, are limited to 50% of the project costs. 

The legislation, signed by Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly last month, was criticized by Missouri officials who considered it a violation of an agreement Kelly and Parson reached in 2019 to stop using economic incentives to move companies and jobs back and forth across the state line.

Neither the Chiefs nor the Royals were available to comment.

This story was updated at 8:48 a.m. with comments from Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson and Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr. 

Gov. Mike Parson, seated, holds up legislation he just signed offering a tax break to private developers expanding the National Nuclear Security Administration's south Kansas City campus. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent)

Developers planning to expand a Kansas City facility manufacturing nuclear weapons components will get a break on sales tax under legislation Gov. Mike Parson signed Monday.

Parson held a signing ceremony at the site, currently a gravel lot across from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s south Kansas City campus. The expansion is expected to cost more than $3 billion and add more than 2 million square feet of space to the campus.

Lawmakers present Monday predicted the expansion would add about 2,000 high-paying jobs in south Kansas City.

“To have that kind of investment anywhere in the state, especially here, is a big deal for the entire state and a big deal for this community,” Parson said.

For years, Honeywell International Inc. has operated the National Nuclear Security Administration’s plant manufacturing non-nuclear parts for the U.S. nuclear weapons program.

Missouri legislators pass tax break for Kansas City nuclear weapons campus expansion

But proponents of the tax break say the facility needs to expand to accommodate work the NNSA will need to modernize and refurbish the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. 

“You’re talking about securing the country and making sure that this country stays safe,” Parson said Monday.

Lawmakers passed the tax break overwhelmingly this spring, largely citing the potential economic boon of the new jobs. The sales tax exemption on construction materials for the project is expected to divert more than $150 million in state, county, city and Kansas City zoo sales tax revenue over 10 years, according to a fiscal analysis that noted the exact cost couldn’t be verified. 

Legislative staff wrote that the bill’s “fiscal impact could be significant.”

The legislation had support from both Democrats and Republicans and was championed by now-former Missouri Sen. Greg Razer, a Kansas City Democrat.

At the signing event Monday, Razer called the tax break a “no-nonsense piece of legislation.” He said the Honeywell expansion would be “transformational” for south Kansas City, Grandview and surrounding communities.  

“This is high-paying jobs in these communities,” Razer said, “and as Kansas City continues to grow and have a renaissance, we’ve got to make sure that every corner of Kansas City grows and is involved in that renaissance. That’s what’s happening here today.”

The University of Kansas Health System, which has its primary location in Kansas City, Kansas, has entered a partnership Liberty Hospital in Missouri. News of the deal last fall sparked discontent among some state lawmakers. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent)

Despite resistance from lawmakers in both Kansas and Missouri, Liberty Hospital has officially joined the University of Kansas Health System, executives announced Monday.

Leaders of the health system announced the completion of the merger Monday in a short video Monday alongside the CEO of Liberty Hospital, located in the Kansas City suburbs north of the Missouri River.

Liberty’s leadership began looking in May 2023 to partner with another health system to help the hospital meet growing demand. It announced in October that it had chosen the University of Kansas. 

Raghu Adiga — who served as Liberty Hospital’s CEO and now is CEO of the Liberty market for KU — said the hospital’s board of trustees evaluated more than 30 potential partners. He said he’s “more than convinced” merging with the Kansas hospital system was the right decision.

“We share a commitment to putting patients first,” Adiga said. “We prioritize our people and believe in providing high quality care close to home. To have a strong community, we need to have strong healthcare. We believe this relationship not only strengthens Liberty Hospital, but the Liberty community and the entire Northland.” 

Missouri lawmakers debate blocking University of Kansas deal with Liberty hospital

Tammy Peterman, president of KU Health’s Kansas City Division, said about 35% of the health system’s patients currently come from Missouri, and KU already has clinics in the state. 

“We knew eventually we would need a way to care for more patients in Missouri and the Northland to keep care close to home,” Peterman said. “…So today is a big milestone for us as well: our very first hospital in Missouri.” 

Health system leaders did not take questions from journalists following the press conference. Asked about the terms of the deal, a spokeswoman for KU said in an email that the health system’s leaders are “celebrating the next couple of days” and were not available to comment.

KU and Liberty’s merger was met with disdain from some lawmakers in both Kansas and Missouri. Former-Missouri Sen. Greg Razer, a Kansas City Democrat, pushed legislation earlier this year to block the deal, calling it “mind boggling” and saying the idea of a Kansas health system owning a Missouri hospital felt “terribly wrong.” 

But supporters of the deal argued Liberty needed a larger hospital partner to be able to grow and make investments in its facilities. A Liberty board member told lawmakers this spring that if the hospital didn’t merge with KU, it could be purchased by a for-profit chain and stop offering some of its services, becoming “little bit more than a triage center.” 

Bob Page, president and CEO of the University of Kansas Health System, said it’s “incredibly difficult in health care today to remain a completely independent hospital” like Liberty.

“They found a new path forward to ensure they could continue to deliver high quality care in the Northland for generations to come,” Page said. “By becoming part of this health system, they will be able to offer some of the most advanced treatments and expertise anywhere in the country.”

Razer’s legislation made it out of a Senate committee but never received a floor vote. 

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey also opposed the merger, writing in a letter to Senate leadership in January that the deal was illegal unless the Missouri General Assembly signed off on it. An attorney for Liberty said, however, that the deal was structured to comply with state laws. 

Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, a Republican from Andover, expressed frustration about the merger in a committee meeting in November, saying struggling hospitals in Kansas could have benefitted from a partnership with KU.

And Kansas Sen. J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican, filed legislation that would have required KU get permission from the Kansas Legislature before entering a deal that involves acquiring, building, repairing or improving property outside of Kansas. The bill never got a hearing.

In the meantime, the systems were working toward a finalized deal that is expected to include investment in Liberty’s facilities. 

Peterman said over the coming months, KU leadership will learn more about how Liberty operates and how it can be best integrated into the health system. 

“This includes everything from inpatient and ambulatory care to supply chain and branding,” she said. “Ultimately, we want to ensure we are one health system offering a seamless and consistent patient experience.”

A sign warns of radioactive material at the West Lake Landfill. Thousands of tons of nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project were dumped there in the 1970s (Theo Welling/Riverfront Times).

Crews working to clean up the West Lake Landfill in St. Louis County detected contamination in nearby groundwater, forcing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to investigate whether radium might have left the site.

In a periodic update to nearby communities last month, the EPA said it would add groundwater monitoring wells around the site, which sits in Bridgeton, about a mile from the banks of the Missouri River. 

The expansion, which came after contamination was detected at the edge of the landfill, will help determine whether contamination may be migrating from the site and whether it could reach the river. Radium has been detected near the site at slightly above drinking water limits, the EPA said in a statement, but the radioactive element also occurs naturally in rock formations and aquifers.

Initially, the EPA had anticipated all necessary groundwater wells would be installed by August 2022, the project manager for the groundwater remediation at West Lake, Snehal Bhagat, said in a briefing in December.

“But the detections in offsite locations required a significant expansion of the network in order to delineate exactly where the impacts are found,” Bhagat said, “so a lot more wells were put in. We’re still putting them in as we chase the edges of the impacts.”

EPA: Radioactive contamination at West Lake landfill is more widespread

The West Lake Landfill, formerly a municipal landfill, is one of several sites in the St. Louis area contaminated by decades-old nuclear waste. 

St. Louis was pivotal to the development of the world’s first atomic bomb in the 1940s. Uranium refined in downtown was used in experiments in Chicago as part of the Manhattan Project, the name given to the World War II-era nuclear weapons program. 

After the war, radioactive waste from the downtown uranium plants was trucked to the St. Louis airport, often spilling off of trucks along the way, and dumped, unprotected on the ground next to Coldwater Creek. The creek, which runs through what are now bustling suburbs, was contaminated for miles, increasing the risk of cancer for generations of children who played on its banks and in its waters.

The waste sat at the airport for years before being sold and relocated to a property in nearby Hazlewood, also adjacent to the creek. In the early 1970s, after valuable metals were extracted from the waste, it was trucked to the West Lake Landfill and dumped illegally. It remains there today.

Now, the landfill is a Superfund site subject to EPA cleanup, and in recent years, the agency has discovered the contamination is more widespread than it thought. Despite outcry from the community, the EPA, for years, relied on a decades-old radiation reading taken from a helicopter to determine where the waste was.

Now, it’s working to determine the “size and mobility of the plume.”

“To date, no conclusions have been made about the source(s) of the radium in off site groundwater because data collection is ongoing,” Kellen Ashford, a spokesman for the EPA’s regional office said in an email.

Dawn Chapman, a co-founder of Just Moms STL, a nonprofit that formed to advocate for communities near contaminated sites around St. Louis, said she was concerned that the EPA hadn’t yet identified the edges of the contamination. 

Given both the radioactive waste and the other chemical contaminants that are in the landfill, she feared it could be “one hell of a nasty plume.”

Chapman noted the parties responsible for the site — the landfill’s owner, the company that dumped the waste and the U.S. Department of Energy — are nearing the end of the process to plan the cleanup at West Lake. 

“I really would have hoped,” Chapman said, “that by now they would have found the edge.”

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly at a campaign event in 2022 (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector).

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly on Friday signed legislation that offers hundreds of millions of dollars to the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals to relocate from Missouri. 

The legislation, an expansion of one of the state’s tax incentive programs, could help finance up to 70% of the cost for one or both teams to build a new stadium in Kansas.

“We know that modernizing our economic development tools provides the opportunity to increase private investment into the state,” Kelly said in a news release announcing she had signed the bill along with an income tax cut for Kansas residents.

Missouri lawmakers criticize Kansas attempt to poach Royals, Chiefs

Both bills passed the Kansas Legislature earlier this week. Lawmakers argued during a special legislative session this week that Kansas needed to offer the Chiefs and Royals incentives to stay in the Kansas City area after voters in Jackson County, Missouri, rejected a 3/8-cent sales tax for the teams. 

Extending the sales tax would have helped finance a new Royals stadium in the Crossroads Arts District of downtown Kansas City. The Royals currently play at Kauffman Stadium next door to the Chiefs in the Truman Sports Complex, where both teams have had venues since 1973. 

The sales tax would have also financed upgrades to the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium.

The teams’ plans for the Jackson County sales tax were criticized by some as vague and incomplete. Jackson County Executive Frank White Jr. has said he is open to discussions to help keep the teams in Kansas City, Missouri, but wants to see a “complete and transparent plan that offers tangible benefits to our taxpayers.”

Kansas lawmakers, arguing Missouri had “dropped the ball,” expanded the state’s Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program to help finance up to 70% of the cost of the stadiums, which would have to hold 30,000 fans and cost at least $1 billion.

STAR Bonds are issued to help pay the construction costs and then repaid by the sales tax collected at the project site. Normally, STAR Bonds, which are meant to help build tourist and entertainment venues, are limited to 50% of the project costs. 

Bonds for the stadiums wouldn’t have to be repaid for 30 years, compared to the normal 20.

And both projects would be eligible to use funds from the state’s legalization of sports betting and the liquor taxes paid at the stadiums to help repay the bonds.

Neither team has pledged to move to Kansas, but both the Chiefs and the Royals welcomed the legislation when it passed the Kansas Legislature on Tuesday.

Missouri currently spends $3 million annually on the Truman Sports Complex, part of a deal cut in 1989 to secure financing for construction of the St. Louis stadium now referred to as The Dome at America’s Center.

Missouri’s current fiscal year budget also includes $50 million from general revenue for “stadium and ground modifications, transportation, marketing, and additional event support” around Arrowhead for the FIFA World Cup.

Missouri legislative leaders have signaled they may respond to Kansas’ efforts to poach the Chiefs and Royals after the August primary, though no plans are currently in place.

Fireworks go off before a game at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri last September. Kansas lawmakers passed legislation that would offer incentives if the Kansas City Chiefs relocate from Arrowhead to Kansas and build a new stadium (David Eulitt/Getty Images).

State and local officials from Missouri denounced  Kansas legislators’ attempt to lure the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals across the state line, saying they would take steps to keep both teams.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, in a statement on Tuesday, said the city and state would continue negotiations with the teams that Missouri and Kansas City have “welcomed, funded and supported … since the 1960s.” 

“We remain in the first quarter of the Kansas City stadium discussion,” Lucas said. 

Kansas lawmakers on Tuesday passed legislation meant to help finance new stadiums for the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals in an attempt to relocate one or both teams from Missouri. The legislation, an expansion of the state’s existing Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program, could yield hundreds of millions of dollars for each stadium.

It comes after Jackson County, Missouri, voters in April rejected the extension of a sales tax to help finance a new downtown Kansas City baseball stadium for the Royals and upgrades to the Chiefs’ Arrowhead Stadium.

Kansas lawmakers who supported the STAR Bond legislation said it was necessary to keep the teams in the Kansas City area.

“We’re in jeopardy of Kansas City losing those franchises,” Kansas Sen. Jeff Pittman, a Leavenworth Democrat, said during debate on the bill Tuesday. “Missouri has dropped the ball. We now have an opportunity to make an offer.” 

Kansas Democratic lawmakers dined with Kansas City Royals on eve of stadium vote

After Kansas lawmakers’ vote, Missouri legislators said they hoped and expected to see the state put forward a plan. 

“It’s a wakeup call to Missouri that there are other states that are willing to do whatever it takes to get the teams,” Missouri House Majority Leader Jonathan Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, said in an interview Thursday.

Patterson, who is in line to become speaker of the House next year, said he expected to see Missouri put together a plan after this summer’s primary elections and before the Missouri General Assembly returns for its legislative session in January. He said it was possible legislators would be called back to Jefferson City for a special session but didn’t think it was necessary.

The Kansas legislation would help finance up to 70% of a stadium project — with a minimum $1 billion price tag and 30,000 seats — by issuing bonds to be repaid with the state sales tax collected in the STAR Bond district. Liquor taxes from the district and funds from the state’s legalization of sports betting also could be used to repay the bonds.

The offer remains in place for a year and is limited to National Football League or Major League Baseball teams in states adjacent to Kansas. 

Kansas’ attempt to poach the teams was seen by several Missouri lawmakers as a violation of a truce the two states reached five years ago to stop offering incentives to move businesses back and forth the state line in the Kansas City area. 

But Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, didn’t see it that way.

“The border war was really focused on businesses like AMC Theatres, which went back and forth, back and forth,” Kelly said. “We never discussed teams.”

For years, the two states engaged in an economic development “border war,” offering incentives to companies that jumped the state line, spending taxpayer funds while largely not creating any new jobs. 

“Today’s vote regrettably restarts the Missouri-Kansas incentive border war, creating leverage for the teams, but injecting even greater uncertainty into the regional stadium conversation,” Lucas said Tuesday. 

In a statement Tuesday, Jackson County, Missouri, Executive Frank White Jr. urged state and local governments to abide by the border war truce “and refrain from engaging in a counterproductive stadium bidding war.”

“We must focus on common sense over politics,” White said. “Our resources should be used wisely to improve the lives of our residents, not wasted on bidding wars that only serve to drain public funds and divide our region.”

White said in order to agree to subsidies for a stadium he expects “a complete and transparent plan that offers tangible benefits to our taxpayers.”

“My office remains open to conversations with the Royals, Chiefs, lawmakers, and other stakeholders, but any proposal must meet this standard and make sense for our community,” he said.

Missouri Sen. Denny Hoskins, a Warrensburg Republican, said the border war “didn’t benefit anyone” and saw Kansas’ push to relocate the teams as a violation. 

He said he wanted to see the Missouri Department of Economic Development make an offer to keep the teams, but he didn’t support the idea of lawmakers being called back to Jefferson City for a special session and didn’t want a package that could put taxpayers on the hook. 

“We want to keep the Kansas City Chiefs and KC Royals in the state of Missouri, but we can’t saddle taxpayers with billions of dollars in debt to help finance stadiums,” he said. 

Hoskins, who is running in the GOP primary for secretary of state, said he thought the Kansas plan was based on lofty revenue expectations and that the stadiums wouldn’t generate enough activity to pay off the bonds without additional assistance from Kansas taxpayers. He didn’t want to see Missouri put forward a similar plan.

“Missouri taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for financing stadiums for billion-dollar corporations and multimillion-dollar athletes,” he said. “It’s hard enough being a Missourian right now just trying to keep your own money in your pocket, let alone financing stadiums for a billion-dollar industry.” 

Patterson called the border war talk “somewhat irrelevant.” 

“It’s obvious that Kansas is going to act,” he said, “and I think we should focus on acting ourselves and not crying about some sort of truce that may or may not have been agreed to regarding the teams.”

A red-clad crowd packs Arrowhead Stadium to watch the Kansas City Chiefs play (Eric Thomas/Kansas Reflector).

TOPEKA, Kansas — The Kansas City Royals and Chiefs could receive hundreds of millions of dollars in sales tax revenue to move from Missouri and build new stadiums across the state line under legislation passed Tuesday by Kansas lawmakers.

The House voted 84-38 and the Senate voted 27-8 to approve legislation that would expand a state incentive program in an attempt to lure one or both teams from Kansas City. 

The bill now heads to Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, who said in a statement following the Senate vote that the effort to bring the teams to Kansas “shows we’re all-in on keeping our beloved teams in the Kansas City metro.”

“Kansas now has the opportunity to become a professional sports powerhouse with the Chiefs and Royals potentially joining Sporting KC as major league attractions, all with robust, revenue-generating entertainment districts surrounding them providing new jobs, new visitors and new revenues that boost the Kansas economy,” Kelly said.

Neither team has promised to move to Kansas, though both actively lobbied for the legislation’s passage. The Chiefs said in a statement that the team appreciated Kansas leaders reaching out for input on the legislation.

“We look forward to exploring the options this legislation may provide,” the statement said. 

The Royals said the team was grateful to the legislature for its vote. 

“The Kansas City Royals look forward to additional conversations as we evaluate where we will play baseball in the future,” the team said. “We will always prioritize the best interests of our fans, associates and taxpayers in this process.”

State Rep. Sean Tarwater, a Republican from Stilwell, said during debate in the House that Missouri had a history of losing professional sports teams and implored fellow House members to pass the legislation.

“I ask you today, do you really want to put that type of an economic generation in the hands of the state of Missouri?” Tarwater said just before the vote.

Passage of the bill represents a monumental step in Kansas lawmakers’ attempts to court the teams. Both teams have signaled a willingness to move from their current stadiums at the Truman Sports Complex in Kansas City, Missouri.

While neither team has announced a proposed site for a Kansas stadium, legislators speculated it could land in Wyandotte County near the Sporting KC soccer stadium, NASCAR track and outlet shops.

“We have the history of building amazing projects that have brought in retail commerce, restaurants, hotels and have improved an area that was largely just a field and turned it into a tax-generating machine for our state,” said state Sen. J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican.

The legislation, he said, would put Kansas in a “very good position to keep the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals in the Kansas City metro area.” 

The bill, which was not voted on by any legislative committee, would expand the state’s Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program, which is meant to help finance tourism and entertainment districts to help pay for a professional football or baseball stadium of at least $1 billion.

A developer building a stadium under the program would be eligible to finance up to 70% of the project cost by issuing bonds and repaying them with the increased sales tax collections from the stadium site. The expansion would have initially allowed up to 75% of project costs but was tweaked before introduction. Debt on a stadium constructed under the expansion wouldn’t have to be repaid for 30 years instead of the normal 20.

The project could also receive a boost from liquor taxes generated in the STAR Bond district and revenues from a fund Kansas created when it legalized sports betting.

During House debate, state Rep. Paul Waggoner, a Hutchinson Republican, argued subsidized stadiums never generate the economic activity that they promise. He was alarmed by what he called “minimal transparency” in the deal-making process laid out in the legislation.

The bill says any agreement between the state and a team would be confidential until after it has been executed.

Waggoner called the legislation “bad public policy.”

“This is not your mother’s STAR Bonds,” Waggoner said. “This is a jacked up super-sized version of STAR Bonds.”

The bill limits the eligibility to National Football League or Major League Baseball teams currently near Kansas. The financing mechanism could be used for both stadiums and training facilities.

Both teams have pressed lawmakers in recent weeks to pass the bill with representatives from the Royals hosting dinner for Democratic lawmakers at a steakhouse Monday night and the Chiefs throwing a lunchtime block party Tuesday steps from the Capitol.

Earlier this month, a nonprofit called Scoop and Score Inc. launched to advocate for a Kansas stadium deal. The organization, which does not have to disclose its donors, hired 30 lobbyists to advocate for the STAR Bond expansion legislation. 

In a statement, former Kansas House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr., a lobbyist for Scoop and Score and the Chiefs, said the Legislature “stepped up in a big way, paving the path to make sure the Chiefs stay right where they belong — in Kansas City with their loyal fans.”

“The votes show overwhelming bipartisan support because Kansas lawmakers know what the Chiefs mean to us and how big of an economic opportunity this is for Kansas,” Ryckman said.

Several lawmakers expressed skepticism about STAR Bonds or the deal in front of them but voted for it anyway.

State Rep. Jason Probst, a Democrat from Hutchinson, said the idea disgusts him and lamented that the legislature does not move as swiftly to pass bills on issues including homelessness, hunger or childhood poverty. But he still voted for the bill.

“So I’m going to hold my nose and probably support this,” he said, “but not without protesting the fact that we get sent here to do things for people, and we never move with this sort of urgency or with this sort of passion or the energy that we have around this.”

In a meeting of House Democrats before the vote, Probst said he thought the Chiefs were using Kansas to “get Missouri worked up” so the state would “sweeten the pot” and offer the team more incentives to stay put.

Probst said he was bothered that the Chiefs were making an emotional appeal, invoking sports heroes, while being thin on details. Still, he said, it would be “catastrophic” if the Chiefs left the Kansas City metro area.

“I do not like this. It feels gross,” Probst said. “This whole show that’s going on feels disgusting to me. And it’s still the right thing to do. That’s how I see it.”

State Rep. Stephanie Sawyer Clayton, an Overland Park Democrat, said during that meeting that she was struggling with the proposal “because I don’t like misogynistic dude bro culture,” because the family that owns the Chiefs supported the anti-abortion constitutional amendment that Kansas voters rejected in 2022. She said she also doesn’t like Ryckman.

But, she said, her decision to support the bill was cemented when she saw testimony from the governor’s office that suggested the governor planned to sign the bill if passed. 

Clayton said it would “warm the cockles of my cold, dead feminist heart” to see Kelly get credit for moving the teams from Missouri “and not the dude bros who have been working on this.”

“That is why I’m a ‘yes,’” Clayton said. “I want a woman getting credit for sports things. So I’m doing it out of spite, frankly.”

Across the rotunda, state Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Republican from Louisburg, argued STAR Bonds had generally not created anything new but rather subsidized development that likely would have occurred anyway.

“I understand the excitement behind the prospect,” she said. “It is like it’s Christmas Eve and there’s visions of sugar plums, only its royal blue and crimson and gold in this case.”

Brady Singer of the Kansas City Royals throws in the first inning against the Houston Astros at Kauffman Stadium in April (Ed Zurga/Getty Images).

LAWRENCE, Kansas — On the eve of a vote that could yield $750 million for a new Kansas City Royals baseball stadium in Kansas, a team executive met with several Democratic state lawmakers at a local steakhouse.

Brooks Sherman, chief operating officer for the Royals, and lobbyists hosted lawmakers at the Six Mile Chop House and Tavern on Monday “to talk about the Royals interest in Kansas,” according to an email from a lobbyist inviting Kansas House and Senate Democrats.

Outside the restaurant, lawmakers said they weren’t concerned about the idea of their votes on legislation worth hundreds of millions of dollars being influenced over dinner.

“It happens,” said Sen. Marci Francisco, a Lawrence Democrat. “Most of the discussions in the legislature go on behind closed doors.”

The meal came the night before lawmakers were expected to vote on whether to expand a state tax incentive program to help finance a new stadium for the Royals or the Kansas City Chiefs to lure the teams from Missouri.

Chiefs, Royals ask Kansas for incentives to allow teams to leave Missouri

The bill, which was discussed in an informational hearing Monday, would enhance the state’s existing Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program to provide up to 75% of the project’s cost for a professional football or baseball stadium project with a minimum $1 billion investment. STAR Bonds are issued to pay for the construction and repaid by the increased state sales tax revenue at the project site.

Normally, STAR Bonds, which are intended to help pay for tourism and entertainment destinations, are only authorized to finance up to 50% of a project. Debt on a stadium constructed under the expansion wouldn’t have to be repaid for 30 years instead of the normal 20.

The project could also receive a boost from liquor taxes generated in the STAR Bond district and revenues from a fund Kansas created when it legalized sports betting.

The Chiefs shut down a city block near the Capitol in Topeka for a rally at the Celtic Fox restaurant at lunchtime Tuesday.

On her way into the restaurant, Francisco said she wasn’t supporting the current bill but would be interested to know whether the Royals would support a standalone deal. She wasn’t sure what level of impact dinners with lobbyists have on lawmakers’ overall support.

Francisco said she was uncomfortable that revenue information from the project would not be released and that there was not enough public testimony on the legislation.

Rep. Jerry Stogsdill, a Democrat from Prairie Village, said it was “par for the course” for lawmakers to get lobbied at evening events. He said he has discussed issues with lobbyists and asked for information but that in his eight years in the Legislature he has never been influenced to change his vote on an issue.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a single person in there tonight that is going to be persuaded to vote against their conscience and against their constituents,” he said.

Stogsdill said he imagined he’d vote for the legislation and thought a stadium would be an economic boon to the community around it.

Sen. Ethan Corson, a fellow Prairie Village Democrat, said didn’t see Kansas’ efforts to help finance one or both stadiums as competing with Missouri. He’d be fine if the teams stayed in Kansas City, Missouri, but he said the Missouri Legislature is “beyond dysfunctional.”

“I worry about their ability to do anything, really,” Corson said, “so I think this is a chance to put something on the table so, that way, we can say we made a reasonable effort to keep the teams in the metro.”

Rep. Linda Featherston, an Overland Park Democrat, said Monday she declined to attend the lobbying event.

“I don’t want there to be any questions about undue influence,” she said.

Rep. Cindy Neighbor, a Shawnee Democrat, attended Monday’s dinner and recounted the sales pitch in a meeting of House Democrats Tuesday morning.

She said the Royals are looking at three potential sites in Wyandotte County where they could build a 34,500-seat stadium. The team, she said, believes its current home, Kauffman Stadium, is crumbling and that repairs would cost at least $800 million. It also doesn’t have enough office space or room for medical personnel.

Royals executives told attendees that most ticket buyers are from Johnson County, Neighbor said, and that the team is not interested in having conversations about staying where they are.

“The Royals do not feel welcome in Kansas City, Missouri, right now,” Neighbor said.

The Royals declined to comment.

Patrick Mahomes throws pass against the Buffalo Bills during the third quarter in the AFC Divisional Playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium on January 23, 2022 (Jamie Squire/Getty Images).

Representatives of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals urged Kansas lawmakers Monday to expand a tax incentive program to provide the teams millions of dollars to leave Missouri and set up shop in new stadiums across the state line.

“If we want to be major league we’ve got to have major league teams,” Korb Maxwell, an attorney who represents the Chiefs, told lawmakers during an informational hearing at the Kansas Statehouse. “This is the greatest opportunity we’ve had in any generation, and it’s here before us right now.”

Other proponents of the plan were more blunt: If Kansas doesn’t act, a group hoping to lure the teams to Kansas argued, the Kansas City region is at risk of losing its professional football and baseball teams.

“The risk that the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals — our Chiefs, our Royals — could be lured away by other states is not a risk that Kansans want to take,” said Dan Murray, a lobbyist for Scoop and Score Inc., a nonprofit hoping to bring the Chiefs to Kansas.

On the table Monday was a plan to expand the state’s tax incentive program meant to help finance tourism and entertainment destinations. Under the legislation, the teams could receive more than $750 million to help finance stadium projects.

The informational hearing came ahead of a special legislative session that starts Tuesday. Lawmakers can’t take action on the bill until the formal start of the special session.

The legislation would enhance the state’s existing Sales Tax and Revenue (STAR) Bond program to provide up to 75% of the project’s costs by issuing bonds that would be repaid with the increased sales state tax collections at the project site. Other projects can use STAR Bonds to finance up to 50% of a project.

The bill requires a minimum $1 billion capital investment and limits the eligibility to National Football League or Major League Baseball teams currently located near Kansas. The financing mechanism could be used for both stadiums and training facilities. 

Debt on a stadium constructed under the expansion wouldn’t have to be repaid for 30 years instead of the normal 20. 

The project could also receive a boost from liquor taxes generated in the STAR Bond district and revenues from a fund Kansas created when it legalized sports betting. 

Gov. Laura Kelly, who has championed enormous economic development projects in Kansas, didn’t commit to supporting the legislation on Monday.

“I’m impressed by the full-court press that has been made to get these teams to consider moving across the river,” she told reporters. “It’s not something I’m going to invest a lot of energy in. I think this is something for the legislature to work through.” 

Kelly’s chief of staff, Will Lawrence, told the joint committee the governor’s office had no concerns with the current version of the bill that would keep her from signing it. 

STAR Bonds have been criticized by some legislators as ineffective, and an audit found that less than one-quarter of the attractions funded through the program met the state’s goal of increasing tourism. There may be some cases, the audit says, where certain projects kept Kansans spending money in Kansas rather than going to Missouri. 

“But we think it’s more often that local visitors simply move existing economic activity from one part of Kansas to another,” the audit says. 

Moving the teams 

Kansas lawmakers launched an effort to lure the Chiefs or Royals — or both — after Jackson County, Missouri, voters in April rejected a proposed extension of a 3/8-cent sales tax to help finance a new stadium for the Royals and upgrades at Arrowhead Stadium. 

Maxwell said the organization had been asked why the legislation needed to be passed in special session rather than when lawmakers reconvene for their normal session in January. 

Because with only a few years left in the Chiefs’ lease at Arrowhead, “time is of the essence,” he said. 

“The time is now,” Maxwell said. “Missouri spoke, Jackson County spoke. They had their opportunity, but now there’s a moment for Kansas to step up.”

The effort to reauthorize the sales tax in Missouri was driven primarily by the Royals, whose executives unveiled plans to move to the Crossroads Arts District in downtown Kansas City in February — less than two months before the vote. It failed with 58% of voters rejecting the proposal.

Earlier this month, Scoop and Score Inc. launched to advocate for moving Chiefs — the reigning Super Bowl champions — to Kansas. The organization’s website implores visitors to sign a petition to “tell legislators to keep the Chiefs in KC!”

The organization has hired 30 lobbyists, including Murray. The Royals have eight lobbyists, and the Chiefs employ former Kansas House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr. and his former aide, Paje Resner, as lobbyists.

Ryckman said Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt could be open to moving the team outside of the Kansas City region. 

“We’re aware of numerous cities that would love to be the home of the Chiefs or the Royals,” Ryckman said. 

Murray urged lawmakers to support the legislation, arguing it has “guardrails, guardrails guardrails” to keep the state and local governments from being on the hook for the bonds.

While an attorney for the Chiefs acknowledged the franchise hasn’t come up with a design or plan for a stadium in Kansas, Murray urged lawmakers to move forward with creating a program. Vetting the details, he said, will be up to the Kansas Department of Commerce with final approval by the Legislative Coordinating Council, an eight-member committee of House and Senate lawmakers that can adopt legislation when the Legislature is not in session.

But a draft of the bill says any agreement between the state and a team would be confidential until after it has been executed. 

The bill was panned by libertarian groups as a handout for corporations that would do little to increase economic activity in Kansas. Dave Trabert, CEO of the Kansas Policy Institute, told the committee there was no way to verify the claims that the stadiums would boost the economy. 

“We asked Scoop and Score to provide their math. ‘Show us how you arrived at a billion dollars of economic activity,’’ Trabert said. “Nothing was forthcoming.”

In an interview, Trabert called the proposal “absurd.”

“This isn’t about economic development,” he said. “It’s about politics. It’s so people can say, ‘Look what I did. Vote for me.’”

Chickens gather around a feeder at a farm on August 9, 2014, in Osage, Iowa. Chicken houses are often constructed near processing facilities like Tyson's former plant in Dexter, Missouri. (Scott Olson/Getty Images).

Tyson Foods, Inc. “devastated” a Missouri town and “chicken farmers who put everything on the line” to raise animals for slaughter when it closed its Dexter plant, a lawsuit alleges. 

An owner of three poultry farms in Arkansas that raised chickens for slaughter at the plant, which closed last October, filed a lawsuit against the company in Stoddard County Circuit Court last week. Attorneys are seeking certification as a class-action lawsuit to represent other affected farmers.

The lawsuit claims Tyson engaged in an “anticompetitive and fraudulent scheme” to reduce competition for poultry and receive higher profits in selling its Dexter plant. Doing so, the lawsuit says, not only put plant employees out of work but suppliers and families who “took on millions of dollars of debt.”

“The Tyson chicken processing plant was the lifeblood of the Dexter community,” the lawsuit says.

Tyson, the world’s largest chicken producer, operated a processing plant in Dexter — population 7,864 — for 25 years. It held contracts with local producers within 50 miles of the plant to grow chickens for slaughter. According to the lawsuit, those farmers — some with no experience and no collateral — took out government-backed loans and invested huge sums to build facilities to Tyson’s specifications. 

But while the farmers invested in facilities to care for the chickens, Tyson retained ownership of the birds, the lawsuit says, which shifted the risk from the poultry company to the local producers.

“The chicken houses built to Tyson’s specifications and financed by poultry banks could be used for one thing and one thing only: Raising chickens for slaughter at Tyson’s plant in Dexter,” the lawsuit says. 

Refugees came to Noel for opportunity. Tyson’s plant closure leaves their futures uncertain

The company “shocked and devastated” the Dexter community in August when it announced the plant would close in November. Tyson also closed its Noel plant last fall.

After Tyson’s announcement, according to the lawsuit, it assured state and federal lawmakers from Missouri that it wouldn’t prevent a competitor from acquiring the plant to continue slaughtering chickens.

In a social media post in September, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, said Tyson’s CEO, Donnie King, assured him the company was willing to sell to competitors. 

“I hope Tyson is actively pursuing a sale that will save these jobs in Missouri,” Hawley wrote. “Second, he told me Tyson would help any farmer who wanted to keep raising chickens to do so, including helping them get new contracts with Tyson or other companies.”

But instead, it sold to Cal-Maine Foods, Inc., which produces eggs but does not slaughter chickens, which “decimated former Tyson chicken farmers…whose farms were financed and built exclusively for the chicken slaughter system.” Raising chickens for egg-laying “is an entirely different grow process.”

The redacted lawsuit filed in circuit court says the terms of a property use agreement reached by Tyson and Cal-Maine are illegal and will shut chicken farmers out of any market in Dexter for 25 years. Those terms are redacted.

But the result of the agreement, the lawsuit alleges, is “reducing the value of the farmers’ multi-million-dollar investments to nearly nothing” and boosting Tyson’s profits by reducing the supply of chicken to increase prices. 

Neither of the companies nor attorneys for the plaintiffs immediately responded to requests for comment.

Sprinklers irrigate a field in Hamilton County, Kansas, where some farmers have petitioned to be removed from a local groundwater management district. State lawmakers are pressuring the district to do more to conserve water in the Ogallala Aquifer. (Allison Kite/Kansas Reflector)

JETMORE, Kan. — An inch or two of corn peeks out of the dirt, just enough to reveal long rows forming over the horizon.

Sprinkler engines roar as they force water from underground to pour life into dusty fields.

Thunder cracks. The wind whips up dirt as a trail of dark storms looms. The crashing hot and cold fronts would probably set off tornado sirens — if there were any in this remote part of the state.

It’s spring in southwest Kansas, a hub for the nation’s crop, dairy and beef industries.

As the familiar seasonal rhythm plays out, some farmers are bracing for major changes in how they use the long-depleting Ogallala Aquifer. The nation’s largest underground store of fresh water, the Ogallala transformed this arid region into an agricultural powerhouse.

After 50 years of studies, discussions and hand-wringing about the aquifer’s decline, the state is demanding that local groundwater managers finally enforce conservation. But in this region where water is everything, they’ll have to overcome entrenched attitudes and practices that led to decades of overpumping.

“It scares the hell out of me,” farmer Hugh Brownlee said at a recent public meeting in the district on the changes to come.

Last year, Kansas lawmakers passed legislation squarely targeting the Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District, which spans a dozen counties. Unlike the two other Kansas districts that sit atop the crucial aquifer, this one has done little to enact formal conservation programs that could help prolong the life of the aquifer. The new law aims to force action.

The district has come under fire from legislators increasingly incensed by its substantial travel expenses, its lack of formal conservation policies and its alienation of farmers who are trying to save water. At a hearing in February on a bill meant to help farmers in one county leave the district, a Kansas House member floated the idea of doing away with the organization, also known as Groundwater Management District 3, altogether.

“Maybe that’s something that we need to consider — just dissolve GMD 3 so that these other boards that are doing good work are not affected,” said state Rep. Cyndi Howerton, a Republican from Wichita.

District leaders think the criticism is unfair. But even they acknowledge that painful change is brewing. Change that will force farmers to cut back.

Clay Scott, a farmer and rancher who has served on the district’s board for more than two decades, said most local farmers are ready to change. That’s partly because they don’t want to give the state a reason to impose its own restrictions, he said.

Scott said the problem of overuse has been generations in the making and can’t be reversed overnight.

“It’s going to take us time to turn this ship around,” he said.

But critics say the organization has already had plenty of time. Decades.

Agriculture built these High Plains towns. Now, it might run them dry.

“My biggest disappointment with GMD 3 is they’ve had 50 years to build a consensus on conservation and they failed to do it,” said Frank Mercurio, who works for a dairy with facilities across southwest Kansas and southeast Colorado.

The discussions here mirror those occurring not just across the eight Ogallala states (Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming) but also across the country. The dual threat of climate change and overpumping of groundwater threatens farming and agricultural communities coast to coast.

Outside the town of Syracuse, Kansas, Brownlee runs a small farm with dryland and irrigated fields divided by a curvy two-lane blacktop. More than 200 years ago, Mexican and American traders following the Santa Fe Trail crossed this part of the plains on ox-pulled wagons.

Brownlee, who farms part time and drives a propane truck, said he understands the shrinking water supply. But he thinks the state is to blame — not farmers. Decades ago, Kansas officials issued more water rights than the aquifer can sustain.

The state should fix that, rather than punishing farmers with across-the-board cuts, he said.

“They want to be able to flip the switch and just stop it,” Brownlee said. “That’s not going to do anybody no good.”

‘Should have been done 40 years ago’ 

In a community center on Main Street in Lakin, Kansas, a few dozen farmers in feed and seed hats last month pulled folding chairs off a big metal rack.

Just below the stained drop ceiling panels, a tilted projector shone onto a bare beige wall the district’s plans to comply with the new law. The first step: identifying priority areas for its conservation efforts.

An expert from the Kansas Geological Survey pointed to maps of the district. Blood red blots showed where aquifer conditions were most severe. In some parts of the district, the aquifer is already all but gone. Other areas have more than 60 years of water left even if they don’t cut back their usage.

But at this and a series of meetings across southwest Kansas, district leaders outlined plans to declare its entire territory a priority area. Some critics viewed the move as a stall tactic, but district leaders say it leaves all options available to them. The district in 2026 will have to present an action plan, which it says will reflect the huge variations in aquifer conditions.

Kansas’ chief engineer, Earl Lewis, who will evaluate the board’s plan and future conservation efforts, said the board likely can designate the whole region a priority, though he’s not sure it meets “the spirit” of the law.

In the series of meetings, farmers ran through familiar questions, concerns and excuses.

What about the farms pumping the aquifer down in Oklahoma?

What about all the new dairies and feedlots coming in?

What about city drinking water wells?

Crop irrigation accounts for 85% of all water use in Kansas — even more in western Kansas.

The group also discussed the possibility of paying growers to shut down their wells.

But one farmer said he can’t farm his sandy soil without irrigation. After the meeting, he declined to be named, saying he could get in big trouble for sharing his real feelings.

Local farmer Steve Sterling interjected at the first meeting in Garden City to say conservation planning “should have been done 40 years ago.” Some of his neighbors abandoned their farm when he was 12, he said. They were out of water.

Katie Durham, who manages Groundwater Management District 1 in western Kansas, drove south to attend some of the meetings in GMD 3. She said she hoped the farmers in attendance understood that change is coming under the new law.

“This is happening,” Durham said. “I just hope that urgency and sense of wanting to be involved and kind of taking ownership of the future on a local level — I just hope people are understanding that.”

‘This is a cultural thing’

Between the 1950s and the 1970s, Kansas created the fundamental problem that allows aquifer depletion by granting farmers the right to pump more water out of the aquifer each year than returns to it via rainfall. But the state has largely left it up to locals to find solutions to the problem.

The state charged the three groundwater management districts over the Ogallala with protecting both the agricultural economy and aquifer water. But their five-decade histories primarily have been marked by further decline of the Ogallala Aquifer. Two districts have made progress in recent years and helped farmers to slow, or even stop, the decline.

GMD 3 is different.

Burke Griggs, a water attorney who previously worked for the state, argues the southwest Kansas district isn’t doing much compared with the other two.

“The law is the same. The regs are basically the same,” he said. “This is a cultural thing.”

He argues the state should take a firmer stance in aquifer management.

“I think it’s time for a reckoning,” Griggs said.

District officials say farmers in GMD 3 have used 13% less water in the past 10 years compared with the decade before. But it’s unclear how much of that change is intentional — from conservation — or a reflection of the limited water available in the declining aquifer.

Though its territory is twice the size of the other two districts’ combined, the southwest Kansas district hasn’t accomplished as much. The other districts have offered financial assistance to farmers investing in water-efficient irrigation systems and championed large-scale restrictions on pumping.

GMD 3 has done none of that. Between 2010 and 2022, financial records show, the district spent, on average, only 13% of the money it budgeted for conservation. In most years, it didn’t spend anything on conservation.

Mark Rude, who has been the organization’s executive director for nearly two decades, said the district’s entire budget supports water conservation. The district takes in more than $1 million per year and spends 70% of that on salaries and benefits, according to financial documents received through a records request. The rest goes largely to office equipment, travel and other administrative costs.

“I mean, ultimately, that’s why we’re here,” Rude said, “and if you look at the $600,000-plus we (spend) on staff, why is the staff here?”

This summer, the district board will consider a 38% increase in the fee it imposes on water users, which is expected to raise more than $200,000 each year. Rude said that money would primarily be used to hire two new employees to help with grant projects offering technical assistance to farmers trying to conserve water.

Between 2010 and 2022, GMD 3 spent about four times as much on travel for Rude and staff as on water conservation. On average, the GMD pays more than $20,000 each year for Rude’s travel — plus another $20,000 for the rest of its staff members — compared with $10,000 for water conservation.

Last year, the district changed its financial statements, reporting fewer, broader categories. The new financial structure did not distinguish travel costs from other expenses.

Rude defends the spending by saying it’s necessary to build the partnerships and relationships needed to achieve district goals, including its aim of piping in water from out of state.

“How else do you do it?” Rude said. “Really, please show us: How else do you do it?”

House bill calls for western Kansas to create plans to save the Ogallala Aquifer

Last year, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle questioned Rude during a committee hearing on why the district wasn’t doing more to conserve groundwater.

State Rep. Lindsay Vaughn, an Overland Park Democrat, said during a legislative hearing that the district had 50 years to act but made no progress on addressing aquifer decline.

“The issue is only becoming more urgent,” Vaughn said, “and I am discouraged to see that there aren’t any real efforts right now to get the ball rolling and coming up with a long-term plan.”

The district’s lack of action also has drawn the attention of farmers who mounted a campaign to secede.

In 2022, Hamilton County farmers submitted a petition to withdraw from the groundwater district.

They characterized the organization as a bureaucratic mess with a ballooning budget that spends little on conservation, obstructs programs meant to slow groundwater decline and provides no benefits for dryland farmers who also pay assessments.

The petition criticized groundwater district leaders’ fixation on building an aqueduct across the state. The organization twice has trucked water 400 miles from the Missouri River to western Kansas in an effort to sell the idea.

In their petition, Hamilton County farmers said the project only managed to move and dump water with “no tangible benefit to anyone.”

Richard Geven, owner of the 10,000-head Southwest Plains Dairy, was among those who signed the petition to leave.

Geven, a native of the Netherlands who has been farming here for nearly 20 years, said he sees little reason for the groundwater district. When he has issues with his wells or needs clarity on water rights, he works with state regulators.

But he pays assessments every year to the district.

“We don’t know what the purpose is,” he said. “We think, ‘What are they doing? We don’t need them.’”

‘They will face the same choices’

Across most of the Ogallala states, governments have preferred to encourage voluntary conservation rather than mandating steep cutbacks, said Kevin Wagner, director of the Oklahoma Water Resource Center at Oklahoma State University.

Oklahoma allows farmers to use up to 2 feet of water each year on every acre they own. But usage is not monitored. Farmers report annual estimates of water usage.

And the state has not banned the drilling of new irrigation wells.

Researchers have closely monitored the decline of the aquifer across the Oklahoma Panhandle — it’s dropping about half a foot per year, he said.

But there’s no telling how much individual farmers are using or conserving.

“When I talk to producers in Oklahoma, there’s a lot of feeling that Oklahoma producers are doing just as good at conserving as their neighbors in Texas and in Kansas,” Wagner said. “And honestly there’s no data out there right now.”

Oklahoma state Rep. Carl Newton, a Republican, introduced legislation this year that would require irrigators to meter their water use.

The measure passed, but amid steep opposition from agriculture trade groups, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt vetoed it. He called it government overreach and a violation of private property rights.

Newton said he plans to reintroduce the bill, which he described as “a starting point” for conservation efforts.

“You’ve got to find out where your problem is to get an idea of where to go,” he said. “That was my whole goal.”

Kansas started requiring irrigators to install meters and report water usage in the early 1990s.

Formal conservation efforts have been underway in other parts of the region for years.

In Nebraska’s Republican River Basin, groundwater regulators have helped producers install soil moisture probes and more accurate meters that use telemetry to conserve. And Colorado offers a master irrigator course to help farmers grow crops more efficiently.

In Wichita County, Kansas, just beyond the bounds of GMD 3, farmers created a conservation program that launched in 2021. Called a local enhanced management area, farmers committed to cutting water use by at least 25%.

Farmer Don Smith said the program provided a chance for locals to act together before the state stepped in.

Smith, his brother and nephews together run Smith Family Farms, which grows corn, wheat and milo against a backdrop of massive wind turbines. Shiny grain bins emblazoned with the family name tower near the office, where a curious Australian shepherd keeps watch, rearing up on hind legs to peer through the door.

The farm is mostly dryland. Its irrigated fields draw upon 38 wells, connected to advanced sprinkler systems that help reduce water use. The farm also has transitioned to no-till methods, which keeps more moisture in the soil.

Smith said the farm shows that growers can save water and still make money. Lower water use does lead to lower yields, he said. But it also makes growing crops less expensive.

Smith knows the groundwater district just to his south has deeper wells and more abundant water. But the declining aquifer eventually will force changes there.

“I guess it’ll be interesting to see if at some point somebody responds before the gun’s to their head,” he said. “They will face the same choices we all north of them have had to face.”

In Wichita County, Smith said, test wells show the changes have slowed or even reversed aquifer decline. But even so, he doesn’t think irrigated farming will last forever. He expects the day will come when pumping small amounts of water won’t be worth the cost.

“We all understand that we are sucking water out of a bathtub,” he said. “And the rate we’re taking it out of the bathtub exceeds the rate Mother Nature can put it back in.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

A photo taken in 1960 of deteriorating steel drums containing radioactive residues near Coldwater Creek, by the Mallinckrodt-St. Louis Sites Task Force Working Group (State Historical Society of Missouri, Kay Drey Mallinckrodt Collection, 1943-2006).

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office on Wednesday scrapped a proposal to extend a compensation program for victims of radiation exposure without expanding it to thousands of Americans across nine states.

In a statement that came less than four hours after Johnson’s office said a proposal to expand the program was too expensive, a spokesperson said Republican leadership had decided not to bring the bill up for a vote next week. The statement said the decision came after discussions with U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, a Republican from the St. Louis suburbs.

Wagner said in a statement she was glad Republican leaders “listened to my concerns and those of my constituents and pulled the floor vote on this misguided proposal.” 

“We’re going to keep fighting for expansion…so Missourians impacted by radiation get the support and compensation they deserve,” Wagner said.

The existing Radiation Exposure Compensation Act expires in less than two weeks, and as the deadline nears, federal lawmakers have been caught between the need to extend the program to keep it available for people who already qualify and pressure to expand it to cancer patients from St. Louis to the Navajo Nation.

Members of Missouri’s Congressional delegation decried Johnson’s plan to extend the program without expanding it. Early Wednesday afternoon, Johnson’s spokesperson said Republican leaders were “committed to ensuring the federal government fulfills its existing obligations to Americans exposed to nuclear radiation.” 

“Unfortunately, the current Senate bill is estimated to cost $50-60 billion in new mandatory spending with no offsets and was supported by only 20 of 49 Republicans in the Senate,” the spokesperson said.

It’s unclear after leadership’s reversal whether a vote on an expanded program will be held before the law expires. 

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA, originally passed by Congress in 1990, offers compensation to uranium miners and civilians who were downwind of nuclear bomb testing in Arizona, Utah and Nevada. It expires June 10, and for months, advocates and members of Congress — especially from Missouri and New Mexico — have been lobbying Congress to expand it.

U.S. senators have twice passed legislation that would expand RECA, but it hasn’t gone anywhere in the House of Representatives. The legislation would add the remaining parts of Arizona, Utah and Nevada to the program and bring coverage to downwinders in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Guam. It would also offer coverage for residents exposed to radioactive waste in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska and Kentucky. 

Dawn Chapman, who co-founded Just Moms STL to advocate for communities affected by World War II-era nuclear waste that contaminated parts of the St. Louis area, called Johnson’s initial statement a “pitiful excuse.” 

Chapman welcomed Johnson’s change of mind and gave credit to Wagner, but she said advocates couldn’t sit an enjoy the victory because it’s unclear where the legislation will go from here.

“We went from feeling good to horrible to, I guess, good now,” she said.

Chapman and supporters of the legislation believe the $50-60 billion price tag is an overestimation, and she noted that cost is spread over five years. 

She said supporters have worked to cut the costs of the program, including narrowing the list of health conditions that would qualify for compensation. If costs were a concern, Chapman said, Johnson should have met with advocates to work on further cuts. 

Chapman said she’d return to Washington, D.C., next week, and “the least he can do is meet with us for 10 minutes.”

Johnson’s earlier position was revealed Tuesday evening on social media by U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, and sparked outrage among the state’s congressional delegation. 

U.S. Reps. Cori Bush, a Democrat from St. Louis, and Ann Wagner, a Republican from the nearby suburbs, vowed to oppose any extension of RECA that didn’t add Missouri.

On social media Wednesday afternoon, Hawley said the federal government “has not begun to meet its obligations to nuclear radiation victims.”

“(Missouri) victims have gotten zilch,” Hawley said. 

Parts of the St. Louis area have been contaminated for 75 years with radioactive waste left over from the effort to build the world’s first atomic bomb during World War II. Uranium refined in downtown St. Louis was used in the first sustained nuclear chain reaction in Chicago, a breakthrough in the Manhattan Project, the name given to the effort to develop the bomb. 

After the war, waste from uranium refining efforts was trucked from St. Louis to surrounding counties and dumped near Coldwater Creek and in a quarry in Weldon Spring, polluting surface and groundwater. Remaining waste was dumped at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, where it remains today. 

Generations of St. Louis-area families lived in homes near contaminated sites without warning from the federal government. A study by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found exposure to the creek elevated residents’ risk of cancer. Residents of nearby communities suffer higher-than-normal rates of breast, colon, prostate, kidney and bladder cancers and leukemia. Childhood brain and nervous system cancers are also higher. 

This article has been updated since it was initially published with an update that House Speaker Johnson reversed course and to add new comments from Dawn Chapman.

A sign warns of radioactive material at the West Lake Landfill. Thousands of tons of nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project were dumped there in the 1970s (Theo Welling/Riverfront Times).

A proposal to renew compensation for cancer victims who were exposed to radioactive material from the nation’s weapons development without expanding the program to Missouri and several other states amounted to a betrayal, Missouri advocates and lawmakers said Tuesday.

Members of Congress from Missouri learned late Tuesday that U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson plans to extend the federal program for two years despite pressure from communities harmed by nuclear bomb testing and waste to expand the program. 

The announcement dealt a huge blow to advocates from St. Louis, the Navajo Nation and other communities that have been left out of the program, originally created in the 1990s. The existing program covers civilians in parts of Arizona, Utah and Nevada and uranium miners. 

“I cannot believe how emotionally manipulated we feel that Speaker Johnson would sit back and allow sick and dying community members to beg him for a meeting for months — then to spend (an) hour and a half with staff only to have the door slammed in our faces!” Dawn Chapman, co-founder of Just Moms STL, said in a social media post.

Chapman was reacting to a post from U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, who said Johnson told Hawley’s office he’ll seek a bill that doesn’t cover either state. Hawley said he’ll put up roadblocks to keep any such bill from passing the Senate without a fight. 

“Total dereliction,” Hawley said. “No member from Missouri can possibly vote for this.”

Since last summer, Hawley has been pushing for an expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which was initially passed in 1990 and offered compensation to uranium miners and residents who lived downwind of nuclear bomb testing sites in certain states.

Hawley’s legislation, which has twice passed the U.S. Senate, would expand the program to “downwinders” in the remaining parts of Arizona, Utah and Nevada and bring coverage to downwinders in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Guam. It would also expand coverage to those exposed to radioactive waste in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska and Kentucky. 

The existing RECA program expires June 10, and advocates and lawmakers from states hoping to be brought into the program have been urging Congress to renew and expand it.

U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, a Republican from the St. Louis suburbs, said on social media that a RECA bill without Missouri “is dead on arrival.” 

“I will continue to fight for the expansion of RECA so Missourians are given the justice they deserve,” she said. “The House can and must take up the Senate-passed version.” 

U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat from St. Louis, also wrote on social media that “failing to expand RECA is not a viable option.”

“Next week, Speaker Johnson plans to rip off Missourians and thousands of others who are suffering from radioactive waste dumped in our backyards by the federal government,” Bush said. 

Parts of the St. Louis area have been contaminated for 75 years with radioactive waste left over from the effort to build the world’s first atomic bomb during World War II. Uranium refined in downtown St. Louis was used in the first sustained nuclear chain reaction in Chicago, a breakthrough in the Manhattan Project, the name given to the effort to develop the bomb. 

After the war, waste from uranium refining efforts was trucked from St. Louis to surrounding counties and dumped near Coldwater Creek and in a quarry in Weldon Spring, polluting surface and groundwater. Remaining waste was dumped at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, where it remains today. 

Generations of St. Louis-area families lived in homes near contaminated sites without warning from the federal government. A study by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found exposure to the creek elevated residents’ risk of cancer. Residents of nearby communities suffer higher-than-normal rates of breast, colon, prostate, kidney and bladder cancers and leukemia. Childhood brain and nervous system cancers are also higher. 

Johnson’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.

Karen Nickel, left, and Dawn Chapman flip through binders full of government documents about St. Louis County sites contaminated by nuclear waste left over from World War II. Nickel and Chapman founded Just Moms STL to advocate for the community to federal environmental and energy officials (Theo Welling/Riverfront Times).

Over the course of half a dozen trips to Washington, D.C., Dawn Chapman has become accustomed to long days of congressional meetings and questions about St. Louis’ decades-long struggle with radioactive contamination.

Chapman, co-founder of Just Moms STL, wraps her feet with duct tape to keep her shoes from giving her blisters, and she and fellow advocates pack their schedules with meetings to ask lawmakers to expand compensation for those exposed to the U.S. nuclear weapons program.

The months-long fight has drained the budget of the small nonprofit, founded about 10 years ago to advocate for communities exposed to nuclear waste in the St. Louis region.

Despite efforts by St. Louis activists, as well as communities across the southwest, Congress has yet to act. And with the federal government’s existing compensation program set to expire in two weeks, the decision has come down to the wire. 

“I definitely think we are on the winning side of this,” Chapman said in an interview with The Independent, “and I do feel hopeful. It’s just — I’m tired.”

Chapman and fellow advocates are asking Congress to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, originally passed in 1990 to compensate uranium miners and those who were exposed to atomic bomb testing in parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona.

But it excluded parts of the southwest, including New Mexico, where residents have developed cancer or had children with birth defects because of exposure to World War II-era bomb testing. 

It also didn’t include St. Louis communities that have struggled for decades with lingering contamination left over from efforts to develop the first atomic bomb.

The existing RECA program’s June 10 expiration date has set up a standoff between lawmakers from states already covered by the program and states, like Missouri, hoping to be included. But Chapman said she and fellow St. Louis-area activists will keep pushing even if the program isn’t expanded in the next two weeks.

“The reasons for RECA, the people that need it — they don’t disappear after June (10) regardless of what happens with this program,” she said. 

Parts of St. Louis have been contaminated for 75 years with radioactive waste left over from the effort to build the world’s first atomic bomb. Uranium refined in downtown St. Louis was used in the first sustained nuclear chain reaction in Chicago, a breakthrough in the Manhattan Project, the name given to the effort to develop the bomb.

After World War II ended, uranium was trucked from St. Louis to surrounding counties and dumped near Coldwater Creek and in a quarry in Weldon Spring, polluting surface and groundwater. Remaining waste was dumped at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, where it remains today.

Generations of St. Louis-area families lived in homes near contaminated sites without warning from the federal government. A study by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found exposure to the creek elevated residents’ risk of cancer. Residents of nearby communities suffer higher-than-normal rates of breast, colon, prostate, kidney and bladder cancers and leukemia. Childhood brain and nervous system cancer are also higher. 

An investigation by The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press revealed last summer that the government and companies that handled the waste knew of the dangerous contamination for years before they informed the public. Those revelations inspired a push by U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley to expand RECA to cover those exposed to waste in St. Louis.

Hawley’s legislation, which passed the Senate again in March, would expand RECA to remaining parts of Arizona, Nevada and Utah as well as to Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Guam, where residents were exposed to radiation from nuclear bomb testing. It would also expand coverage to those exposed to radioactive waste in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska and Kentucky. 

Stalled in the House

The expansion of RECA sponsored by Hawley, a Missouri Republican, has twice passed the Senate. But it’s been stuck for months in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Members of the Missouri Congressional delegation hoped it would be included in a federal appropriations bill in March and were outraged when it wasn’t included. U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat from St. Louis, called its exclusion an “insult to our communities.”

Since then, Bush has joined advocates in a last push to get RECA expanded before it expires next month. 

Bush has written letters to each of her 434 House colleagues, calling on them to support expanding RECA, and organized a meeting between advocates and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York. 

Bush said it had been frustrating that the legislation hasn’t made it through the House because “this legislation is a no-brainer.”

“We’re talking about compensating people at home who have been victims of war and continue to be victims of World War II,” she said. “The reality is that the people in St. Louis as well as across the country have been poisoned by the federal government, and the government has a responsibility to compensate those victims no matter the price tag.”

Bush said she needed colleagues to listen to victims.

“The cost has already been paid,” she said. “The cost is the human lives that have been taken because of our government’s negligence, the cost is those who are here on the Hill over and over again that are bringing stories forward saying, ‘My kids, my grandkids, me, my parents have all been sick or died.’” 

On the other side of the aisle, U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, a Republican from the St. Louis suburbs, snagged a surprise meeting for advocates earlier this month with staff of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office.

Wagner’s office declined an interview but said she will “continue to fight for reauthorization and expansion of RECA.”

Chapman said staff from Johnson’s office didn’t promise to bring RECA to the floor. But, she said, “what they told us is that it is absolutely on their radar.”

“They’re not ignoring it,” Chapman said. “They know it’s there. They are aware of it now and that there is a tremendous amount of Republican colleagues that are writing letters and that are reaching out to their office to have this hit the floor.”

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 approved a sales tax exemption on construction materials for the private developer building the expansion. It now goes to Gov. Mike Parson. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent).

A proposed expansion of a nuclear weapons parts manufacturer in south Kansas City could get a boost from a tax break Missouri lawmakers passed Friday.

With only hours left in Missouri’s annual legislative session, the state House voted 141-2 to authorize a sales tax exemption for construction materials purchased to expand the National Nuclear Safety Administration campus, operated by Honeywell International Inc. 

The legislation now goes to Gov. Mike Parson. 

State Rep. Chris Brown, a Republican from Kansas City, called the legislation a “win-win.” 

“It’s a small ask on the sales tax exemption,” he said, “and it’s really about economic development. And at the end of the day…it’s about making sure we are keeping our nuclear facilities, our nuclear defenses — keeping them safe, keeping them dependable, and keeping them reliable.”

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to spend more than $3 billion to expand its facilities in Kansas City, where workers produce non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons, according to a fiscal analysis on the bill.

If the administration built the facilities itself, it would be exempt from sales tax as a government entity. But to expedite the expansion, the federal government plans to acquire the buildings from a private developer. Supporters of the legislation argue exempting the private developer will keep the costs on par with what the federal government would pay itself.

The fiscal analysis of the bill says it would divert about a combined more than $150 million in state, county, city and Kansas City zoo sales tax revenue over 10 years, but it says the exact cost couldn’t be verified.

Staff legislative staff wrote that the bill’s “fiscal impact could be significant.” 

Supporters of the legislation — including its sponsor in the Missouri Senate, now-former Sen. Greg Razer — argue the jobs created by the expansion would offset the losses from the sales tax exemption.

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 facilities and hire thousands of employees to help modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. 

“We need to modernize this to keep them safe to ensure that accidents don’t happen,” Razer said, “and that’s what we will be doing in Kansas City.” 

Roundup’s manufacturer, the multinational Bayer, has faced myriad lawsuits related to the weed killer (Scott Olson/Getty Images).

Time is running out for legislation that would make it harder to sue pesticide manufacturers over claims their products cause cancer, with an unusual coalition of opponents working to ensure they’ve stalled the bill’s progress. 

The bill, critics argue, shields large corporations at the expense of everyday Missourians who have developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma they attribute to the use of pesticides formulated with glyphosate — most prominently, Roundup.

Supporters, including Roundup’s manufacturer, Bayer, say the lawsuits are unfair because glyphosate has been approved by environmental regulators who have determined it is “unlikely” to cause cancer in humans.

“Going through that litigation process and having this patchwork of labeling requirements has cost this company billions of dollars,” said Catherine Hanaway, an attorney for Bayer and former Missouri House speaker, “even when there’s consistent scientific consensus that glyphosate does not cause cancer.”

The legislation cleared the House and has until 6 p.m. Friday to pass the Senate, which has been marked this year by gridlock and dysfunction and is currently bogged down in a multi-day filibuster. 

It pits powerful agriculture and business organizations against trial attorneys that have built an alliance with GOP lawmakers known for bringing the state Senate to a halt: the Missouri Freedom Caucus.

“It’s not a traditional alliance,” said Amy Gunn, president of the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys, “but I appreciate…that there are people on both sides of the aisle that can recognize the importance of not limiting our rights.”

The legislation, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Dane Diehl of Butler, would protect Roundup manufacturer Bayer from lawsuits by plaintiffs who claim the company failed to warn them that glyphosate might be carcinogenic. Bayer maintains that it’s safe, though it has paid billions to settle Roundup claims or pay out jury judgments.

Specifically, the legislation would dictate that pesticides that are registered with the Environmental Protection Agency and carry an approved label consistent with the EPA’s opinion on whether the ingredients are carcinogenic satisfies its duty to warn customers, insulating Bayer from “failure to warn” cases. Bayer argues 

“We believe anything that’s gone through the full regulatory process…and has been deemed safe through multiple studies, multiple endeavors — over time of about 50 years on certain products — that they have fulfilled their duties to warn of the dangers associated with the product,” Diehl said in a Senate committee hearing last month. 

‘This bill is about protecting a corporation over the citizens of our state’

Bayer said it has set aside about $16 billion to deal with Roundup lawsuits, including more than $10 billion it has already paid out in settlements. It has lost other cases at trial. 

Earlier this year, a jury in Philadelphia awarded a plaintiff $2.25 billion. Last year in Cole County, three plaintiffs were awarded $1.56 billion, though a judge later reduced that to $622 million. 

Bayer says the settlements it has paid out don’t represent an admission of wrongdoing. It stands behind the product and says it has won in cases where the court allowed it to present studies that deem glyphosate safe. 

But it’s looking at “several options” for the future of Roundup, said Jessica Christiansen, head of sustainability and stewardship for crop science at Bayer.

“We’ve been pretty clear that the cost and the burden of the lawsuits is not sustainable,” she said in an interview with The Independent when asked if Bayer would pull Roundup from shelves.

Missouri farm groups have backed the pesticide labeling legislation, saying farmers need assurance Roundup will be available for the long term. 

“We feel strongly that pesticides are an essential crop protection tool that provide many environmental benefits by enabling conservation practices,” Jacob Knaebel, a lobbyist for the Missouri Corn Growers Association, told a Missouri Senate committee last month. 

Christiansen, however, said it was “simply not true” that the legislation would provide blanket immunity for Bayer from litigation. She wouldn’t say whether it would shield the company from liability in “failure to warn” cases, but its sponsor and other supporters say that’s the idea. 

Bayer says there are other means by which people can sue, including product failures and warranty claims.

“There’s other ways that people can still file lawsuits, and they have the right to do that, but on this particular issue, we support the science and the labeling should be supported by science as well,” she said. 

Gunn panned that argument. 

“That’s been a talking point for the Bayer people, which sort of begs the question — okay, well then why do you want (the legislation)?” she said. “And the answer is clearly that the vast majority of the successful claims are based on a ‘failure to warn’ cause of action.” 

Melissa Vatterott, policy director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, said the legislation is “not the right thing for Missouri’s people.” 

“The fact that Bayer has lobbied not only legislators in Missouri but in three other states…shows that this bill is about protecting a corporation over the citizens of our state,” she said. 

Prospects for passage 

If the Senate does manage to take up the pesticide labeling bill before Friday’s adjournment, Vatterott said she doesn’t think the bill has enough support to make it to the governor’s desk. 

Efforts to make it harder for Missourians to file litigation against businesses have historically had the support of Republicans, who hold super majorities in both the House and Senate. But in more recent years, those bills have run into GOP opposition. This year, that resistance is led by the Freedom Caucus.

The rise of Republican criticism of these bills comes as trial attorneys have shifted their strategy from supporting Democratic candidates with donations to cutting big checks to Republicans aligned with the Freedom Caucus. 

The Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry says trial attorneys’ donations have helped “slow down the momentum on tort reform.”

“There is no doubt that the plaintiffs’ bar has taken a very, very active interest in lobbying and attempting to fund campaigns and candidates who are anti-tort reform,” said Brendan Cossette, the chamber’s chief of operations. 

Between 2005 when Republicans took control of the Missouri General Assembly until 2019, Cossette said, the legislature routinely passed “tort reform” legislation.

Cossette said the chamber still has some hope the pesticide bill might pass. 

“There’s always a chance,” he said. “The bill’s never really dead until the end of session…and you never know what dam might break and what bills might start going through.” 

Gunn doesn’t see certain conservative lawmakers’ opposition to the pesticide bill as a product of campaign donations. 

“If you look back over the last number of years, there has been…an alliance based on a mutual respect for the Seventh Amendment,” Gunn said. 

The Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the right to a jury trial in civil cases. 

Should the legislation pass, Gunn said, people who develop cancer they believe was caused by Roundup will call plaintiff attorneys like her.

“And I’m going to say, ‘You know what? You have no cause of action,’” she said, “‘but here’s who you need to call who voted for it, who voted to take away your Seventh Amendment right to have a cause of action.’” 

Legislation on its way to Missouri Gov. Mike Parson would impose regulations to help rural residents who complain of unbearable smells from lagoons storing meatpacking waste. (USGAO/Wikipedia)

Meatpacking sludge storage lagoons that have drawn the ire of rural neighbors because of their foul stench would face stricter state regulations under legislation that cleared a final vote in the Missouri House Thursday.

The Missouri House voted 155-1 to require the facilities to obtain water pollution permits, be set back from nearby homes, follow certain design requirements and monitor groundwater in certain areas. It passed the Senate earlier this week. It now heads to Gov. Mike Parson for a signature.

The bill was combined in a Senate committee with legislation meant to protect Missouri’s water from being exported to other states out of fear parts of the country impacted by worsening drought brought on by climate change would look to Missouri’s abundant rivers for a solution. But the provision was removed before the full Senate vote. 

State Sen. Jill Carter, who carried the legislation in the Senate, said companies that store meatpacking sludge and apply it as fertilizer aren’t required to follow any standards to ensure the health of soil and water in rural Missouri. 

“When I’ve been out, there’s six inches of this ‘industrial waste sludge,’ they call it, and the cows are out there eating it,” said Carter, a Republican from Granby. 

The meatpacking sludge legislation was introduced in response to an abrupt switch in state agencies that regulate fertilizer. It primarily targets Denali Water Solutions, which collects waste from meatpacking plants and holds it in lagoons in McDonald, Newton and Macon counties before spreading it on farmers’ fields as free fertilizer. 

Until last year, Denali held permits from the Missouri Fertilizer Control Board, which exempted it from having to get a permit from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Because of that, Denali was free from regulation by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources unless the meatpacking sludge polluted the state’s waterways.

Last year, the Missouri Fertilizer Control Board decided it didn’t have authority over Denali since it gives away its product rather than selling it as a commercial fertilizer. Without a fertilizer permit, Denali had to get a permit from the Department of Natural Resources. 

The company has sued the fertilizer board in an attempt to have its previous permit reinstated. 

After the fertilizer board’s decision, Missouri environmental regulators allowed the company to keep operating in the interim. But last fall, the company applied so much sludge to a field just before a storm that regulators changed their minds. 

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources visited a site following residents’ complaints and found Denali had applied so much waste it resulted in “standing pools of liquids and solids” covering vegetation on the fields. 

The state and Denali reached an agreement prohibiting the company from applying waste to fields in Missouri and requiring it to drain its lagoons and pay fines. 

To resume its operations, Denali still needs a permit from the state. Until then, it must take its waste to a treatment facility or haul it out of Missouri. 

Denali was not immediately available to comment on the legislation.

Steven Jeffery, an attorney representing two separate resident groups fighting Denali lagoons in their areas, applauded the legislation. While “no one ever gets everything they want in developing legislation,” he said, the bill would be far more protective of rural communities than the status quo.

This story was updated on May 9 to reflect that the Missouri House approved the Senate version of the bill and sent it to the governor. 

A sign across from the proposed landfill in south Kansas City implores drivers to help stop the project from moving forward. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent)

Gov. Mike Parson on Monday signed legislation designed to keep a landfill from moving into south Kansas City, ending a more than year-long effort by nearby communities to stymie the project.

In a news release, Parson called the legislation “a win for property rights across the state of Missouri.” 

“This commonsense measure will ensure homeowners have more of a say in what developments are allowed in their communities,” Parson said.

The legislation targets a plan by KC Recycle & Waste Solutions to build a landfill at Kansas City’s southern border with Raymore. For more than a year, Raymore and other suburban Kansas City municipalities have pushed legislation designed to prohibit the proposed landfill, arguing it would hurt the environment, property values and residents’ health.

Raymore Mayor Kris Turnbow said in a statement Monday that the governor’s signature brought “relief.”

“That’s the only way to describe how our community feels,” Turnbow said. “The governor’s signature lifts the veil that has hung over our city for nearly two years since we first learned of this proposed development.”

KC Recycle & Waste Solutions, owned by Jennifer and Aden Monheiser, planned to build the landfill at a site just south of Missouri Highway 150 near Kansas City’s border with Raymore. The 270-acre facility would have been less than a mile from Creekmoor, a golf course community in Raymore with homes priced up to $1 million. 

Under existing Missouri law, a landfill can’t be built in Kansas City within half a mile of an adjacent city unless that community approves the project. The city of Raymore and fellow critics of the project wanted that buffer zone increased to one mile.

Rep. Mike Haffner, a Pleasant Hill Republican, took up their cause and sponsored legislation to increase the buffer zone in the Missouri House. In a statement on Monday, he said Parson’s signature on the legislation was a “testament to our commitment to fighting for the rights of all Missourians.” 

“This legislation is a victory for the people of Missouri, who have spoken loud and clear about the need to defend their property rights and preserve the well-being of their communities,” Haffner said. “I support economic development, but not at the expense of our families, small business owners and their livelihoods.”

Jennifer Monheiser initially pushed back against the legislation, arguing increasing the buffer zone would change the rules on a local business that had already begun purchasing land and making plans for the facility.

The legislation was first introduced last year and cleared the Missouri House, but couldn’t get past a filibuster in the Senate. The same thing happened earlier this legislative session. 

But last month, Raymore city officials revealed they had struck a deal wherein the Monheisers would scrap their project, provided that the buffer zone legislation passed and received Parson’s signature. 

In an interview with The Independent, Monheiser said she was “glad there’s a resolution that we can all live with.” 

“It’s not the outcome that we were hoping for, but we (are) happy that we can now maybe work with those communities to find a solution for the waste problem that we have here in Kansas City,” Monheiser said.

As part of the agreement, which the Raymore City Council approved unanimously, the city will pay more than $3.7 million to the Moheisers, including $440,000 for the city to acquire one of the land parcels currently owned by the developers. KC Recycle & Waste Solutions also agreed to adopt restrictive covenants that would keep the land from being used for a landfill in the future.

Monheiser said the $3.7 million payment was not enough that her business would profit from scrapping the proposed landfill and it “did not make us whole.” She did not detail how she and the city arrived at the figure for the payment, but she said her business had incurred costs for engineering and legal services and purchased land. She and her husband, she said, also invested considerable time into the project.

“I’m not exactly sure…why we landed on that exact number, but it was a number that was thrown out there and that ultimately we all agreed to, and so we just moved forward with that,” she said. 

Aside from the parcel that will be sold to the city of Raymore as part of the agreement, Monheiser said she wasn’t sure yet what she would do with the land purchased to build the landfill. She said she would look at options to develop it, but it would not become any sort of waste management facility. 

Monheiser said she’s still committed to finding a solution to garbage disposal in the metropolitan area, but the south Kansas City site was the only one she had found that appeared feasible.

Missouri House members passed legislation that would prohibit the use of eminent domain to build solar and wind farms (Sirisak Boakaew/Getty Images)

With two weeks left in the Missouri General Assembly’s session, lawmakers are weighing multiple bills that would bar developers from seizing land to build wind and solar farms. 

One such bill, sponsored by state Rep. Mike Haffner, a Republican from Pleasant Hill, passed the House Thursday by an overwhelming 115-27 vote. It now heads to the Senate, where a similar proposal has been added to wide-ranging utilities legislation that awaits debate.

Haffner’s bill would prohibit wind and solar builders from using eminent domain, which allows utilities and governments to condemn land to build infrastructure that serves the public, including power lines and roads. 

Wind and solar projects, however, have not sought to use eminent domain, which is often unpopular because of the intrusion on private property.

“This has not happened,” Haffner said before the vote Thursday morning. “But property rights are so important…we want to make sure that it doesn’t happen.”

Environmental advocates and lawmakers critical of Haffner’s bill, however, said it unfairly targets sources of renewable energy rather than reforming the use of eminent domain more broadly.

“It’s singling out this specific type of energy and saying we want them to have different constraints on the use of eminent domain than an oil pipeline or a coal-generating plant,” said state Rep. Peter Merideth, a St. Louis Democrat, “and that’s where I’ve got a problem.” 

Missouri Republicans for years have criticized the use of eminent domain to build high-voltage transmission lines — most significantly, the Grain Belt Express. That line, under development by Chicago-based Invenergy, will carry wind energy from southwest Kansas through Missouri and Illinois to the Indiana border. 

To do so, Invenergy needs easements to construct towers and run the power line across private properties. In some cases, the company is able to negotiate a deal with willing landowners, but in the event a property owner won’t agree to a voluntary deal, Invenergy has the authority to condemn land. 

In either case, the company must compensate landowners.

Invenergy’s ability to use eminent domain was, for years, a source of controversy among lawmakers who repeatedly tried to bar transmission line builders from condemning land.

Haffner’s bill, however, specifically exempts transmission lines. His concern, he said, was that owners of wind or solar farms that wanted to expand would use eminent domain to strong arm their neighbors into giving up land.

“We want economic development,” Haffner said in an interview with The Independent. “We just want to make sure that there’s not an abuse of condemnation as it deals with property rights.” 

Haffner said the solar developers he has heard of are “doing it right.” 

“They’re negotiating with every landowner; they’re not using condemnation,” Haffner said. “And that’s the way it should be.”

Haffner’s legislation was supported in committee by farm groups and rural landowners who have been critical of Grain Belt Express. 

The Missouri chapter of the Sierra Club, a national environmental advocacy organization, objected to the singling out of renewable energy resources. 

“We just really feel like, as we move forward, we’re going to need more renewable resources,” said Frances Klahr, a former Missouri Department of Natural Resources staffer and a Sierra Club member, “because fossil fuel isn’t going to last forever…and we’ve got to find a clean way to come up with energy.”

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. 

Missouri lawmakers push tax break to expand Kansas City nuclear weapons facility

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. 

Records reveal 75 years of government downplaying, ignoring risks of St. Louis radioactive waste

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.”

A crew from Kansas City Fire Station 19 responded to a call in December 2021 when Dominic Biscari ran a red light and crashed into a car in the intersection and then three parked cars, killing three people. The city hopes to overturn an arbitration decision that Biscari could only be suspended for three days. The city had said it would seek to fire him. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent)

Kansas City officials are hoping to overturn an arbitrator’s decision that a firefighter who crashed a fire truck and killed three people could only receive a three-day suspension.

On Tuesday, the city of Kansas City filed a motion in Jackson County Circuit Court to vacate an arbitration decision that determined Dominic Biscari could only be suspended for three days after he ran a red light in a fire department pumper truck and crashed into a car in the Westport neighborhood, killing both the driver and passenger. 

Biscari then veered and hit three parked cars, killing a pedestrian and running into a building that ultimately collapsed. He was charged with three felonies, and according to the city, lawsuits by loved ones of the deceased and the building’s owner have cost Kansas City $3.2 million.

After the crash, the city sought to suspend Biscari pending an investigation, citing the three felony charges. The city told him, according to documents filed Tuesday in circuit court, that the suspension would remain in effect until his felony charges were adjudicated. 

But the firefighters’ union, International Association of Firefighters Local 42, filed a grievance against the city, stating it was shocked at the suspension, which it said violated a previous arbitration decision, according to the city’s filing. The decision that Biscari could only be suspended for three days came as a result of that grievance.

According to the city’s petition, the arbitrator reached the decision, which it argues was an overreach, “without any explanation of how he arrived at a three-day suspension,”

“But it amounted to one day for each death and one day for each million dollars that (the) firefighter’s fatality accident cost the city,” the petition says.

Representatives from the union, as well as Biscari’s attorney, did not respond to requests for comment.

In February 2023, roughly 15 months after the crash, Bascari was charged with three felony counts of involuntary manslaughter in the second degree. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years of probation and 40 hours of community service. 

The city notified him of his suspension that same week. Interim Fire Chief Ross Grundyson told the Kansas City Star at the time that the department was suspending Biscari without pay and seeking to terminate his employment.

A few weeks later in March 2023, the union filed its grievance concerning Biscari’s suspension, saying it violated a previous arbitration decision concerning whether suspending firefighters pending an investigation violated their just cause and due process rights. 

The city’s petition emphasizes that the union’s grievance dealt with the suspension — not the investigation of the crash or any ultimate disciplinary action.

The issue went to an arbitrator to determine whether the city had cause to suspend Bascari and whether it gave him due process. The arbitrator decided last month in favor of the union. The decision, however, went beyond the question of whether the suspension was justified, the city argues in its petition. 

“The arbitrator issued discipline on the underlying fatality accident: that (the) firefighter only be suspended for three days and that most references to the underlying fatality accident be removed from his personnel file,” the city’s motion says. The arbitrator also ordered that the city pay Local 42 for its costs in pursuing the grievance. 

In its Tuesday filing, the city says Missouri’s Uniform Arbitration Act requires that a court overturn an arbitration decision if the arbitrator “exceeds their powers,” which the city argues occurred. 

The city repeatedly emphasizes that the arbitrator should have only issued an order on the suspension. It also says its collective bargaining agreement with Local 42 states parties to an arbitration will bear their own costs and that the arbitrator overstepped in awarding the union fees. 

“The city had not found him negligent with respect to the underlying fatality accident and had not fashioned discipline for such a finding were it to occur,” the motion says. “Despite this, the arbitrator took it upon himself to write a prospective cure for a future, hypothetical dispute that was not before him.” 

A sign across from the proposed landfill in south Kansas City implores drivers to help stop the project from moving forward. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent)

Legislation key to keeping a landfill from being built near pricey suburban homes just outside Kansas City is headed to Gov. Mike Parson’s desk. 

The Missouri House gave the legislation final approval by a 121-25 vote on Tuesday. It passed the Senate 24-7 last week.

With Parson’s signature, it would prohibit a landfill from being built in Kansas City within a mile of another municipality unless that adjoining city approves the project. 

The legislation was initially proposed last year after plans for a landfill in south Kansas City became public. Communities surrounding the site have been fighting for more than a year against the project, saying it would harm their health and property values. 

Rep. Mike Haffner, a Republican from Pleasant Hill, noted thousands of children go to school within a couple miles of the proposed landfill site. 

“That is the foundation of the next generation for the state of Missouri,” Haffner said on the House floor Tuesday. “We’ve got to protect them, and I think we did it the right way here.” 

House Majority Leader Jon Patterson, of Lee’s Summit, said there were doubts the legislature could get the bill passed this year. It was filibustered earlier this month in the Senate. 

Patterson called the bill’s passage on Tuesday a “huge win.” 

“I think it’s just a testament to…all the people that have worked on this, all the fine people of the city of Raymore, city of Lee’s Summit,” Patterson said.

The proposed 270-acre landfill, proposed by KC Recycle & Waste Solutions, was planned for a site just south of Missouri Highway 150 in Kansas City. It’s less than a mile from the Creekmoor golf course community, located in Raymore, with homes priced as high as $1 million. 

Under current law, a landfill can’t be built in Kansas City within half a mile of an adjacent city unless that community approves the project. The landfill proposed by KC Recycle & Waste Solutions — run by Jennifer and Aden Monheiser — would have been located between half a mile and one mile from the city’s boundary with Raymore.

When plans for the landfill became public, surrounding communities began lobbying the legislature to increase that buffer zone to one mile to kill the project.

Jennifer Monheiser and some legislators from outside the Kansas City area pushed back, arguing increasing the buffer zone would change the rules on a local business attempting to build a landfill in accordance with existing law. 

But earlier this month, officials from Raymore struck a deal with the Monheisers to keep the landfill from moving in. 

The Raymore City Council voted unanimously last week to approve a deal to pay the Monheisers more than $3.7 million to scrap the project, including $440,000 for the city to acquire a piece of land currently owned by the developers. 

The deal was contingent on the legislation increasing the buffer zone passing and developers’ agreement to impose restrictive use covenants on the property they’ve acquired to prevent it from being used for a landfill in the future. 

Raymore Mayor Kris Turnbow said in a statement he was grateful to the lawmakers who supported the legislation. 

“This measure ensures our community is protected from a threat that would have had negative impacts for generations,” Turnbow said. 

Kill The Fill, a political action committee launched to fight the proposed project, celebrated in a social media post after the House vote. 

“Fill almost killed,” the group said. “We’re a signature away.”

A sign across from the proposed landfill in south Kansas City implores drivers to help stop the project from moving forward. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent)

Legislation pivotal to killing a proposed landfill project in south Kansas City took a huge step forward this week in the Missouri Senate and is now just one step away from the governor’s desk. 

Missouri senators passed the legislation, which would prohibit a landfill from being built in Kansas City within a mile of its borders unless any adjacent municipalities approved the project, by a vote of 24-7 Wednesday night. 

The Senate vote represented a significant step forward in the effort to pass the legislation. House members have approved similar bills before, but they have stalled in the Senate following filibusters. 

The bill was amended in the Senate and needs a final House approval before it can go to Republican Gov. Mike Parson’s desk. The bill is ready to be debated by the House, but was not taken up before the chamber adjourned for the week on Thursday.

Parson’s signature would bring to an end an 18-month battle by nearby communities to keep a landfill out of south Kansas City.

Raymore city officials approve agreement meant to kill Kansas City landfill

“It’s too soon for a victory lap, but 9,000 or so people who live around the proposed landfill woke up with more hope today,” a political action committee formed in opposition to the landfill said in a social media post Thursday.

Residents, city governments and legislators from the suburbs of Kansas City have been fighting for well over a year to keep a proposed landfill from moving in less than a mile from the city’s border with Raymore. 

The 270-acre landfill, proposed by KC Recycle & Waste Solutions, was planned for a site just south of Missouri Highway 150 in Kansas City. It’s less than a mile from the Creekmoor golf course community, located in Raymore, with homes priced as high as $1 million. 

When the landfill plan became public, Raymore and other Kansas City suburbs were outraged, saying the project would harm their communities’ health and ruin their property values.

Under current law, a landfill can’t be built within half a mile of Kansas City’s boundaries without approval from the adjacent community. But the project proposed by KC Recycle & Waste Solutions — run by Jennifer and Aden Monheiser — would have been between half a mile and one mile from the city’s boundary with Raymore. 

Starting last year, critics of the landfill pushed legislation at the Missouri General Assembly to increase that buffer one to one mile. But it was repeatedly filibustered in the Missouri Senate. The Monheisers have donated tens of thousands of dollars to state and local races and political action committees.

After another filibuster earlier this month, Raymore city officials revealed they had struck a tentative deal with developers of the landfill to stave off the landfill. Raymore City Council members voted unanimously on Monday to approve an agreement to pay more than $3.7 million to the Monheisers to scrap the project, including $440,000 for the city to acquire one of the parcels currently owned by the developers. 

But the deal is contingent on the passage of the state legislation and the Monheisers’ agreement to impose restrictive use covenants on the property they’ve acquired to prevent it from being used for a landfill in the future. 

Monheiser said in a statement that she appreciates the discussions with Raymore officials that led to the deal. 

“We’re hopeful that the governor signs the legislation that will be sent to his desk so that all parties can move forward,” she said. “We will have more to say in the coming weeks about plans for the future, but for now, we’re happy to have an agreement that closes this chapter.”

A sign just outside Creekmoor, a golf course subdivision in Raymore, implores drivers to stop a proposed landfill less than a mile away. The Raymore City Council on Monday adopted legislation that would offer a payment to developers of the proposed landfill to abandon their plans for the site. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent).

A controversial landfill proposed for south Kansas City is likely dead after approval of a deal developers struck with a suburban municipality that has been fighting to kill the project. 

The Raymore City Council voted unanimously Monday for an ordinance setting out the terms for  a settlement that would pay developers of the proposed landfill $3.73 million to scrap their project, including $440,000 for Raymore to acquire one of the developers’ 12-acre parcels. 

The agreement is contingent on the developers halting efforts to build the landfill, agreeing to impose restrictive use covenants on the property they’ve acquired and dropping their fight against state legislation drafted to kill the project.

“I have seen firsthand the anguish that our residents have gone through for more than a year and a half of fighting this battle,” Raymore Mayor Kris Turnbow said just before the vote. “And I don’t believe there’s any price on the long term health, safety and well being of our community.” 

Developers of the project, KC Recycle & Waste Solutions, declined to comment through a spokeswoman. 

KC Recycle & Waste Solutions — run by Jennifer Monheiser — proposed the 270-acre landfill just south of Missouri Highway 150 in Kansas City. It’s less than a mile from the Creekmoor golf course community, located in Raymore, with homes priced as high as $1 million. 

When the landfill plan became public, Raymore and several other Kansas City suburbs banded together in opposition saying the dump would harm their communities. 

Monday night’s city council vote represented a huge victory for those who have been fighting for more than a year to prevent the landfill from moving in. 

Under current law, if a landfill is built in Kansas City within half a mile of its boundary with another municipality, the adjacent city can approve or deny the project. The Monheisers’ project, however, would have been between half a mile and one mile from Kansas City’s boundary with Raymore. 

Raymore, along with nearby Kansas City suburbs and individuals, have pushed legislation at the Missouri Statehouse that would increase that buffer zone to one mile. 

Monheiser has fought back against those legislative efforts to kill her project, hiring close to 20 lobbyists and donating to Missouri lawmakers’ campaigns. 

One of several identical bills that would increase the buffer zone cleared the Missouri House in March and has passed a Senate committee, but has not yet been heard on the Senate floor. Another version came up in the Senate earlier this month, but lawmakers from outside the Kansas City area launched an hours-long filibuster, shutting down the chamber. The same thing happened last year.

After efforts to kill the project via state legislation failed last year, critics formed Kill The Fill, a political action committee that has raised money through small dollar donations, a golf tournament and bourbon tasting. The PAC hired a lobbying firm run by Steve Tilley, a veteran Jefferson City lobbyist with ties to Gov. Mike Parson, and has paid the firm $46,500 for lobbying and public relations since October. 

The PAC’s founder, Jennifer Phanton, said in a statement the group was happy with the outcome. 

“We’re grateful for Mayor Turnbow and the City of Raymore’s efforts on this,” she said. “Our group’s focus remains on passing legislation, and we’ll have more to say when that time comes.”

A sign just outside Creekmoor, a golf course subdivision in Raymore, implores drivers to stop a proposed landfill less than a mile away. Officials from the city of Raymore are negotiating with developers of the project to keep it from being built (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent).

Kansas City-area communities fighting a proposed landfill are hopeful negotiations with the developers will end the controversy and “eliminate” the project.

For more than a year, communities that border south Kansas City have been fighting a proposed 270-acre landfill. They’ve pleaded with state lawmakers to pass legislation to kill the project, hired lobbyists and formed a political action committee. 

The push was stymied last week when a group of state senators outside the Kansas City area used a filibuster to block a vote on legislation meant to kill the landfill project. Now, it appears, the city of Raymore is near a deal with developers that would halt the project in exchange for cash payments. 

Melissa Harmer, a spokeswoman for Raymore, which borders Kansas City at the proposed site, said in an email to The Independent on Wednesday that the city was working toward an agreement with the developers “that would eliminate the landfill,” contingent on the passage of the legislation. She said there was little to share “except that we’re feeling positive.”

She did not answer an email asking follow-up questions.

A day later, the city of Raymore posted on its website an agenda for a special meeting of the City Council to approve legislation establishing an agreement wherein the city would make settlement payments in exchange for restrictive covenants preventing the site from becoming a landfill. According to the agenda, the settlement would also include “mutual support” for state legislation that would prevent the landfill from being built at the proposed site. 

“This is the local step necessary to advance legislative action in Jefferson City to end the threat of a landfill on Raymore’s northern border,” the agenda says. 

Jennifer Monheiser, one of the developers, said in a statement Wednesday that the team is “dedicated to finding a solution that works for everyone.” 

“Our team is focused on conversations that address the region’s waste management needs as well as concerns about the environmental impact of our project,” Monheiser said. A spokeswoman for Monheiser declined to answer follow-up questions about possible negotiations with local municipalities, saying there are “a lot of moving parts.” 

The landfill — proposed by Monheiser’s business, KC Recycle & Waste Solutions — was proposed just south of Missouri Highway 150 in Kansas City. It’s less than a mile from the Creekmoor golf course community, located in Raymore, with homes priced as high as $1 million. 

Under current law, KC Recycle & Waste Solutions’ proposal to place the landfill within a mile of the city’s boundary with a nearby community is permissible — subject to state permitting requirements. If it were within a half mile of city limits, though, it would need the approval of neighboring municipalities.

Critics of the project in nearby Raymore, Lee’s Summit and other suburban Kansas City municipalities want that buffer zone increased to one mile. They have decried the project, saying it will harm their constituents’ property values, health and ability to enjoy their homes.

After legislative efforts to block the project failed last year, area residents launched Kill The Fill, a political action committee that has raised money through small dollar donations, a golf tournament and bourbon tasting. 

The PAC hired a lobbying firm run by Steve Tilley, a veteran Jefferson City lobbyist with ties to Gov. Mike Parson, and has paid $46,500 for lobbying and public relations since October.

Kill The Fill’s treasurer, Jennifer Phanton, said in an interview that she can see the proposed landfill site from her upstairs window. 

“When this becomes a mountain of trash,” she said, “I’ll be able to see it from my house.” 

Phanton said she was hopeful about the negotiations between the developers and opponents like the city of Raymore, which she described as “close-lipped.” 

She argued the municipalities around the landfill deserve a seat at the table because its placement will affect them. The closest fire station, she said, isn’t one of Kansas City’s. And the roads leading to the landfill that will incur heavy truck traffic pass through surrounding cities. 

“You’re putting the onus, you know, on these neighboring municipalities to support this landfill…but you’re not willing to give them a seat at the table,” she said. “That’s insane to me.”

Lawmakers have debated increasing the buffer zones for the past two legislative sessions, but it has yet to clear the Missouri General Assembly.

One of several identical bills to increase the buffer zone cleared the Missouri House in March and has passed a Senate committee. It awaits floor action. Another version came up last week in the Missouri Senate, but lawmakers from other parts of  Missouri launched an hours-long filibuster, shutting down the chamber. 

The same thing happened last year when State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Arnold, stood opposed to the legislation.

State Sen. Rick Brattin, a Republican from Harrisonville who represents neighbors of the proposed landfill, responded the next day with a filibuster meant to shut down debate of the state budget as a deadline to pass it loomed.

Kansas City-area senators have since criticized colleagues from other parts of the state for fighting on behalf of the landfill, saying they should respect the judgment of senators who represent the area of the proposed project to determine what’s best for their communities.

State Sen. Mike Cierpiot, a Lee’s Summit Republican, said the Senate has a tradition of deferring to senators from the area when considering legislation that affects a particular part of the state. He called it “troubling” that lawmakers who live “nowhere near” the affected communities would fight for the landfill when the senators representing the Kansas City area stand opposed.

Cierpiot said the entire Kansas City delegation — including both Republicans and Democrats — agree the site isn’t appropriate for a landfill. 

“I ask this body to trust those senators that represent this entire area,” Cierpiot said. “We know what is best for our area, as I’m sure each of you do.”

Missouri River and Capitol Building during sunset in Jefferson City (Getty Images).

Missouri House members on Wednesday took a step toward prohibiting exports of water, arguing the state’s “most precious resource” should be protected and reserved for residents.

The bill, which prohibits water exports without a state permit, cleared an initial Missouri House vote 115-25. It needs second approval before it moves to the Missouri Senate, where a similar bill has passed a committee vote and awaits action by senators.

Speaking in favor of the bill, Bridget Walsh Moore, a Democrat from St. Louis, said “the water wars are coming.” 

“The western water table is drying up,” Walsh Moore said. “This is forward thinking and protecting Missouri from future problems.”

With the Missouri River running through the middle of the state, the Mississippi along its eastern border and the Osage River that feeds the Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri is home to a host of reliable freshwater systems. But lawmakers fear as other states struggle with a drier future, they might look to Missouri as a solution.

To the west, Kansas is grappling with the decline of the Ogallala Aquifer, an underground supply of fresh water that has been over pumped for decades and threatens running dry. The changing climate and overuse threaten water supplies in much of the western U.S.

Republicans Sen. Jason Bean and Rep. Jamie Burger — from Holcomb and Benton, respectively — introduced legislation this year that would prohibit water exports from Missouri without a permit from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

The bill would prioritize Missouri users over requests from out of state. In order to receive an export permit, according to the bill, there would have to be enough water present and the out-of-state proposal could not interfere with existing or proposed uses within Missouri. The applicant would also have to demonstrate they need the water and intend to put it to good use.

Missouri officials would have to analyze whether existing and proposed water uses in Missouri would still have access to adequate supply before approving a water export. 

Burger told The Independent earlier this year that he wasn’t aware of any efforts to export water from the state aside from some long standing agreements along the state’s borders with Arkansas and Oklahoma.As of last week, about one-third of Missouri is in a moderate or severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Karen Nickel, left, and Dawn Chapman flip through binders full of government documents about St. Louis County sites contaminated by nuclear waste left over from World War II. Nickel and Chapman founded Just Moms STL to advocate for the community to federal environmental and energy officials (Theo Welling/Riverfront Times).

Legislation that would compensate victims of radioactive waste and U.S. nuclear bomb tests faces an uncertain future after it was left out of a federal appropriations bill Thursday, outraging members of Missouri’s Congressional delegation. 

But advocates for St. Louis-area residents exposed to World War II-era radioactive waste remain “extremely hopeful” as compensation remains closer than ever to passage.

“We feel like we’re going to get RECA, guys,” Dawn Chapman, co-founder of Just Moms STL, said in a live video on Facebook. “…I’m not going to just take it for granted and stop pushing. We’re going to push even harder. It’s just unfortunate how hard we have to fight up to the bitter end.”

Members of Missouri’s Congressional delegation, however, were irate that the legislation won’t be considered as part of the budget process and demanded the House take action quickly.

“This is an insult to our communities who continue to be harmed by the radioactive waste dumped and left for decades by the federal government,” U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat representing St. Louis and north St. Louis County, said in a statement.

U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, a Republican representing St. Louis suburbs and parts of adjacent counties, said in a statement that she was “extremely disappointed” in House and Senate leaders for not including the legislation in the budget bill released Thursday. 

The legislation — an expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act — has twice passed the U.S. Senate but has yet to be taken up by the House of Representatives.

Records reveal 75 years of government downplaying, ignoring risks of St. Louis radioactive waste

Expanding the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act would extend coverage to current and former Missouri residents who were exposed to radioactive waste left over from the Manhattan Project, the name given to the effort to develop the world’s first atomic bomb.

The St. Louis metro has struggled for decades with a radioactive waste problem. Material from uranium-refining efforts were trucked from downtown to surrounding counties after World War II where it polluted Coldwater Creek and a quarry and groundwater in Weldon Spring. Remaining waste was dumped at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, where it still remains.

Generations of St. Louis-area families lived in homes surrounded by radioactive waste without warning from the federal government. An investigation this summer by The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and the Associated Press found the government and companies that handled the waste knew of the dangerous contamination decades before they informed the public.

“The federal government wronged our communities — and they now have an obligation to make it right,” Bush said. 

RECA was first passed in the 1990s and covered some western states where residents — or “downwinders” — were exposed to radiation from atomic bomb tests during World War II. But several states, including New Mexico, where the first bombs were tested, were left out. The existing program is also set to expire this summer. 

Right now, downwinders are covered in parts of Nevada, Utah and Arizona. The expansion would reauthorize the program in those areas and expand coverage to the rest of those states. It would offer coverage for the first time to downwinders in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Guam and individuals exposed to radioactive waste in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska and Kentucky.

Advocates for RECA’s expansion had hoped it would be included in budget legislation Congress must pass by Friday night to avoid a partial government shutdown. But the language wasn’t in the bill unveiled Thursday morning. 

Wagner in a speech on the House floor called on House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, to bring the bill up for a vote. 

“These innocent victims of the U.S. nuclear weapons program are relying on Congress for restitution,” Wagner said. “I am outraged.” 

Bush also spoke on the House floor, saying it was “past time that this body gets its priorities straight.”

“To this day, many of my constituents are sick and dying because of their exposure (to nuclear waste),” Bush said. “World War II is still killing people in my district.”

In a statement released to St. Louis Public Radio, Johnson praised Wagner, calling her a “relentless fighter for over a decade on nuclear waste issues” and said he looked forward to working with her “as we chart a path together for the House to move forward with evaluating and acting on a reauthorization measure.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who has championed expanding RECA and twice guided it through the Senate, called that a “total failure” in a social media post.

“Politicians have talked like this for decades,” Hawley said of Johnson’s statement. “While doing nothing. The time to talk is over. The time to ACT is now.”

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).

Kansas City-area lawmakers want to give a sales tax break to developers expected to expand a federal facility that builds non-nuclear components to “modernize and refurbish” the nation’s nuclear stockpile. 

A bipartisan group of Missouri lawmakers from the metro are promoting legislation to offer a sales tax exemption on materials needed to expand the National Nuclear Security Administration’s existing campus in south Kansas City, which is operated by Honeywell International Inc.

Democratic Sen. Greg Razer told a Missouri Senate committee that the agency, 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. 

Rather than building the expansion itself, Razer said, the federal government will acquire the facilities from a private developer who can build them more quickly. He called it a “smart plan to keep our existing weapons arsenal safe.”

“We need to modernize this to keep them safe to ensure that accidents don’t happen,” Razer said, “and that’s what we will be doing in Kansas City.” 

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. 

The permanent jobs would then bring in additional state revenue. 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.

If the federal government built the facilities, it would be exempt from paying sales tax anyway, Razer said. Exempting the private developer allows it to keep its costs on par with what the federal government’s would be.

State Reps. Chris Brown, a Republican, and Anthony Ealy, a Democrat, are sponsoring the same legislation in the Missouri House.

The representatives’ bills were combined and passed a House committee unanimously. Razer’s bill also cleared its Senate committee unanimously. 

A spokesperson for the National Nuclear Security Agency said in an email that the new facilities would house about 4,000 employees, including existing employers working at other facilities and new hires. Asked how many jobs would be transferred from other facilities and how many new employees would be hired, the spokesperson did not clarify.

The spokesperson said since Honeywell moved to the existing campus in 2014, it experienced “significant growth in workload and personnel to support NNSA’s planned modernization of the nuclear deterrent.” 

Now, it’s pursuing the expansion to “expand manufacturing capacity and office space necessary to sustain continued production growth in support of NNSA’s national security mission.”

Construction is expected to begin this year and continue into the next decade. 

Kevin Breslin and Terry Anderson appeared before committees in the House and Senate to support the legislation on behalf of the developer, Promontory 150 LLC. 

The company, according to Missouri Ethics Commission filings, is located on Main Street in Kansas City, sharing an address with the law firm Watters Wolf Bub Hansmann. Breslin is registered as a lobbyist for Promontory 150 LLC, Botts 150 LLC and Bannister Transformation & Development LLC. 

Botts 150 LLC appears to refer to the project. The National Nuclear Security Administration campus is located on Botts Road. 

Bannister Transformation & Development LLC owns the former Bannister Federal Complex where Honeywell operated before moving to its Botts Road facility more than 10 years ago. 

Anderson, according to a witness form filed with a similar bill in the House, represents Promontory 150 LLC/Platform Ventures. He’s co-founder and co-president of Platform, a real estate investment firm in Kansas City.

Breslin said in the Senate committee hearing that the federal government had already made an initial appropriation to pay for the 15 buildings it plans to add over the next 10 years. 

In the last 10 years, Breslin said, the campus has grown from 3,000 to 8,000 employees. The facility needs to double its capacity to accommodate work anticipated over the next 15 to 20 years to update decades-old systems.

“They need to be refurbished,” he said. “They need to be modernized in order to make sure that they’re safe and protective for our national defense purposes, so this is a critical, vital function that needs to be performed, and they simply need additional infrastructure to accomplish their national defense mission.” 

Breslin told the House committee the facility is “not a weapons production facility,” arguing it instead “supports the technology that secures those weapons.” 

The website for Honeywell’s Kansas City campus says it develops, produces, procures and delivers “over 80% of all nonnuclear components in support of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.” 

Both Razer and Breslin said it would take an additional three to five years for the federal government to hire contractors and build the facility itself than it will for the developer. 

The legislation was backed by economic development and city officials from Kansas City who welcomed the proposed influx of jobs.

During a hearing in the Missouri House Economic Development Committee last week, representatives praised Honeywell as a good “corporate citizen” and lauded the project as wonderful and promising for Kansas City.

Honeywell will run the new facility. The company referred questions to the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Honeywell last month announced it would invest $84 million to expand its aerospace manufacturing facility in Olathe and hire 156 workers. 

Razer’s bill faced opposition from the state’s Sierra Club chapter and the Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation, a nonprofit organization that promotes nonviolence. The groups opposed the idea of producing parts for nuclear weapons. 

“This is a long-term investment in, really, the possible annihilation of humankind,” said Jeff Stack, with the fellowship of reconciliation. “We shouldn’t be a party to that.”  

Razer said he would love to live in a world where nuclear weapons don’t exist. 

“However that’s not the world we live in,” Razer said, “and we’re not producing new weapons … We are making sure that our aging weapons are safe.”

Legislation sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri extends the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which is set to expire, and expands it to cover individuals who were exposed to the radioactive waste that remains scattered across the St. Louis region (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images).

The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted again in favor of legislation that would compensate those who developed cancer following exposure to World War II-era radioactive waste in St. Louis. 

The legislation, sponsored by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, extends the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which is set to expire, and expands it to cover individuals who were exposed to the radioactive waste that remains scattered across the St. Louis region. 

It would also expand coverage to those who were exposed to atomic bomb testing in the southwest. 

“The United States Senate has the opportunity to do its part — its small part — to continue to make this nation what it could be, what we promised it will be, and to put right things that have been wrong,” Hawley said just before senators voted 69-30 in favor of his bill.

The legislation, which is backed by President Joe Biden, would represent a federal recognition of — and apology for — St. Louis’ decades-long struggle with radioactive waste. 

The St. Louis area was instrumental to the Manhattan Project, the name given to the World War II-era effort to build the world’s first atomic bomb. Mallinckrodt Chemical Works refined uranium in downtown St. Louis during the war that was used in the first sustained nuclear chain reaction in Chicago, a key breakthrough in the bomb’s development. 

After the war, radioactive waste from Mallinckrodt’s downtown facilities was trucked to St. Louis County — falling into the road along the way — and dumped at the airport. The material, which was left open to the elements, contaminated Coldwater Creek, which flows by the airport and through the county’s busy suburban neighborhoods. 

The material was sold and moved to another site next to Coldwater Creek where it continued to pollute the water. Eventually, the material that couldn’t be further refined to extract valuable metals was illegally dumped at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, where it remains today. 

“We have not done right by those good people,” Hawley said. “We have turned our back on them.”

Hawley added: “The government exposed them over a period of decades to nuclear radiation and waste, and in almost every case, did nothing about it — in many cases, lied to them about it.” 

The Senate last summer voted 61-37 in favor of Hawley’s update to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. But the expansion was included as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act and stripped out by a conference committee of senators and representatives.

Hawley has criticized Senate Republican leaders, particularly Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, for allowing the expansion to be removed from the defense bill. 

McConnell voted in favor of the bill senators passed Thursday, which was a standalone expansion of RECA. It still needs approval by the House of Representatives. 

The White House announced its endorsement of the legislation Wednesday evening, saying in a statement that the administration looks forward to working with legislators to ensure funding for the program. 

“The president believes we have a solemn obligation to address toxic exposure, especially among those who have been placed in harm’s way by the government’s actions,” the statement says. 

Joining Hawley in sponsoring the legislation were Missouri’s junior Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican, and Sen. Ben Ray Luján, a New Mexico Democrat.

Luján urged senators to support the legislation, noting that when the Senate attempted to expand RECA last summer, the movie Oppenheimer — about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb” — was hitting theaters.

The movie, Luján said, left out the important stories of the families who lived near the site where the Manhattan Project tested atomic bombs and suffered cancers and other diseases. 

“Generations of families wiped out by lung, stomach, prostate, thyroid, skin, breast and tongue cancer didn’t get the glossy Hollywood treatment, and the United States Congress has not made any significant progress in correcting these injustices since 2000,” Luján said. 

He added: “Shame on us.”

Hawley said on a conference call Monday that the standalone RECA expansion bill was expected to cost only about one-third as much as the version senators approved last summer. The legislation still covers the same geographic areas, he said. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has not released an independent analysis of the new legislation. It estimated the previous version would have cost $147 billion.

The standalone RECA legislation would offer coverage for individuals who were exposed to radioactive waste in Missouri, Tennessee, Alaska or Kentucky and were diagnosed with multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and cancer of the thyroid, breast, esophagus, stomach, pharynx, small intestine, pancreas, bile ducts, gallbladder, salivary gland, urinary bladder, brain, colon, ovary, bone, kidney or lung. It covers liver cancer as long as the patient doesn’t have cirrhosis or hepatitis B. 

Surviving spouses and children could also seek compensation if the individual exposed to the radioactive waste has died.

The legislation senators considered last summer would have also covered diabetes, systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis or Hashimoto’s disease. Those conditions are not in the new version of the bill.

Under the bill, the fund for uranium workers and miners would be extended for six years. Last summer’s bill would have extended it by 19. 

In urging his colleagues to vote for the bill, Hawley noted the federal government is now testing underneath homes in the St. Louis area to determine whether a subdivision built in the 1990s was constructed on top of radioactive contamination. 

“Today we say enough,” Hawley said. “Today we turn the page. Today we begin something new.”

People swim and fish in the Jacks Fork River on a hot summer day in 2021. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources and environmental groups warn a Missouri Senate bill could seriously hamper the state's ability to protect clean water. (Photo by Tessa Weinberg/Missouri Independent)

Missouri’s leading agriculture groups are pushing legislation environmentalists and state regulators warn could jeopardize thousands of miles of streams and drinking water for 3.6 million people.

Members of a Missouri Senate committee on Tuesday heard testimony on a bill that would narrow the definition of “waters of the state,” slashing the state’s authority over small streams and major aquifers. Supporters say it’s necessary to clean up confusion in the law.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources warned in a fiscal analysis that the bill could jeopardize the state’s groundwater, which provides drinking water to almost 60% of Missourians, and 136,236 miles of small streams.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Rusty Black of Chillicothe, said he’s working with state regulators on updated language to ensure the legislation doesn’t threaten groundwater. 

Black said he introduced the bill because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that narrowed the scope of the Clean Water Act and limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority over wetlands. Black’s legislation would similarly limit the types of waters Missouri can regulate.

“I have wells at home. I don’t necessarily want those to get bad,” Black told the Senate’s Agriculture, Food Production and Outdoor Resources Committee. “But at the same time, going past my home, past farms, my family farms…what out there on those properties really should be state waters?”

Black’s bill would define waters of the state as all “relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing rivers, streams, lakes and ponds” that are not confined to a single piece of property. Lakes, ponds, aquifers and wetlands would have to have a “continuous surface connection to a relatively permanent” body of water. Current law defines waters of the state as any body of water that crosses property lines. 

The term “waters of the state” is referred to throughout the state’s pollution control laws, meaning placing limits on its definition narrows the kinds of water Missouri regulators can protect. Agriculture groups supporting the legislation say it brings the state in alignment with the new federal authority.

“We have a current definition of waters of the state…that regulates basically grass waterways and other upland watercourses that I would rather call a ditch than a stream,” said Robert Brundage, an attorney for the Missouri Pork Association and the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association. 

But environmental groups say there’s no reason to narrow Missouri’s definition. Federal pollution rules, they said, set minimum standards, but the state is free to further regulate water as it sees fit.

Critics fear the language requiring that lakes, ponds, aquifers and wetlands have a surface connection to another body of water in order to be protected would exclude numerous bodies of water.

Zach Morris, president of the Conservation Federation of Missouri, said he was concerned about streams that have surface connections during periods of high flow or wetlands that are disconnected from rivers at the surface but are connected underground.

“The Mississippi and Missouri Rivers are drinking water sources for millions of people and they have many, many wetlands along their banks that are permanently separated by man made structures but still have a subsurface connection,” Morris said, “and polluting those waters could certainly add pollution into that drinking water source.” 

Melissa Vatterott, policy director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, told the committee the legislation “is seeking to fix a problem that doesn’t exist. 

“It’s being pushed by a very few industries — or maybe one particular person — to create confusion,” she said. 

Stephen Jeffery, an environmental attorney, said the bill should be rejected because it conflates wetlands and subsurface waters and fails to take into account the huge differences in geology and hydrology between various parts of Missouri. Beyond that, he said, “there have been expressed, so far today, no significant compelling reasons to change the existing law.” 

“There’s been no testimony at all today of any government overreach or government intrusion coming onto someone’s property to do something that is unlawful,” Jeffery said. 

He then quoted President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 State of the Union address: “Preservation of our environment is not a liberal or conservative challenge. It’s common sense.” 

The committee did not take action on the bill Tuesday.

Rep. Mike Haffner is sponsoring legislation that would allow neighboring communities a voice in whether landfills can be built in Kansas City within half a mile of the border (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications)..

Lawmakers must change a “broken process that unfairly hurts Missourians” to keep a landfill from moving into south Kansas City without residents’ input, state Rep. Mike Haffner told his colleagues Tuesday.

Speaking on the floor of the Missouri House, Haffner argued that a landfill proposed for a site at Kansas City’s southern border would devastate the environment, residents’ property values and surrounding suburbs’ economic development efforts. The project, he said, is “exactly what’s wrong with politics.”

Starting last year when rumors of the proposed landfill began circulating, Haffner has pushed legislation meant to give surrounding communities more sway over landfills proposed at the edges of Kansas City. 

“The location of landfills should be open and transparent,” said Haffner, a Pleasant Hill Republican. “It should be publicly discussed with the community and not done in the dark of night.”

Haffner urged the House again Tuesday to pass his legislation and protect suburban municipalities surrounding Kansas City.

Seventy Republicans joined with 43 Democrats in support of the bill, with 30 Republicans voting against. It faces one more House vote before it can move to the Missouri Senate, where Republican Sens. Mike Cierpiot and Rick Brattin are sponsoring identical legislation.

KC Recycle & Waste Solutions, owned by a married couple from the Kansas City metro, has proposed building a landfill at the southern tip of Kansas City where it borders Raymore. The site, just south of Missouri Highway 150, is within a mile of the Creekmoor golf course community with homes priced between $500,000 and $1 million. 

News of the proposed landfill, which would occupy about 270 acres, roiled nearby communities who have organized against the project and formed a political action committee, Kill The Fill.

Suburbs braced to use the legislature to block a south Kansas City landfill

Under current law, Missouri environmental regulators can’t issue a permit for a landfill in Kansas City within half a mile of a neighboring municipality unless that municipality signs off on it. Haffner’s bill would increase the buffer zone to a mile, effectively giving the surrounding community veto power over KC Recycle & Waste Solutions’ project.

“No one outside of the owners and developers of this $1 billion project, their 20-plus hired lobbyists want this landfill,” Haffner said on the House floor, referencing the fact that the Monheisers’ company currently has 19 lobbyists registered with the state. The city of Raymore has three. 

One of Haffner’s fellow Republican lawmakers, state Rep. Mark Matthiesen of O’Fallon, acknowledged spending time close to a landfill can have detrimental health effects. But he argued those effects occur within 500 meters, less than one-third of a mile. 

“If the neighborhood was 1.1 miles away instead of 0.8 miles…the bill we’d be talking about would expand that regulation to 1.2 miles or whatever arbitrary number we’re gonna pull out of the hat so that we can change the established process of Missouri,” Matthiesen said. 

Jennifer Monheiser, one of the owners of KC Recycle & Waste Solutions owners, said in an emailed statement to The Independent that 60% of Kansas City voters “see existing landfill capacity as a serious problem.”

“We’re confident that our proposed project is the right solution,” she said, “and we look forward to continuing to work with elected officials to address this critical problem facing our region.”

Haffner and Brattin pursued the same legislation last year. It cleared the Missouri House but got stuck in the Senate. Haffner and Brattin are now running against each other in the GOP primary for that state Senate seat. Also in the primary is state Rep. Dan Houx of Warrensburg, who voted in support of Haffner’s bill on Tuesday. 

Last year, state Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Arnold, launched a filibuster in an attempt to kill Brattin’s bill. He responded the next day with a filibuster of his own, holding the floor for four hours during the final days of the legislative session as members faced a constitutionally-mandated deadline to pass the state budget.

Eventually, Brattin struck a deal with Senate leadership to fund a study by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources into the effect a landfill would have on surrounding schools, residents, the environment and property values. 

Gov. Mike Parson vetoed the funding for the study.

A group of people with the Army Corps of Engineers exit a home on Cades Cove on Monday, March 4, 2024, in Florissant. The Army Corp of Engineers were drilling into the foundation of the house to test soil for radioactive material (Zachary Linhares/Riverfront Times).

Federal officials are investigating whether residents of a small subdivision in the St. Louis suburbs are living on top of contamination dating back to World War II after finding radioactive material in their backyards.

The Cades Cove subdivision, a small enclave in Florissant, was built on top of where Coldwater Creek once meandered. The creek, which runs through several St. Louis suburbs and into the Missouri River, was contaminated decades ago by waste left over from the development of the world’s first atomic bomb. 

Now, 78 years after the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, waste from their development lingers in Cades Cove residents’ backyards. And federal officials are drilling through their basement floors to determine whether it’s under their homes. 

“There are homes built on top of the Manhattan Project in St. Louis,” said Dawn Chapman, a co-founder of Just Moms STL, an advocacy group for affected communities, “and there are residents who have been living in those homes on top of this for decades.”

Chapman was speaking on a press conference call about legislation that would compensate St. Louis-area residents who have developed illnesses because of exposure to radioactive waste.

“This is not a 50-year-old problem,” Chapman said. “This is a today problem.”

Records reveal 75 years of government downplaying, ignoring risks of St. Louis radioactive waste

Following the conference call and media inquiries on Monday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for cleaning up Coldwater Creek and surrounding properties, announced the sampling efforts in a news release. The agency said it was planning a public meeting.

Phil Moser, a program manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said in an interview with The Independent that the agency, which is responsible for cleaning up Coldwater Creek, discovered radioactive contamination in several backyards in Cades Cove, leading officials to sample under residents’ foundations. 

Moser said it’s the first time since the agency began sampling efforts — meant to inform its cleanup plan — that it has needed to go inside residents’ homes to collect samples. He called the neighborhood an “outlier” for its contamination in residents’ yards.

Contamination in Cades Cove, Moser said, has been found deep underground because the creek meander was filled in with dirt when the neighborhood was built more than 30 years ago. He said several yards will need to be remediated. 

It’s less clear what will happen if contamination is discovered under residents’ homes. Moser said the Army Corps is going to ensure it gets all the contamination. Asked if homes may need to be demolished or whether residents might have to move, Moser said he couldn’t speak about hypotheticals. 

“We’re not taking anything off the table as far as what we would eventually have to do,” he said.

He said “no matter what” the agency will remove all the contamination.

In an email to activists about the sampling and in an interview with The Independent, Moser said the agency had been in contact with Cades Cove residents and the local homeowners’ association.

“As expected, this is a difficult time for (residents) to navigate and we are striving (to) not make it worse with too much outside attention,” Moser said in an email to activists. The Corps’ St. Louis spokesman, Jeremy Idleman, said the same in an emailed statement.

Parts of St. Louis and surrounding counties have been contaminated for decades by waste generated during the Manhattan Project, the name given to the effort to build the world’s first atomic bomb. Uranium refined in downtown St. Louis was used in the first sustained nuclear reaction in Chicago, a key breakthrough in the bomb’s creation.

After the war, waste generated from uranium processing was trucked to St. Louis County and dumped, uncovered, at the airport, right next to Coldwater Creek. Wind and rain spread the waste, polluting the creek for miles. Over the ensuing decades, tons of waste were moved around St. Louis and St. Charles counties, polluting numerous sites.

Radioactive contamination remains at sites around the St. Louis metro today, and the cleanup of Coldwater Creek and surrounding properties is expected to take until 2038. 

Even at the time the homes in Cades Cove were built, the federal government had known for years that radioactive waste stored nearby had polluted Coldwater Creek. An investigation published last summer by The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press revealed that federal officials and the company that refined uranium for the Manhattan Project knew the waste posed a risk to St. Louis residents for years before acknowledging it to the public. 

“I’m angry,” said Karen Nickel, Chapman’s fellow co-founder, who visited the neighborhood Monday. “I’m angry. I’m frustrated, disappointed, and I feel very, very bad for the people that are living in those homes, living in that subdivision.” 

Nickel said Just Moms hopes to share resources and information with Cades Cove residents and ensure those outside the neighborhood know what is being found. She criticized the Army Corps for not making the findings public more quickly.

“Stop using this excuse,” Nickel said. “…the rest of this community has the right to know.”

The revelation of the Cades Cove contamination comes at a time when St. Louis’ radioactive contamination is in the spotlight. 

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote this week on legislation that would expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to residents of Missouri sickened by radioactive waste and several western states where atomic bomb testing exposed huge swaths of the nation to airborne radioactivity.

And Chapman is attending President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address on Thursday as U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley’s guest. 

The Riverfront Times’ Zach Linhares contributed to this report.

Denali Water Solutions operates storage basins for meatpacking sludge in Missouri. Legislation in the Missouri House would impose regulations to help rural residents who complain of unbearable smells from the facilities. (USGAO/Wikipedia).

Between Vallerie Steele, her seven siblings and their children, there’s always a birthday or anniversary to celebrate on the family’s southwest Missouri farm. The summer months are typically a parade of pool parties and barbecues.

Until last year. 

The stench coming from the lagoon across the road from Steele’s home has become unbearable. It holds waste Denali Water Solutions collects from meatpacking plants before spreading it as free fertilizer on farmers’ properties. 

The smell from the “cesspool of rotting flesh” has forced the family inside, she said. 

“Nobody wants to eat a burger or a hot dog if it smells like rotten crap in the air,” Steele said in an interview with The Independent. “It’s just disgusting.”

She tried to stain her porch three times last summer but couldn’t stand to be outside because of the smell. One of her sons was bullied at school because the stench of the lagoon clung to his clothes. Children at her younger son’s combined elementary and middle school beg their teachers to stay inside during recess.

“It literally burns your lungs, your chest,” she said. “I’m an ICU nurse — like, I know this isn’t normal.”

Steele leads a coalition of southwest Missouri residents fighting for more regulation of Denali’s — and similar — lagoons. She implored state lawmakers last month to pass legislation meant to protect rural neighbors and impose more regulations on wastewater sludge haulers.

And on Thursday, the Missouri House voted 151-2 to pass legislation that would require companies like Denali to have water pollution permits and follow certain design requirements for its facilities. 

Facilities like Denali’s would have to be at least 1,000, 2,000 or 4,000 feet from the nearest public building or home depending on the size of the lagoon. And the state would have to establish sampling rules for the basins and require groundwater monitoring in hydrologically sensitive areas.

Sponsored by state Reps. Ed Lewis, a Moberly Republican, and Dirk Deaton, a Noel Republican, the legislation now moves to the Missouri Senate for consideration. The House attached an emergency clause, meaning if it clears the Senate and is signed by the governor the new regulations would go into effect immediately. 

Arkansas-based Denali’s communications director, Samuel Liebl, said in a statement that Lewis and Deaton’s bill would add “excessive and unnecessary costs to food manufacturers and would have negative impacts on the state’s economy and businesses.” 

“While Denali supports revised regulations focused on transparency, we feel strongly the bill voted on in the Missouri House…this week requires significant revisions,” he said.

Liebl said there was “high demand among farmers for food processing residuals due to their valuable nutrients.” 

“Our model allows them to receive them without any added expense, helping keep food costs down for Missouri residents,” he said.

Denali operates three lagoons in McDonald, Newton and Macon counties and built a fourth that has not been filled in Randolph County. Before last fall, it spread meatpacking sludge over 20,000 acres in the state. Farmers that work with Denali can have the sludge spread on their fields as free fertilizer.

But under an agreement with state environmental regulators, the company is currently draining its lagoons until it can obtain a permit to operate.

An abrupt regulatory change 

Until last year, Denali had a permit from the Missouri Fertilizer Control Board, which exempted it from having to get a permit from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. That meant the state’s environmental regulators couldn’t impose any instructions on Denali unless its sludge polluted the state’s waterways, a policy decried by Deaton. 

“Nobody seems to know exactly how it got there — when, why and what for and who thought it was a good idea,” he said. 

But the fertilizer board last year decided it didn’t have authority over Denali because it provides its sludge for free rather than selling it as a commercial fertilizer. Without a fertilizer permit, Denali had to get a permit from the Department of Natural Resources. 

Denali has sued the fertilizer board in an attempt to have its fertilizer permit reinstated. 

After the fertilizer board’s decision, Missouri environmental regulators allowed Denali to keep operating in the interim until, in October, the company applied so much sludge to a field just before it rained that regulators reversed course. 

Following complaints, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources visited a site where Denali had applied waste and found “standing pools of liquids and solids” and such huge quantities of meatpacking and sewage sludge it covered the vegetation on the fields, according to a document from the state. It was expected to rain in the coming days, meaning the sludge could pollute nearby streams.

Under an agreement the state and Denali reached last month, the company is now prohibited from applying waste to fields in Missouri and must start draining its lagoons. It was also ordered to pay $21,665 in fines.

Until Denali receives permits to resume its operations, it has to haul its waste to a treatment facility or take it out of Missouri and apply it to farmland in another state. 

That wasn’t the company’s only violation.

In 2022, it dumped 36 truck loads — or 165,000 gallons — of sludge onto only five acres a day ahead of heavy rains. The waste flowed onto neighboring property and into a waterway.

Denali has received four violations since 2022. 

Rural neighbors fight back

Around the same time the state investigated Denali in the fall of 2023, Steele and nearby neighbors sued in an attempt to force regulation of the sludge.

The group — Stop Land Use Our Ground and Environment, or S.L.U.D.G.E — argues the state should be treating Denali as a solid waste business and not allow it to spread the material on individuals’ fields. 

Another group called Citizens of Randolph County Against Pollution, or C.R.A.P. is fighting the lagoon Denali constructed in their area but has yet to fill. In September, a judge in that lawsuit prohibited the state from granting a permit to Denali without court permission. 

The outcry from neighbors has gotten so bad that one landowner whose field Denali uses to spread the sludge has been charged with four misdemeanor counts of disturbing the peace.

In a probable cause statement filed in the case, an investigator said 10 residents near one of Denali’s lagoons complained about the “noxious and offensive” odor and reported that they couldn’t stand to be outside. 

“I have also received statements that the smell interferes with efforts to sell houses, therefore, (affecting) their property values,” the probable cause statement says. “One victim stated ‘we feel like hostages in our own home.’” 

Deaton said when he took office in 2019, he was flooded with constituent emails and letters concerned about Denali. 

“We oftentimes say we got hundreds of emails. I don’t know about you; sometimes I wonder— did they really get hundreds of emails?” Deaton said in a committee hearing. “Let me tell you, I’m happy to show you. I’ve gotten hundreds of emails, probably over 1,000 at this point.”

Steele, a member of S.L.U.D.G.E, said the odor had exacerbated neighbors’ asthma and caused kids at the nearby baseball fields to throw up behind dugouts.

“If these people had to dump this stuff in their front yard, they wouldn’t do it,” Steele said. 

Rep. Tim Taylor, a Republican from Bunceton, questioned a lobbyist for Denali in a hearing last month about the contents of the sludge.

“Tell me why in the world a company that’s looking to make a profit would give away a product for free when they can easily charge even a small amount of money and make money,” Taylor said. “To see that, I can’t see it in any other way, except that ‘as long as we don’t charge for it, nobody’s going to ask any questions.’”

The lawsuit is still pending, and S.L.U.D.G.E.’s lawyer, Stephen Jeffery, is fighting for the ability to take samples of the material. Denali and partnering farmers have not complied with Jeffery’s subpoenas. 

Jeffery filed a motion to hold Denali and the farmers in contempt of court for failing to comply with the subpoenas. A hearing on the issue is set for Friday. 

John Hoke, director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ water protection program, said the material that comes from meatpacking plants that pay Denali to haul away waste was tested for nutrients and heavy metals under the fertilizer control board.

But once the materials are combined in Denali’s lagoons, it’s less clear what the total composition is. 

“You need to know what nutrients are in that material before you land apply to make sure you’re not causing any negative impacts to the soils,” Hoke said, adding that enhanced monitoring was included as a provision in Denali’s pending permits.

Lewis implored colleagues Thursday to adopt his legislation imposing regulations on Denali and to do so with an emergency clause to allow the bill to take effect quickly.

“It’ll definitely secure our food supply, make that safer,” Lewis said, “but it will also make the rivers and the streams of Missouri safer.” 

An undated photo of the Pomme de Terre River, which runs through Webster, Greene, Dallas, Polk and Hickory counties. A meat packing company near Pleasant Hope wanted a permit to discharge its wastewater into the river, which is already proposed for the impaired waters list. The meatpacker is now closing. (Shannon Henry photo via the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)

A southwest Missouri meatpacking plant that sought to dump treated wastewater into an impaired river will halt operations — at least temporarily.

Missouri Prime Beef Packers will shutter its Pleasant Hope facility, which processes 3,500 cattle per week, April 26. It’s not clear whether the closure will be temporary or permanent. 

The closure, disclosed in a filing with the state, comes after the facility withdrew a request with state environmental regulators to discharge treated wastewater from its operations directly into the Pomme de Terre River, which already struggles with high levels of E. coli bacteria.  

Missouri environmental regulators in November signaled their intent to deny the facility’s request. 

Missouri Prime Beef Packers could not immediately be reached for comment, but the company’s spokesman told the Springfield News-Leader, which first reported the closure, that it “stems from operational challenges at the facility related to wastewater management and persistently unfavorable market conditions.”

According to a notice filed under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, Act, the plant’s 335 workers will be laid off. Some will continue to work until the plant closes April 26, but others will be placed on leave and then terminated in April.

The WARN Act notice says the closure could be temporary or permanent. 

The meatpacking plant had sought permission from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to treat wastewater from the meatpacking process with a proprietary microbe technology called “iLeaf” before discharging it into the Pomme de Terre River. The company currently applies its wastewater to surrounding land as fertilizer.

The state initially found in its review of the requests that the microbe technology could sufficiently treat the wastewater, but after considerable public pushback, it determined it didn’t have adequate assurance the facility wouldn’t contribute to the river’s water quality problems.

The Pomme de Terre River winds through the Ozark region of southwest Missouri and is a popular destination for canoeing, swimming and fishing. But it has been on and off a federal list of impaired waterways because of high levels of E. coli bacteria. It’s currently considered impaired.

The river was found in 2019 to have an average of more than 200 E. coli colonies per 100 milliliters of water, well above the limit of 126. 

Pomme de Terre Lake, which is fed by the river, is also considered impaired because of high levels of chlorophyll-a, which indicates the lake is receiving too much phosphorus and nitrogen, both found in farm runoff and animal waste. 

After the state signaled its intent to deny the company’s request, Missouri Prime Beef Packer withdrew it. 

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources could not immediately be reached for comment. 

(Illustration by Tyler Gross)

Local governments in the St. Louis area could request radioactive waste testing from the state under a Missouri House bill that would appropriate money to a long-unfunded program. 

The Missouri House Conservation and Natural Resources Committee on Monday heard testimony on a bill that would transfer $300,000 to a radioactive waste investigations fund created six years ago. 

Despite the fund passing the legislature in 2018 and being signed into law by Gov. Mike Parson, it has never had any money allocated to it.

The funding — double what Parson recommended in his proposed budget — would allow the state to test sites that are feared to be contaminated with decades-old radioactive waste. 

“Legacy waste from the Manhattan Project has been bought, resold, moved around the area, leaving in its path radioactive contamination to the extent that we don’t necessarily know every single last place that it still exists,” said state Rep. Mark Matthiesen, an O’Fallon Republican.

Five revelations about St. Louis’ history with radioactive waste

The committee took no action on the bill Monday evening. 

Federal agencies are working to clean up several sites, but Matthiesen said the fund would allow state environmental regulators to identify nearby residential areas that could be contaminated.

“There’s many areas where we have known contamination but there could potentially be some areas surrounding those known areas where there could still be contamination that is yet to be identified,” he said. 

The St. Louis area has struggled for decades with remnant radioactive waste from World War II. The city was integral to the Manhattan Project, the name given to the war-ear effort to build the world’s first atomic bomb. Waste from uranium refining efforts in downtown St. Louis was transported to several sites in St. Louis and St. Charles counties, contaminating parks, lakes and Coldwater Creek.

Parts of the region aren’t expected to be remediated until 2038 — 93 years after the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and almost 90 years after the waste was identified as a risk to Coldwater Creek.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is remediating Coldwater Creek, which runs through what are now busy suburbs. It was contaminated in the years after World War II when radioactive waste was dumped at the nearby St. Louis airport and at a property in Hazelwood. 

For decades, the contaminated creek water exposed residents to radioactive waste. A federal study found the creek contamination raised the risk of certain cancers for people who lived nearby and children played in the creek. 

From the airport, the radioactive waste was sold and moved to Hazelwood where it again sat next to and leaked into Coldwater Creek. The Cotter Corporation, which bought the waste to extract valuable metals, then requested to dump the remaining waste that had no economic value at a quarry in Weldon Spring or bury it onsite. When the federal government denied the company permission, it illegally dumped the waste at the West Lake Landfill where it remains today.

The Environmental Protection Agency is leading the effort to design a remediation for the landfill.

The decades-long problem has come under new scrutiny as the EPA works to start remediation at West Lake and an outside expert identified contamination at an elementary school next to Coldwater Creek.

The Missouri Independent, in partnership with MuckRock and the Associated Press, revealed last summer that federal officials and companies that handled the waste knew the radioactive waste posed a risk to St. Louis-area residents for years before making it known to the public. 

In 1949, Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, which refined uranium in downtown St. Louis for the Manhattan Project, realized waste stored in decaying steel drums at the airport threatened to leak into Coldwater Creek. It determined that workers couldn’t move the material to new containers because “the hazards to the workers involved in such an occupation would be considerable.”

But despite knowing the waste was spreading, federal officials downplayed the risks for years. 

State Rep. Paula Brown, a Democrat from Hazelwood, noted despite the EPA reaching a decision on how to handle the West Lake Landfill, “there is still no shovel in the ground.” She noted activists for years told the EPA the agency didn’t have a handle on where all of the radioactive waste was and urged further testing of the landfill.

“They kept saying, ‘No, it’s not. No it’s not,’” Brown said. “Well, they have found it. It is awful…so this is an important bill.”

State Rep. Kurtis Gregory, R-Marshall, speaks during House debate on April 27, 2022 (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Legislation backed by Missouri agriculture groups could slash the state’s clean water enforcement, jeopardizing millions of dollars in grants and raising the specter of a federal takeover. 

A Missouri House committee Monday night considered legislation that would remove “nonpoint sources” from the definition of contamination source in the state’s water laws, which critics say would undermine state environmental regulators’ efforts to control farm runoff.

According to the fiscal note prepared for the bill, its passage could mean $4.7 million in lost funding for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, including 17 staff members. 

The bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Kurtis Gregory of  Marshall, and agriculture groups that support his bill argue it offers farmers “regulatory certainty” in their operations. They fear as the law is currently written, state environmental regulators could start requiring a permit for anything and everything a farmer does. 

The goal is “making sure that no one is going to be out there (wondering), ‘Where’s the next Whack-A-Mole coming from?’”

Among the bill’s chief proponents is the Missouri Corn Growers Association. The group told Missouri House members the bill would clarify existing law. Right now, the group’s director of public policy, Derek Steen, said, the state is obligated “to be issuing permits to every farmer in every activity that’s going on on every farm.” 

“Whether you’re applying fertilizer, whether you’re putting in conservation practices, whether you’re running cattle on farm ground, is setting up the potential for a nonpoint source,” Steen said.

Steen said there “would be potentially millions of these sorts of permits out there,” though he acknowledged the state is not requiring such permits. 

“Nonpoint source” pollution refers to indirect means through which water can become contaminated. Farm fertilizers and animal waste wash off of fields, contributing nitrate and phosphorus pollution to rivers and streams. Sediment can wash from a parking lot into storm sewers and, eventually, rivers.

Southwest Missouri river’s listing as polluted may set up fight over meatpacker permit

In the Midwest, nonpoint source pollution is a major source of contamination because of the concentration of farms. Of the rivers listed by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources as “impaired waters,” 87% are there because of nonpoint source pollution.

Nutrient pollution from farms is primarily responsible for a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that’s currently larger than the state of Delaware. In some years, it has been as large as New Jersey.

The pollution flows down the Mississippi River into the gulf, contributing to algae blooms. When the algae dies, oxygen-consuming bacteria consumes the oxygen in the water, creating a dead zone where fish can’t survive. 

It’s impossible to impose measurable limits on nonpoint source pollution since it’s not confined. But the Missouri Department of Natural Resources has voluntary incentives and programs meant to help farmers reduce their pollution. 

Critics of Gregory’s bill fear it would jeopardize funding for those efforts, laid out in the estimated $4.7 million cost included in the bill’s fiscal note. 

State Rep. Michael Burton, a Lakeshire Democrat who serves on the committee that heard the bill, said the House Conservation and Natural Resources Committee should be focused on taking care of the environment.

“This appears to be doing the opposite,” Burton said. 

Burton also questioned the need for the bill considering that the state is not requiring permits for nonpoint source pollution. He appeared dubious of Steen’s claim that the Missouri Department of Natural Resources may start requiring the Missouri Department of Transportation to get a nonpoint source pollution permit for trucks that disperse salt during winter storms.

“I don’t see them doing that,” Burton said. “It seems like you’re really reaching there.” 

John Madras, a volunteer for the Sierra Club and former employee of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, said nonpoint sources of pollution have been exempt from permitting requirements “from the date those laws were written.” 

“It’s never been there,” Madras said. “It’s never anticipated to be there.” 

State Rep. Doyle Justus, a Troy Republican, asked Madras, if the bill passes, whether it would make it legal for nonpoint sources to pollute MIssouris’ waters. 

Madras said: “I think it would be much more difficult to address situations where that occurs.” 

The University of Kansas Health System, which has its primary location in Kansas City, Kansas, is set to partner with Liberty Hospital, sparking discontent among some state lawmakers. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent)

Liberty Hospital would be at risk of falling into the hands of a for-profit chain and losing important services if Missouri lawmakers block a proposed takeover by the University of Kansas Health System, a board member for the Northland hospital argued last week. 

Speaking to a Missouri Senate committee, Liberty Hospital board president Dennis Carter implored lawmakers not to pass legislation meant to kill the proposed deal. 

Doing so, he said, could result in the public hospital getting scooped up by a chain that he fears would shutter its labor and delivery center and Level II trauma center. 

“If we go for-profit, we’ll be a little bit more than a triage center, but we will not be what Liberty Hospital and the people who voted us into office want us to be,” Carter said.

Liberty’s leadership started looking for another health system in May to forge a partnership to help the hospital meet growing demand in the Kansas City suburbs north of the Missouri River. It announced in October that it had chosen the University of Kansas Health System.

But the idea of the Kansas institution taking over a Missouri hospital sparked opposition from lawmakers in both states. Kansas Sen. J.R. Claeys, a Republican from Salina, introduced legislation requiring KU health system receive legislative approval before investing in a facility outside of the state. 

The bill has not yet received a hearing.

And in Missouri, Sen. Greg Razer, a Kansas City Democrat, is sponsoring legislation that would prohibit Missouri hospitals from partnering with an out-of-state health system “operated by an institution of higher education” unless a supermajority of voters approve the deal. 

Razer said he receives medical care from KU and has no issue with the quality of care the institution provides. He says he objects to the idea of a hospital, governed by a board largely appointed by the Kansas governor, running a Missouri institution.

“Borders have a purpose of being there,” Razer said. 

Razer also cited Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who recently argued the proposed arrangement is not legal without legislative approval. While public subdivisions in Missouri — like hospital districts or cities — can enter agreements with subdivisions in other states, Kansas law considers the agreements interstate compacts, which require legislative approval, Bailey argued in a letter to Missouri Senate leadership.

Chuck Hatfield, an attorney representing Liberty, said in an interview that executives had spoken to Bailey and there was a “misconception” that the deal would involve an interstate compact.

Instead, Hatfield said, the Liberty hospital district will still own the buildings and land as a political subdivision. The New Liberty Hospital Corporation, the nonprofit that currently operates the hospital, will add the University of Kansas Health System, also a nonprofit, as a “member, which will operate the hospital.

“I’m very confident after talking with them that we have or will be able to satisfy all of their concerns,” Hatfield said. 

Madeleine Sieren, a spokeswoman for Bailey, said the attorney general’s position had not changed. 

In testimony on Razer’s bill, Hatfield said KU would invest “hundreds of millions of dollars” at Liberty. In an interview, he said, those investments are still the subject of negotiations. 

When Liberty started looking for a partner, Hatfield said, one of the primary issues was the need for capital to upgrade their electronic record and IT systems, invest in new equipment and keep up with building maintenance. 

Much like countless rural hospitals, he said, Liberty can’t come up with the funds needed to keep up with upgrades.

Hatfield noted both he and Razer attended the University of Missouri and “were taught to hate KU.” 

“I think a little of it is just cross-border xenophobia for want of a better term,” Hatfield said, “and I don’t think that’s an appropriate way to make healthcare decisions.” 

Sen. Jason Bean. R-Holcomb, on the first day of the 2024 legislative session (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

As climate change and groundwater pumping leave arid western states hurting for water, Missouri lawmakers are considering legislation to keep the state’s water from being shipped outside its borders. 

“You may hear about states like California and Kansas in the news having water shortages,” said state Sen. Jason Bean, a Republican from Holcomb. “We don’t want to lose our water because they’ve mismanaged theirs.”

With the Missouri River running through the middle of the state, the Mississippi along its eastern border and the Osage River that feeds the Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri is home to a host of reliable freshwater systems. But Bean and other Missouri lawmakers fear as other states grapple with a drier future, they might look to Missouri as a solution. 

“The way the federal government is throwing money around, don’t think it can’t happen,” said Rep. Jamie Burger, a Republican from Benton. “Even if it costs $10 billion to get our water from Missouri to Kansas, to California, to wherever it may be, it can happen.”

Bean and Burger introduced legislation this year that would prohibit exporting water from Missouri unless authorized by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. It’s backed by Missouri agricultural and environmental groups and received support from Republican and Democratic legislators alike.

“I farm in Kansas with my brother and water has become an unbelievable, precious resource,” said Brent Hemphill, a lobbyist for the Missouri Soybean Association, “and I just don’t want Missouri to become Kansas.” 

Kansas sits atop the Ogallala Aquifer, a formation millions of years old that includes the largest underground store of freshwater in the nation. Since the mid-20th Century, farmers have pumped water from the Ogallala to irrigate crops, bringing parts of western Kansas within a generation of running dry.

Burger said in an interview with The Independent that he wasn’t aware of any efforts to export water from the state aside from some longstanding agreements along the state’s borders with Arkansas and Oklahoma. 

“We just don’t want some of the western states that are struggling for water capacities to be able to pipe into our aquifers and pump our water in any direction,” Burger said. “We want to keep that for Missourians.”

Burger said the state couldn’t prohibit someone in a bordering state from pumping water that’s shared between the two — such as Illinois using the Mississippi River. 

Despite its abundant water sources, Missouri has been struggling through a prolonged drought — on and off — for more than a year and a half. As of last week, more than 80% of the state was in some level of drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Almost 14% was in a severe drought.

In July, more than one-quarter of the state was in extreme or exceptional drought.

Rep. Paula Brown, the ranking Democrat on the House’s natural resources committee, said she toured Missouri over the summer and saw bodies of water that were “frighteningly low.”

“I’ve seen the bottom of rivers and lakes that I canoed and swam in growing up as a kid,” said Brown, who is from St. Louis County, “and I am very nervous about the water in Missouri. I don’t want any of it leaving.”

Michael Berg, state political director for the Sierra Club, said the environmental nonprofit supports the purpose of the bill but wants to make sure it doesn’t harm agreements with communities along Missouri’s borders to meet water needs on both sides.

Chris Wieberg, deputy director of the Missouri Geological Survey, told a Missouri Senate committee last month that the state is seeing an increasing number of water transfer proposals. 

He cited the longshot Kansas aqueduct, a proposal pushed by groundwater managers in southwest Kansas to offset the decline of the area’s primary water resource, the Ogallala Aquifer, which has been over pumped for decades to support agriculture in the arid region.

The project, as it’s proposed, would pump water from the Missouri River in northeast Kansas hundreds of miles to the southwest. 

Groundwater Management District 3 in southwest Kansas spent thousands to truck 6,000 gallons of water from the Missouri River to farms in Wichita County and Colorado in an attempt to prove a pipeline could work, but the idea is largely dismissed by state officials.

Brownie Wilson kneels next to a decommissioned irrigation well outside Moscow, Kan., as part of the Kansas Geological Survey’s efforts to measure the decline of the Ogallala Aquifer. Groundwater has been declining for decades because of irrigation in the eight states that rely on the aquifer (Kevin Hardy/Stateline).

MOSCOW, Kansas — Brownie Wilson pulls off a remote dirt road right through a steep ditch and onto a farmer’s field.

He hops out of his white Silverado pickup, mud covering nearly all of it except the Kansas Geological Survey logo stuck on the side with electrical tape. Dry cornstalks crunch under his work boots as he makes his way to a decommissioned irrigation well.

He unspools a steel highway tape measure a few feet at a time and feeds it into the well until gravity takes over. He keeps a thumb on it to control the speed.

How much of the tape comes out wet lets him calculate how much water has been lost here.

Wilson crisscrosses western Kansas every January to measure wells and track the rapid decline of the Ogallala Aquifer, which contains the nation’s largest underground store of fresh water.

Last year, some wells had dropped 10 feet or more because of the severe 2022 drought. But this year, they stayed about the same or dropped a couple feet. Some of these wells have dropped more than 100 feet since Wilson started working for the agency in 2001, he said.

“Some of our issues looking forward look gargantuan,” Wilson said. “But I do think we can peck away at it and make some headway.”

The Ogallala Aquifer, the underground rock and sediment formation that spans eight states from South Dakota to the Texas panhandle, is the only reliable water source for some parts of the region. But for decades, states have allowed farmers to overpump groundwater to irrigate corn and other crops that would otherwise struggle on the arid High Plains.

Now, the disappearing water is threatening more than just agriculture. Rural communities are facing dire futures where water is no longer a certainty. Across the Ogallala, small towns and cities built around agriculture are facing a twisted threat: The very industry that made their communities might just eradicate them.

Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly acknowledges some communities are just a generation away from running out of water. But she said there’s still time to act.

“If they do nothing, I think they’re going to suffer the consequences,” Kelly said in an interview.

Today, the aquifer supports 20% of the nation’s wheat, corn, cotton and cattle production and represents 30% of all water used for irrigation in the United States.

Depletion is forcing aquifer-dependent communities across the region to dig deeper wells, purchase expensive water rights from farmers, build pipelines and recycle their water supplies in new ways to save every drop possible.

Since the mid-20th century, when large-scale irrigation began, water levels in the stretches of the Ogallala underlying Kansas have dropped an average 28.2 feet farther below the surface, far worse than the eight-state average of 16.8 feet.

Water levels in Texas, where the Ogallala runs under the state’s panhandle, have dropped 44 feet. New Mexico has seen a 19.1-foot decline.

In Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Wyoming, the water level has declined less than the eight-state average, while in South Dakota it has risen.

While the Ogallala Aquifer presents distinct circumstances, tensions over groundwater are growing across the country, said climate scientist and author Peter Gleick, who founded the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank.

“You’re not alone,” Gleick told Kansas irrigators and policymakers at the Governor’s Conference on Water, held in November in Manhattan, Kansas. “A lot of the issues that you’re dealing with in Kansas, they’re dealing with in Arizona, and the Colorado [River] basin.”

Without drastic measures, some communities may not survive.

“I think, without a doubt, we will see some communities dry up,” Gleick said in an interview. “We’ve seen that historically, where communities outgrow a natural resource or lose a natural resource and people have to move to abandon their homes.”

‘We’re running out of water’

When Micheal Shannon got his start in local government over 40 years ago, water supplies were not top of mind.

Those days are gone.

“We’re running out of water,” said Shannon, the interim city manager in Guymon, Oklahoma. “We’re pumping our maximum. And the water levels keep coming down.”

The largest city in the Oklahoma Panhandle, Guymon relies on 18 wells to draw water from the Ogallala. But dropping water levels have forced the city of about 13,000 to explore new wells outside of town.

The city has already committed some $4.5 million to study and drill new wells, but there’s no guarantee the wells will produce a reliable water supply.

“There’s always that what if,” he said. “There could not be any water.”

The city’s largest water user and employer is a massive pork plant that slaughters and processes more than 20,000 hogs per day. The plant has voluntarily reduced water usage by nearly half during times of shortened supply.

Shannon said the city, industry and agricultural producers must work together.

“We all still want to be here the next 35, 40 years,” he said. “We know farmers are going to have to produce ag products. And the citizens of Guymon are going to have to have water.”

More than 200 miles away, several New Mexico communities are banking on more drastic measures.

A new pipeline, expected to cost more than $800 million, will bring water from the Canadian River’s Ute Reservoir to four municipalities and Cannon Air Force Base.

“This is our future, no doubt about it,” said Orlando Ortega, administrator of the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority. “Without this project, none of these communities could exist for very long.”

The pipeline is being funded largely by the federal government, though four participating communities have been paying dues to the water authority for years. Officials aim to have the pipeline operational by the end of the decade.

Even so, communities will still need to get more aggressive about conserving water, said Michael Morris, who leads the water authority board and is mayor of Clovis, one of its member communities.

Morris is active in agricultural efforts to decrease pumping — such as conservation programs in the region that pay producers to stop pumping. And the city is working to expand water recycling efforts.

But he said the situation is even more dire than locals realize. Few know how close Clovis has come to seeing its water demand outpace the underground supply.

“So is there another option?” he said. “No.”

Decades of state inaction

In Kansas, the Ogallala Aquifer supplies 70% to 80% of the water residents use each day. But for decades, the state’s regulation of water benefited its largest user and its largest industry: agriculture.

The once-abundant water allowed farmers to grow cheap cattle feed, attracting the feedlots, and increasingly, dairy farms, that dot southwest Kansas.

But that feed is cheap, partly because — aside from the fuel costs associated with running a well — the water is free.

A report commissioned by the Kansas legislature in 1955 warned of a future without it.

“Ground-water mining is a serious problem,” the report says.

After the grave 1955 warning, however, the state legislature only made it easier to pump the water, according to Burke Griggs, a water law professor at Washburn University in Topeka.

Griggs, formerly a water lawyer for the state, criticized Kansas lawmakers’ decadeslong posture that depletion would best be solved locally. He said it is a stance held by every governor since the 1980s.

“They want it to be voluntary. And they want it to be cooperative. They want to have local-based solutions,” Griggs said. “These are the catchwords you hear. None of them have achieved much.”

Kelly follows the same line. The second-term governor recently signed a law mandating more reporting and planning from groundwater management districts and created a new subcabinet to coordinate water issues across agencies. But she hasn’t wavered from her position that water conservation efforts are most effective when they are voluntary.

“Things are more likely to work out in the long run and succeed if there is local buy-in, and local commitment and the idea is generated locally — rather than the state wielding that heavy hammer,” Kelly said.

But even some farmers want the state to step in, water policy watchers say.

“Many families who are trying to make a living from farming, and who would like to keep farming on their own land, are just waiting for the state to step in and help them fix this. Most people agree that we need fair, enforceable and transparent rules to get this turned around,” said Lucas Bessire, a professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma who grew up in southwest Kansas.

Voluntary efforts in action

For the first time since their father dug an irrigation well in the dusty sandhills of southwest Kansas more than 50 years ago, Gina and Marc Gigot’s farm isn’t growing corn.

The sibling farmers are trying to preserve the precious water below their land outside Garden City.

For decades, the Gigot family has benefited from drawing groundwater to the surface to grow bright green circles of crops where the sandy soil is otherwise so dusty it might blow away.

As Marc’s pickup bumps along the farm’s private roads, he and Gina point to the electric systems and water pipes laid by their father. Some of the massive center pivot systems use the same parts he installed 50 years ago.

To extend the life of the aquifer, the siblings are opting for fewer water-intensive crops and grazing cattle. The farm has historically been among Kansas’ largest water users, irrigating 9,000 acres, but they’ve cut their usage in recent years and committed to another 10 years of voluntary water conservation.

In exchange, they get more flexibility in how they use the water. As long as they hit their five-year goal, they can pump more water in drought years.

Beyond that, they’re partnering with Garden City, the largest city in southwest Kansas and a major agricultural hub. Garden City’s municipal water wells sit right next door to the Gigot farm, which can directly impact the city’s ability to supply drinking water.

To keep more water underground, Garden City will soon divert treated wastewater to the Gigot farm — rather than continuing to dump it into the bone-dry bed of the Arkansas River. That will allow the farm to turn off some wells.

“It’s not really a situation where either the city gets what they need or the irrigators get what they need. It is way more symbiotic,” said Fred Jones, who oversees Garden City’s water.

In northwest Kansas, a group of farmers voluntarily cut their water usage by 20% through a five-year conservation program with the state. They switched from corn to wheat or grain sorghum and used irrigation more strategically. Farmers in the area exceeded their goal and cut use, on average, 23.1% over the initial five-year period and slowed the decline of the aquifer from 2 feet per year to less than half a foot.

Still, the Gigots said the state must force other producers to cut back.

Even Kansas Farm Bureau President Joe Newland said he’s fearful that voluntary efforts aren’t enough.

Newland, a former Kansas Republican legislator, offered an amendment in 2022 that effectively sank a massive bill designed to make the aquifer a higher priority in state government, impose more requirements on local groundwater officials, and give communities a greater voice in decisions over water.

In Kansas, the agricultural industry, led in part by Newland, has largely pushed back against aggressive water restrictions, instead calling for voluntary conservation measures. But Newland worries that those voluntary measures haven’t saved enough water, which could eventually push the state to hand down strict mandates.

“I’m always hopeful and prayerful that people realize just how important it is that we’re doing this on a voluntary basis and not ever have to go through a mandatory situation,” he said. “But that’s going to be determined in the near future how this works, because, as I said, we don’t have decades to fix this problem.”

Kansas towns take the lead

Few places evoke the Old West like Dodge City, where Wyatt Earp patrolled the lawless streets rife with gambling, saloons and shootouts.

Today, the city proudly displays remnants of those days at the Boot Hill Museum, which contains a reproduction of the legendary Long Branch Saloon and an Old West photo booth for visitors.

But the former frontier outpost has embraced some of the state’s most progressive water strategies.

“We were recycling before recycling was cool,” said City Manager Nick Hernandez, who highlighted water reuse efforts that began in the 1980s.

Effluent from one of the city’s wastewater treatment plants keeps a golf course green. Another plant sends about 1.8 billion gallons of treated wastewater to irrigate 3,000 acres of crops at a nearby farm, reducing the need for aquifer pumping.

Another project aims to directly recharge the aquifer with treated wastewater. That will not only help protect the city’s quantity of water, but also prevent contamination from agricultural runoff like nitrates by keeping the hydraulic pressure up in city wells, he said.

That project is expected to cost $60 million. Dodge City, home to about 28,000 people, is seeking federal and state assistance for the effort. But even without grants, Hernandez said that would prove cheaper than buying water rights and digging new wells.

All those projects are building toward treating the city’s sewage directly into drinkable water — still an emerging idea in most parts of the country. That would allow the city to decrease demand on groundwater by continually reusing its water.

“We all have a concern about the stability of the aquifer because that’s our lifeline,” said Ray Slattery, the city’s director of engineering services. “But I feel very good about where the city is, and what we’ve done in the past to conserve. We knew it was important and so we took steps way before it became a problem.”

Communities such as Dodge City offer a glimpse into the future of municipal water supplies in the region, said state Rep. Jim Minnix, a Republican who represents part of western Kansas and leads the House Water Committee.

Minnix, who raises cattle and farms both dryland and irrigated crops, said cities and farms alike must adapt. Cities need to continue embracing water recycling efforts, reduce lawn watering and encourage more efficient appliances. Farmers, he said, should embrace new technologies such as more efficient irrigation systems and drought-resistant crops.

“You’d be amazed at the water quantity that’s actually being saved out there from what had been done 40, 50 years ago,” he said. “As a farmer myself, I know a lot of little things add up to something that’s really worthwhile. And to maintain our aquifer and our economy out here is absolutely worthwhile.”

But the way Connie Owen, director of the Kansas Water Office, sees it, change is coming to both agricultural and municipal water users one way or another.

“If we don’t adapt to different behaviors, it will run dry,” she said. “And that will cause the economic devastation that everyone fears with restrictions.”

Workers at the Magnitude 7 Metals plant in Marston, which announced it was closing Wednesday (photo submitted).

One of the nation’s last primary aluminum smelters, which employs more than 400 workers in the Missouri Bootheel, will reportedly close its doors.

The Magnitude 7 Metals plant, in the southeast Missouri town of Marston, announced Wednesday it would curtail operations, according to Industrious Labs, an industry analysis group. In a press release, Industrious Labs said the plant represents about one-fifth of the nation’s aluminum production.

Sen. Jason Bean, a Republican from Holcomb who represents New Madrid County, said his office received no advanced warning that the closure was coming.

“It’s absolutely devastating to our area,” Bean said Thursday afternoon. “Just awful.”

Clean energy groups, including Renew Missouri and the Sierra Club, blamed the closure on the smelter’s dependence on fossil fuels. James Owen, executive director of Renew Missouri, said the plant’s loss “cannot be overstated.” 

“This is devastating news for Missouri and the Marson community,” Owen said in the release. “The smelter provided a lifeline to the entire community, providing both good union jobs and taxes to the local economy.”

Missouri House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat who is running for governor, quickly filed legislation Wednesday in an effort to save the smelter. 

“As we all saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, local and domestic supply lines are essential to keep our economy functioning normally,” Quade said. “Keeping this smelter open saves jobs and ensures Missouri serves an integral role in keeping America safe, secure and prosperous.” 

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley wrote to President Joe Biden Thursday, urging him to use the Defense Production Act to keep Magnitude 7 Metals open because of aluminum’s use in planes, cars, solar panels and military equipment. Hawley said doing so would “preserve good-paying union jobs and safeguard national security.”

“Not only is this development a devastating blow to working families and good-paying union jobs in my state,” Hawley wrote to Biden, “but it directly threatens the national economic security of the United States.”

A local TV station in New Madrid County reported workers at the aluminum smelter had received a letter saying “most employees will no longer be required after January 28.” The letter says, however, the plant will continue looking for investors and “look for ways to restart the smelter in the future.” Circumstances that led to the closure “were not reasonably foreseeable,” the letter claims. It blames recent cold weather for severely impairing the plant’s operations.

However, Quade’s chief of staff, Marc Powers, said in an email that the plant’s owner Matt Lucke confirmed the coming closure in a meeting with Powers and members of Gov. Mike Parson’s staff more than a month ago. And Quade wrote to Parson in November about the possibility of a closure if the plant didn’t find a buyer.

But the Magnitude 7 closure was not listed among layoff notices listed on the Missouri Office of Workforce Development’s website under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, Act. The law, requiring employers to provide notice 60 days before mass layoffs, exempts companies in cases where layoffs arise from “unforeseeable business circumstances.”

Lucke declined to comment. Parson’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.

Magnitude 7, which acquired the plant from Noranda Aluminum in 2018, was under a consent decree with the state — along with a nearby coal-fired power plant — for sulfur dioxide pollution.

Because of the two operations, part of New Madrid County had triple the limit of sulfur dioxide in the air, putting it out of compliance with Environmental Protection Agency standards. The compound, a component of acid rain, can exacerbate breathing and heart issues. 

Magnitude 7 had intended to build a $7 million, 213-foot stack to dissipate emissions concentrated in New Madrid County. 

Missouri lawmakers last year included an $8.5 million loan in the budget for Magnitude 7. The loan raised constitutional questions, and Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, vetoed that line in the budget. 

Quade’s bill is an attempt to lower energy costs for the smelter. Electricity is the largest single cost to aluminum smelters, according to a 2022 Congressional Research Service report. 

The bill would encourage electric utilities to add more renewable and natural gas energy to its portfolio to lessen its dependence on coal. It would also allow a third-party renewable energy provider to generate electricity onsite and provide it directly to the smelter.

This story was updated at 4:15 p.m. to include comments from U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley.

Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Cassville, was joined by, from left, Sens. John Rizzo, D-Independence, Greg Razer, D-Kansas City, and Mike Cierpiot, R-Lee's Summit, at a news conference to discuss a moratorium on landfill development in Kansas City last spring (Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent).

Nine-year-old Macie Thomas loves living in Raymore. She said she spends the summers playing outside, golfing and swimming. Her best friend and her grandmother both live nearby. 

But Thomas told Missouri senators Tuesday that she fears a landfill proposed just over the city limits in Kansas City will change everything.

Thomas said her father suffers lung issues from exposure to toxic burn pits during his time in the U.S. Marine Corps. Her grandmother has cancer, and her brother has severe asthma. She worries living near a landfill will make them all sick, and said her grandmother’s doctor suggested she’d have to move away. 

“I don’t want her to move,” Thomas said. “We get to see each other almost every day. She makes the best hot chocolate and biscuits in the morning. We craft and garden and snuggle.” 

The landfill — proposed by KC Recycle & Waste Solutions — would be built just south of Missouri Highway 150 in Kansas City. It’s less than a mile from the Creekmoor golf course community, located in Raymore, with homes priced between $500,000 and $1 million.

Mayors of Raymore, Lee’s Summit and other suburban Kansas City municipalities have decried the project, saying it will harm their constituents and communities. 

But the Kansas City-Raymore border is just far enough from the site that developers wouldn’t need the approval of any of those cities to build on the Kansas City site. Nearby residents are hoping the Missouri General Assembly will change that. 

Thomas and fellow residents spoke in support of legislation that would block the landfill. Two bills, sponsored by Republican Sens. Mike Cierpiot of Lee’s Summit and Rick Brattin of Harrisonville, would require that municipalities within one mile of a landfill built in an adjacent city be allowed to sign off before the state can issue an environmental permit. Right now, the buffer zone is half a mile. 

Fight over proposed Kansas City landfill will return to Missouri legislature

Rick Meyers, a Kansas City resident who said he lives near the site, quoted a former U.S. Supreme Court justice to say one person can’t infringe on another’s rights.

“My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins,” Meyers said. 

He added: “Their right to put in a harmful landfill next door to a school in the middle of a growing neighborhood does not serve my and my neighbors’ rights to our property, to breathe clean, toxin-and odor-free air.”

The same bill was debated last year, but it stalled in the Senate when another Republican lawmaker — who received a campaign contribution from a political action committee associated with one of the lobbying firms working for KC Recycling & Waste Solutions — launched a filibuster.

Brattin responded the next day with a filibuster of his own, bringing the Senate to a halt for nine hours as its time to pass the state’s annual budget grew short. He relented after striking a deal with fellow senators to amend the budget to fund a study by Missouri environmental regulators into the possible effects a landfill would have on the surrounding communities. 

But Gov. Mike Parson later vetoed that funding, saying the budget passed by legislators was $1.7 billion larger than he had recommended and decreased revenues while increasing expenditures. He added that the landfill was a “local responsibility with minimal statewide impact” and that other funding mechanisms besides earmarked state funding should be used. 

KC Recycle & Waste Solutions is owned by a married couple: Jenny and Aden Monheiser. 

Jenny Monheiser spoke at Tuesday’s hearing in the Missouri Senate’s Local Government and Elections Committee, saying the region is quickly running out of landfill space and needs a new facility.

“I’m not so naïve to think that people wake up in the morning and hope that somebody will knock on their door and say that there’s going to be a landfill developed in their area,” Monheiser said. “The fact of the matter is, though, landfills are a part of infrastructure that cities need.”

Monheiser said her company wants to be “responsible neighbors and engage stakeholders.” 

During debate over similar legislation last year, Monheiser asked legislators not to change the rules in the middle of the game. While her company hasn’t sought rezoning or an environmental permit, they have started acquiring the site. 

But it’s unclear how much land they have already assembled. 

After the last legislative session, the Monheisers and opponents of the landfill started donating and organizing to influence the legislature.

The Monheisers have donated more than $42,000 to state and local races and political action committees, including $25,000 to Southern Drawl PAC, which is supporting Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder’s run for lieutenant governor. 

Kill the Fill PAC, which opposes the landfill, has raised more than $157,000 since its launch last May.

The committee took no action on either bill Tuesday.

A photo taken in 1960 of deteriorating steel drums containing radioactive residues near Coldwater Creek, by the Mallinckrodt-St. Louis Sites Task Force Working Group (State Historical Society of Missouri, Kay Drey Mallinckrodt Collection, 1943-2006).

Billy Winters’ childhood in Florissant in the 1960s sounds enviable. 

His parents bought a new house as thousands of other families flocked to the growing St. Louis suburbs. Winters’ neighborhood was full of other kids to play with. He spent almost every day splashing in a creek that ran near his home.

But Winters didn’t know at the time that the creek waters could be dangerous. The creek he was playing in was a small tributary to Coldwater Creek, which unbeknownst to him had been contaminated with radioactive waste left over from World War II. When Coldwater Creek flooded, its waters would back up in the creek near Winters’ family home. 

His father worked for McDonnell Douglas, an aerospace manufacturer near the St. Louis airport. A 21-acre parcel on the airport property had become a dumping ground for radioactive waste produced downtown.

Winters, who has lived in Florida since 1983, only found out about the poisonous waste that had been dumped at sites all over St. Louis County a few months ago. But it could explain the myriad chronic illnesses he has developed over the years. His wife, Kathy Winters, said that the first 24 hours after they learned about the contamination felt “almost like a sense of relief.”

“This is it, maybe,” she said. “This is why Billy has all this stuff going on. And then, after the first 24 hours, we got mad.”

The St. Louis region was pivotal to the development of the first nuclear bomb in the 1940s. Uranium for the Manhattan Project — the name given to the effort to develop the bomb — was refined in downtown St. Louis. The leftover radioactive waste has plagued the metro area ever since.

‘I can’t describe how much pain I would be in’

Winters’ health struggles began in the early 2000s with an inexplicable high fever and headache. Despite a dayslong stay in the intensive care unit, doctors weren’t sure what was wrong. His lab reports seemed to point toward congestive heart failure. 

He never found out what caused the fever, but he got better.

Next, his joints started locking up, and a biopsy revealed sarcoidosis, a rare inflammatory disease that can cause fatigue, swollen lymph nodes and joint pain and swelling. At times, he said, he couldn’t walk to the end of his driveway. 

“I can’t describe how much pain I would be in,” Winters said.

A couple of years after that, Winters was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare cancer that has been found at higher-than-expected rates in parts of St. Louis County. He also suffers from scleromyxedema and diabetes. 

The pain those diseases left Winters in forced him to retire in 2016. 

He can’t walk half a mile because his joints will start to hurt so badly.

“I had expected in my earlier years that I’d be a whole lot healthier when I retired,” Winters said. 

Radiation exposure is a possible risk factor for developing multiple myeloma, but the connection isn’t clear. Even so, programs for workers and residents exposed to Manhattan Project tests include multiple myeloma and diabetes as compensable diseases.

Billy’s illness has limited the Winters in what they can do in retirement. In the spring, they’ll visit Billy’s sister in Virginia and will get a powered wheelchair for the trip. Sometimes Billy feels guilty the two can’t be more active, but Kathy says they will manage, “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer.”

Proving and environmental exposure was the primary cause of someone’s illness — rather than family history, diet or other risk factors — is difficult. But for years, St. Louis-area residents have pointed to the remnant nuclear waste that contaminated huge swaths of north St. Louis County to explain rare cancers, autoimmune disorders and other diseases.

History of contamination

Even before Winters’ family moved into their Florissant house, the radioactive waste from uranium refining operations in downtown St. Louis posed a health risk.

After the war, waste from Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in St. Louis was trucked to the city’s airport, at times falling out of trucks only to be picked up by a worker with a shovel and broom. For years, the waste was left in the open on the north side of the airport property, adjacent to Coldwater Creek, where wind and rainwater dispersed it. 

Winters’ father worked nearby and died in the 1990s from liver cancer.

In 1949, Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, which refined uranium for the Manhattan Project, discovered radioactive waste in deteriorating steel drums at the airport risked leaking into Coldwater Creek, according to an internal memo.

Private companies and government agencies with oversight of the radioactive material documented the possible dangers of the radioactive waste repeatedly but made little effort to keep it from spreading as suburbs sprung up around the airport and Coldwater Creek throughout the 1950s and 1960s. An investigation last summer by The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press laid bare the way they dismissed the spreading contamination as “slight,” “minimal” or “low-level.”

While at the airport, the waste — a 29-foot-tall mound including almost 200 tons of uranium — produced “some minor contamination to Coldwater Creek,” according to a report by the Atomic Energy Commission that claimed it was “well within permissible and acceptable limits.”

After a few years, the waste was sold to a private company to be further processed to extract valuable metals — such as copper, nickel or cobalt — and moved up the road to Latty Avenue in Hazelwood. It once again sat exposed to the elements and adjacent to Coldwater Creek.

Despite the move, soil and drainage ditches at the airport remained contaminated for decades until crews excavated more than 600,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and scrap material. Remediation at the site wrapped up in 2007.

The Atomic Energy Commission initially planned to allow whatever was left after processing at Latty Avenue to be dumped in a quarry in Weldon Spring but reversed course after the U.S. Geological Survey warned it would likely contaminate the Missouri River just above the intakes for St. Louis County and St. Louis City’s drinking water. 

The Cotter Corp., which owned the waste at Latty Avenue, eventually dumped it in 1973 at the West Lake Landfill, where it remains to this day.

The Environmental Protection Agency is in the midst of planning an excavation and cleanup at the landfill but didn’t discover the true extent of the waste until earlier this year. 

For almost 50 years, federal agencies relied on a reading taken from a helicopter to determine where in the landfill the radioactive material had been dumped. 

But in May, the EPA announced the waste was spread throughout the landfill, not confined to two specific portions, as officials had long maintained. In some areas of the property, the waste was at the surface. In other locations, it was found deep underground. 

The agency said the health risk “remains unchanged” and that the site doesn’t pose a threat to nearby residents at this time.

Still no compensation 

After the investigation was published this summer, lawmakers quickly pledged to take action to support people who have been exposed to nuclear waste.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, joined senators from the Southwest and sponsored an expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which currently covers only some residents who were exposed to atomic bomb testing from 1945 to 1962 and developed any of a list of serious illnesses.

Expanding the program would open up coverage to more “downwinders,” a term for people exposed to airborne radiation from atomic bombs detonated as tests, in Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Montana and Guam and expand coverage to more regions in Arizona, Nevada and Utah. Missouri residents exposed to waste from the Manhattan Project would also be eligible.

Of particular significance, it would extend coverage to the Navajo Nation, one of the tribal areas most affected from the first atomic bomb testing in 1945. 

Since the radiation program first was created in the 1990s, more than 54,000 claims totaling about $2.6 billion have been approved. The program does not require claimants to prove their illnesses were caused by radiation, which is difficult to do, but rather presumes a connection if a sickened individual lived in a covered area at a time they could have been exposed. 

In Missouri, the expansion would have covered individuals who lived in one of 20 ZIP codes for at least two years after 1949. 

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the RECA expansion would cost $147.1 billion over 10 years. Missouri’s portion would be $3.7 billion of that.

The proposal was attached in the Senate to the National Defense Authorization Act with bipartisan support, and President Joe Biden signaled his support for it.

But the legislation was stripped from the NDAA in a conference committee where members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate met to work out differences in their versions of the bill.

Hawley decried that decision, calling it an “injustice,” but he said “the fight is not over.”

“I will come to this floor as long as it takes,” Hawley said on the Senate floor last month. “I will introduce this bill as long as it takes. I will force amendment votes as long as it takes until we compensate the people of this nation who have sacrificed for this nation.” 

Winters’ illnesses would have entitled him to compensation under the expansion. 

Multiple myeloma is one of the diseases covered by the bill, and he grew up in one of the affected ZIP codes. 

For uranium miners, millers and transporters, RECA currently provides a one-time lump sum of $100,000. People who were onsite at weapons tests can get $75,000, and those who lived downwind of a test site in Nevada can get $50,000. Under the proposed expansion, onsite participants and downwinders would have received $150,000. 

Billy and Kathy Winters are still hopeful the compensation program might come to fruition. Kathy said they would use the money if her husband’s illness progressed to the point he needed to go to an assisted living home. 

With his medical conditions, Billy doesn’t qualify for long-term care insurance policies, Kathy said, so they’d be fully responsible for the cost. 

“That money won’t go far,” Kathy said, “but every little bit would help.”

An undated photo of the Pomme de Terre River, which runs through Webster, Greene, Dallas, Polk and Hickory counties. A meat packing company near Pleasant Hope wants a permit to discharge its wastewater into the river, which is already proposed for the impaired waters list. (Shannon Henry photo via the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)

A southwest Missouri meatpacker has withdrawn its request to discharge treated wastewater into an impaired river after state regulators announced their intent to deny the company a permit. 

Missouri Prime Beef Packers, which processes 3,500 cattle per week near Pleasant Hope, sought permission from the state last year to use a proprietary microbe technology to treat wastewater from its operations and discharge it into the Pomme de Terre River.

It had previously applied the wastewater to surrounding land as fertilizer. 

But the company informed the Missouri Department of Natural Resources last week that it was withdrawing its application for a permit to discharge water from its operations into the Pomme de Terre River. Representatives for the company did not immediately return a request for comment. 

The Pomme de Terre River winds through the Ozark region of southwest Missouri and provides clear, spring-fed water for canoeing, swimming and fishing. But it’s impaired by E. coli contamination, landing it on a federal list of impaired waterways.

In 2019, the river was found to have an average of more than 200 E. coli colonies per 100 milliliters of water, well above the limit of 126. E. coli data from 2020 are incomplete because of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on sample collection, and newer data are not yet available.

Missouri may deny meatpacker’s request to dump wastewater in river

Pomme de Terre Lake, which is fed by the river, is also considered impaired because of high levels of chlorophyll-a, indicating the water is receiving too much phosphorus and nitrogen, which can lead to harmful algae blooms that reduce oxygen in the water and kill fish. Some blooms can lead to toxins and bacteria that can make people sick. 

Runoff from farms is a major source of nitrogen and phosphorus, which are found in animal waste. Untreated, the water from the meatpacking facility’s processing could also contain those chemicals. 

Because of the river’s existing struggle with contamination, environmental advocates feared allowing Missouri Prime Beef Packers to release wastewater into the river would make things worse. While the company would treat the water before releasing it, critics raised concerns about the effectiveness of the company’s microbe technology, called iLeaf. 

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources had previously reviewed the Missouri Prime Beef Packers’ request and determined it wouldn’t harm the river. But after hearing concerns from members of the public, the agency announced a draft denial, saying the company didn’t meet all of the regulatory requirements to use an innovative technology. 

John Hoke, director of the agency’s water protection programs, said at the time that the department hadn’t seen the technology used at the scale the meatpacking facility proposed to use it.

Heather Peters, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ water pollution control branch chief, said in an emailed statement that until the meatpacking facility has a permit for land application it either has to store its wastewater, haul it to a treatment facility or take it out of state.

Coldwater Creek runs by the St. Louis airport and through Florissant and Hazelwood before flowing into the Missouri River. The creek is contaminated by nuclear waste left over from the effort to build the first atomic bomb during World War II (Theo Welling/Riverfront Times).

More than 70 years after workers first realized barrels of radioactive waste risked contaminating Coldwater Creek, the federal government has started work to put up signs warning residents.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in a statement Monday that it was working with the Environmental Protection Agency to add signs along the creek to help it monitor areas “that may pose a risk if disturbed.”

Coldwater Creek has been contaminated for decades with radioactive waste left over from the World War II-era effort to build an atomic bomb. But though the creek winds through some of St. Louis’ busiest suburbs and past public parks and schools, the federal government had resisted calls to post signs warning visitors of the contamination.

“This is decades of potential exposure that could have been prevented that they drug their feet on,” said Dawn Chapman, co-founder of Just Moms STL, an organization formed to advocate for communities affected by St. Louis-area radioactive waste.

Despite the delays, Chapman said she’s thankful that the signs are finally going to be installed. 

The St. Louis area has long struggled with a radioactive waste problem. Uranium for the Manhattan Project, the name given to the effort to develop the first atomic bomb, was refined in downtown St. Louis.

After World War II, radioactive waste left over from those efforts was trucked to the St. Louis airport and dumped — some on the open ground and some in barrels — next to Coldwater Creek. As early as 1949, Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, the company that refined uranium for the federal government, was aware the waste could escape deteriorating barrels and enter the creek.

The waste was later sold and moved to a property in Hazelwood where it once again sat in the open next to Coldwater Creek. In the 1970s, the remaining waste that couldn’t be processed to extract valuable metals was transported to the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton and dumped there illegally. It’s still there today. 

Coldwater Creek is expected to be cleaned up by 2038 — 89 years after Mallinckrodt realized the waste could pose a risk to the creek.

U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, whose district includes all of St. Louis City and much of northern St. Louis County, introduced legislation in 2022 that would have required the Army Corps to install signs around Coldwater Creek. In a statement Monday, Bush said she was proud her office was working with the Army Corps and EPA to get the signs posted.

“North County residents have been unknowingly living and raising their families amongst radioactive contamination dumped by the federal government for years,” Bush said.

Bush said the community deserves to be “made whole,” which starts by “ensuring residents are aware of the existence of any environmental harms in our own backyard.” 

While the Army Corps, which has overseen the sites since the late 1990s, said the remaining contaminated sites surrounding Coldwater Creek only pose a risk if they’re disturbed, in previous decades exposure to the creek’s waters may have raised the risk of cancer for St. Louis residents. 

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry concluded in 2019 that children and adults who played in or near Coldwater Creek or lived in its floodplain between the 1960s and 1990s may have been exposed to radioactive materials that raise the risk of certain cancers. The agency — part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — recommended signs be placed along the creek to warn residents of the potential exposure risk.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Army Corps said at the time doing so wasn’t its role.

The Army Corps said there was nothing specific that caused the agency to change its mind on installing signs. The decision was “driven by our commitment to continuous improvement,” George Stringham, a spokesman for the Army Corps, said in an email. 

Stringham said the Army Corps would “continue to prioritize the health and safety of the community.”

“We are adding signage to help inform the community and let them know where to go to for accurate information as well as provide a resource for anyone that needs to dig in areas near Coldwater Creek that may need support from our office,” Stringham said. 

The Army Corps doesn’t yet have details to share regarding the number of signs and locations along the creek where they would be posted.

The EPA said the decision to add the signs “does not reflect a new or increased level of concern about the human health risk.”

The announcement comes at a time of renewed focus on St. Louis’ radioactive waste problem. Bush and U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley have sought compensation for residents sickened because of exposure to radioactive waste, and an investigation by The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press found that private companies and government agencies downplayed the risks associated with the contamination for decades .

Andy Quinones, senior communications manager for the city of Florissant, said the Army Corps had requested to put signs in several of the city’s parks that sit along the creek.

“I’m glad,” Quinones said, “that they are taking the initiative to start doing a better job of informing the public.”

Rep. Mike Haffner, R-Pleasant Hill, speaks during the 2022 legislative session. Haffner is sponsoring legislation that would block a proposed landfill on the boundary between Kansas City and Raymore (Tim Bommel/Missouri House Communications).

Communities bordering the southern stretch of Kansas City and their state legislators are gearing up once again to fight developers’ plan to build a landfill near a high-end golf course subdivision. 

State Rep. Mike Haffner, R-Pleasant Hill, pre-filed a bill ahead of the Missouri legislative session, set to begin in January, aimed at stopping the facility from moving in.

It’s Haffner’s second attempt at blocking the landfill. He first introduced a version of the bill this spring after news of the proposed landfill began circulating. The legislation would make it harder for a developer to build a waste disposal facility on the Kansas City border.

Versions of the bill were also pre-filed in the Senate by Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, and Sen. Mike Cierpiot, R-Lee’s Summit.

Legislators representing the area have raised concerns that the proposed facility would pollute the surrounding watershed, cause a nuisance to neighbors and harm homeowners’ property values.

“There’s going to be ongoing problems with birds, with litter, with the amount of trucks going up and down the highways and increasing the litter, the noise, the impact on our kids and on our residents,” Haffner said in an interview with The Independent. 

KC Recycle & Waste Solutions, owned by a married couple from the area, has been exploring building a landfill at the southern tip of Kansas City near where it borders Raymore since at least last year. The site, just south of Missouri Highway 150, is close to the Creekmoor golf course community with homes priced between $500,000 and $1 million.

The Kansas City-Raymore border is just far enough from the site that developers wouldn’t need Raymore city officials’ approval to build on the Kansas City site. 

Haffner’s legislation would change that, requiring that municipalities within one mile of a landfill built in an adjacent city be allowed to sign off before the state can issue an environmental permit. 

“This location is inappropriate. We need landfills, we need economic development, but let’s do it the right way,” he said. 

Haffner and Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, sponsored similar legislation during the last legislative session. At the time, Jennifer Monheiser, one of the owners of KC Recycle & Waste Solutions, likened the legislation to changing the rules in the middle of a game. 

Monheiser’s company hired 18 lobbyists last spring to fight the legislation.The city of Raymore has three lobbyists. 

A spokeswoman for Monheiser declined to comment on Haffner’s pre-filed bill and the upcoming session.

Haffner and Brattin’s legislation didn’t make it across the finish line last spring. It stalled in the Senate when another Republican lawmaker — who received a campaign contribution from a political action committee associated with one of the lobbying firms working for KC Recycling & Waste Solutions — launched a filibuster.

The next day, Brattin retaliated with a filibuster of his own, bringing the Senate to a halt for nine hours with just a day left for the Missouri General Assembly to pass its annual budget.

Brattin relented after striking a deal with fellow senators to place an item in the state budget to fund a study by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources into the possible effects a landfill would have on area schools, residents, the environment and property values. Gov. Mike Parson later vetoed that provision of the budget. 

Haffner said conversations about stopping the landfill had continued after the spring session and into the summer and fall.

In July, opponents of the landfill launched a political action committee, Kill the Fill PAC, that has raised more than $100,000 since then. 

An evaluation commissioned by the Kansas City City Council, which adopted a resolution opposing the landfill, found the metropolitan area landfills are currently filled to 67% of their total capacity and will be full within 15 years.

In a statement after the city’s findings were released in October, Kill the Fill PAC, said it was “pleased the report has confirmed there is no immediate need for a new landfill in the Kansas City region, and that a solid waste facility in close proximity to homes and schools has detrimental impacts on the community’s health and environment.”

Earlier this month, the PAC said it appreciated the lawmakers’ efforts to expand the buffer zone between residents and landfills.

“We are hopeful that lawmakers will put the health and safety of thousands of Missourians ahead of the financial gain of one business.”

Senate Majority Leader Cindy O'Laughlin wants to prohibit state energy regulators from forcing time-of-use pricing on utilities and customers (Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

One of Missouri’s highest-ranking lawmakers hopes to stop state regulators from forcing electric utilities to charge a premium for power used at times of high demand.

The legislation filed by Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin was inspired by Evergy’s roll out of time-of-use pricing plans to its customers last summer, which included a plan that would have quadrupled customers’ charges for energy used at times of high demand. 

The new rates were mandated by the Public Service Commission, a five-member board appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate that oversees investor-owned utilities in Missouri.

The goal of time-of-use rates is to save consumers money in the long run by limiting demand on the energy grid. But they immediately inspired public backlash, including from O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina. 

“It’s not the job of the Public Service Commission to dictate to consumers the time of day that they can use power,” O’Laughlin said in an interview last week. 

O’Laughlin said she expects energy regulation to be a  “hot topic” when the Missouri General Assembly returns to Jefferson City. In addition to her time-of-use legislation, she’s also sponsoring a bill she says would ensure grid reliability by requiring utilities to add at least an equivalent amount of energy generation to the grid before decommissioning a power plant. 

Environmental advocates, however, fear that proposal would hamper utilities’ efforts to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. 

Evergy, which is the largest energy provider in Western Missouri, began informing customers in June that power used between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. during the summer would cost four times as much as it does during other months.

That means, on a hot summer afternoon, running an air conditioner would become far more expensive. 

Other pricing options, imposed by the Public Service Commission, were less dramatic. But that pricing plan caught O’Laughlin’s attention. She railed against what she referred to as “woke” energy policies.

Time-of-use pricing is meant to encourage customers to limit their energy consumption at times when energy demand is high. By limiting the peaks of demand, the idea is to save utilities from having to build more power generators, which customers end up paying for. 

Citing the pushback, Evergy asked the Public Service Commission in September to allow it to make time-of-use pricing optional, citing the “substantial” number of complaints it received where customers accused the company of trying to “spike customer bills to increase profits.” 

The Office of the Public Counsel, which represents ratepayers before the Public Service Commission, argued that the rates should still go into effect, citing Evegy’s studies that show customers will largely benefit. 

Clean energy advocates with Renew Missouri put it more starkly, saying Evergy needed to better communicate with its customers “rather than succumbing to negative Facebook comments by reversing course and attempting to upend a binding commission order.” 

O’Laughlin isn’t trying to ban time-of-use pricing, but rather simply require it to be optional for customers.

Evergy withdrew the request to make time-of-use pricing optional but did succeed in making the default pricing plan one more similar to the previous flat-rate pricing rather than the plan that quadruples rates on summer afternoons.

Because of that, O’Laughlin said, the issue isn’t as urgent as it appeared this summer. But she still wants to send the Public Service Commission a message. 

“If they made a decision like that once,” she said, “the likelihood that they might try to do that again I would say is fairly high.”

Evergy’s spokeswoman said the company hadn’t seen the bill and could not comment on it. 

Grid reliability 

O’Laughlin is also sponsoring a grid reliability bill she says is a response to the federal government’s efforts to force “death by a thousand cuts” on coal plants. 

“I cannot imagine that we want to allow our citizens and our businesses to run out of power basically because of political activism,” she said.

The legislation, she said, is inspired by the impending closure of the Rush Island Energy Center, owned by Ameren Missouri, which serves electric customers in the greater St. Louis area.

Ameren was ordered by a federal court to install pollution controls at Rush Island after being found in violation of the Clean Air Act. Instead, the utility plans to shut the coal plant down.

Last month, Ameren asked the Public Service Commission for permission to use a new financing law known as securitization to recoup its investment at Rush Island and shutter the plant. 

Ameren and other utilities belong to regional grid operators. In Ameren’s case, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator that coordinates power production to ensure there’s enough electricity to support the grid. Those organizations impose complicated capacity requirements on utilities, and MISO has raised concerns about the planned closure of Rush Island.

Ameren Missouri’s vice president of regulatory and legislative affairs, Warren Wood, said in a statement that the company would monitor O’Laughlin’s bill as it moves through the legislative process. 

 “Delivering safe, reliable and affordable energy to our customers and the communities we serve is our top priority,” Wood said. “We aim to do that by having a diversified generation portfolio that supports the overall reliability and resiliency of the energy grid.”

State Sen. Tracy McCreery, D-Olivette, said a lot of the state’s residents want environmental responsibility, but it’s important to ensure that when Missourians “turn on the switch, they have reliable, safe energy.”

“I’m certainly wanting to make sure that I’m doing things that leave the state of Missouri in a better place than I found it,” she said, “but we’ve got to be responsible about that.” 

Jenn DeRose, Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign representative for Missouri, said the idea behind O’Laughlin’s bill makes sense at first glance, but ensuring reliability is MISO’s job. 

She’s not sure the state has the ability to wade into that complicated calculation.

“This bill is trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist,” DeRose said. “It’s just fear mongering.”

The University of Kansas Health System, which has its primary location in Kansas City, Kansas, is set to partner with Liberty Hospital, sparking discontent among some state lawmakers. (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent)

The proposed takeover of Liberty Hospital in Missouri by the University of Kansas Health System is being greeted with scorn by lawmakers from both sides of the state line and both political parties.

Leading the charge against the takeover in Missouri is Kansas City Democratic state Sen. Greg Razer, who said the idea of KU owning a hospital in suburban Missouri is “terribly wrong.”

“There are boundaries for a reason, and they’ve crossed one,” said Razer, a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia.

The Republican leader of the Kansas Senate also has expressed concern about the takeover, along with at least one member of Liberty Hospital’s board of trustees.

Earlier this month, Razer pre-filed a bill in the Missouri General Assembly that would put a stop to a proposed partnership between the University of Kansas Health System and Liberty Hospital by prohibiting hospital boards to partner with an out-of-state health system “operated by an institution of higher education” without voter approval.

“I can’t imagine the outrage of Missouri taxpayers if we opened up (University of Missouri) Health in Olathe, Kansas,” Razer said, calling the proposed arrangement “mind boggling.”

Liberty Hospital announced in May it was looking to partner with another health system to help it expand to meet growing demand in the Kansas City suburbs north of the Missouri River. In October, it announced it had chosen KU.

The two health systems have signed a letter of intent but are still in negotiations, and the terms of the deal are not yet available. But Liberty Hospital CEO Dr. Raghu Adiga said in an interview Friday that KU had pledged to continue the services the hospital provides, including cardiothoracic surgery and a level-two trauma center. 

Adiga said those are rare for a hospital Liberty’s size.

“They put the patients first just like us,” Adiga said, “ensuring high-quality health care that we can provide right here in town.”

In a video announcing the deal in October, he said the partnership “will bring world class clinical excellence across the river to every Northlander’s doorstep.”

Razer said the arrangement would take health care dollars from Missouri to “prop up Kansas,” and feared it would be a recruiting tool for the University of Kansas. 

“Liberty has a lot of high school students. … They get great grades. It’s a great school district up there. They’re all going to be driving by a Jayhawk every day in the state of Missouri,” Razer said.

Razer’s primary objection centered on the idea of having a Kansas state institution plant its flag in Missouri.

The University of Kansas Health System is governed by the University of Kansas Hospital Authority, a board established in Kansas statute, primarily appointed by the Kansas governor and affiliated with the University of Kansas School of Medicine. But the health system hasn’t been owned by the state in 25 years. It receives no state or local tax dollars.

KU currently has more than half a dozen clinic locations in Missouri, from St. Joe to Lee’s Summit.

In a statement, Jill Chadwick, director of media relations for the University of Kansas Health System, said the organization was committed to the highest quality of care and has been recognized as among the best health systems in the nation.

“The patients and families we serve and those Liberty Hospital serves are looking for the best possible health care close to home regardless of state lines,” Chadwick said. “They come to our health system because they need answers, and we can help them. We are proud to offer the care they need.”

Missouri Sen. Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg, shared Razer’s misgivings about the arrangement.

“That would be my concern from Missouri: Will a state-owned Kansas hospital put forth the necessary resources for a hospital in Missouri that does not serve any Kansas taxpayers,” Hoskins said.

Even knowing KU doesn’t receive Kansas tax funds, Hoskins said his concerns remained.

Chadwick said the health system “strategically reinvests its revenue back into our health care facilities, technology and all of the communities we serve, including those in Missouri.”

Across the state line, Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, a Republican from Andover, expressed frustration to fellow members of a confirmation oversight committee in November.

“Going outside the state when you have … 29 struggling hospitals inside the state of Kansas that probably could have benefitted from an arrangement like that,” Masterson said.

Masterson did not respond to requests for comment.

Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, D-Lenexa, called Masterson’s concerns about struggling Kansas hospitals “disingenuous.”

“I wish that Sen. Masterson was more concerned with offering and having access to health care and having conversations about expanding Medicaid to help with access in Kansas,” Sykes said.

Sykes said she, of course, wants Kansas businesses working in Kansas.

“But at the end of the day, I think we have to look at what is best for society as a whole and working forward to that instead of kind of this zero-sum game,” she said.

Myron Neth, a member of Liberty Hospital’s board of trustees and a former Republican state lawmaker, also objected to the partnership, saying the board didn’t give enough consideration to proposals it received from other health systems.

Neth said KU is a “quality health care organization” with good leadership. That’s not the source of his objection.

But, he said, there’s nothing in the tentative agreement between Liberty and KU to ensure money generated by the Missouri hospital stays in the hospital district — or the state of Missouri. He doesn’t like the idea of a Missouri public subdivision being turned over to the citizens of Kansas.

“There’s just kind of something weird about that,” Neth said.

Neth said he wasn’t out to stop the deal.

“My goal has been to make sure that we get the best deal for the taxpayers,” he said.

Neth said the hospital’s leadership was rushing to get a deal done to avoid “anything adverse coming from the state.”

Adiga said the hospital needed to think about what’s best for the patient and wouldn’t “drag myself into border politics.”

William Jewell College president Elizabeth MacLeod Walls said in an interview the legislation proposed to stop the deal between KU and Liberty was “ridiculous.”

William Jewell, located in Liberty, sends its nursing students to Liberty Hospital for clinical experience. And it has a partnership with the local school district to allow high school students who are interested in nursing to train to become a certified nurse assistant.

MacLeod Walls said the partnership with KU would only enhance William Jewell nursing students’ educational experience.

Beyond that, she noted that Liberty is a triage hospital for a lot of rural communities in northwest Missouri.

“Just imagine when it’s KU Health System and their reach and their resources and their ability to Life Flight and do all of that really important stuff that, right now, Liberty Hospital can’t do,” she said.

MacLeod Walls said she thinks opposition to the deal makes up a “vocal minority.”

“Our community is choosing world class care and opportunity for students and for the community over a for-profit entity that’s going to throw a bunch of money at the county,” she said.

Adiga said the hospital hopes to finalize an agreement with the University of Kansas Health System in early 2024, giving Razer’s bill little time to get through the Missouri General Assembly, which convenes Jan. 3.

The “New Liberty Hospital District” and “New Liberty Hospital Corporation” have hired eight Missouri lobbyists since the beginning of the month.

“They’re going to be rushing,” Razer said, “and I think we will, too.”

A sign warns of radioactive material at the West Lake Landfill. Thousands of tons of nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project were dumped there in the 1970s (Theo Welling/Riverfront Times).

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley said Thursday he would do everything he could to stop a federal defense spending bill after a provision offering compensation to Americans exposed to decades-old radioactive waste was removed. 

Speaking on the floor of the Senate, the Missouri Republican called the decision to remove compensation for Americans who have suffered rare cancers and autoimmune diseases a “scar on the conscience of this body.”

“This is an injustice,” Hawley said. “This is this body turning its back on these good, proud Americans.”

This summer, the Senate amended the National Defense Authorization Act to expand the existing Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include parts of the St. Louis region where individuals were exposed to leftover radioactive material from the development of the first atomic bomb. It would have also included parts of the Southwest where residents were exposed to bomb testing. 

But the provision was removed Wednesday by a conference committee of senators and members of the U.S. House of Representatives working out differences between the two chambers’ versions of the bill.

Even before the text of the amended bill became available Wednesday night, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri was decrying the removal of the radiation compensation policy. 

“This is a major betrayal of thousands and thousands of Missourians who have been lied to and ignored for years,” Hawley said in a post on social media Wednesday. 

Dawn Chapman, a co-founder of Just Moms STL, fought back tears Wednesday night as she described hearing the “gut-wrenching” news from Hawley’s staff. Chapman and fellow moms have been advocating for families exposed to or near radioactive waste for years. 

“I actually thought we had a chance,” Chapman said. But she said the group hopes to get the expansion passed another way. 

“Nobody has given up on it,” Chapman said.

Records reveal 75 years of government downplaying, ignoring risks of St. Louis radioactive waste

The St. Louis region has suffered from a radioactive waste problem for decades. The area was instrumental in the Manhattan Project, the name given to the effort to build an atomic bomb during World War II. Almost 80 years later, residents of St. Louis and St. Charles counties are still dealing with the fallout. 

After the war, radioactive waste produced from refining uranium was trucked from downtown St. Louis to several sites in St. Louis County where it contaminated property at the airport and seeped into Coldwater Creek. In the 1970s, remaining nuclear waste that couldn’t be processed to extract valuable metals was trucked to the West Lake Landfill and illegally dumped. It remains there today.

During the Cold War, uranium was processed in St. Charles County. A chemical plant and open ponds of radioactive waste remained at the site in Weldon Spring for years. The site was remediated in the early 2000s, but groundwater contamination at the site is not improving fast enough, according to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

For years, St. Louis-area residents have pointed to the radioactive waste to explain rare cancers, autoimmune diseases and young deaths. A study by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found people who lived along Coldwater Creek or played in its waters faced an increased risk of cancer.

Chapman said she knew two individuals who made calls to members of Congress while receiving chemotherapy. It’s hard to ask people to keep fighting for the legislation, she said. 

“They’re not going to see another Christmas, and they’re not going to see the compensation from this,” Chapman said. “This won’t help them.” 

Was your family affected by radiation from the Manhattan Project? We want to hear your story

An investigation by The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press this summer found that the private companies and federal agencies handling and overseeing the waste repeatedly downplayed the danger despite knowledge that it posed a risk to human health.

After the report was published, Hawley decried the federal government’s failures and vowed to introduce legislation to help. 

So did U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, D-St. Louis. In a statement Wednesday night, she said the federal government’s failure to compensate those who have been harmed by radioactive waste is “straight up negligence.”

“The people of St. Louis deserve better, and they deserve to be able to live without worry of radioactive contamination,” Bush said. 

Missouri’s junior senator, Republican Eric Schmitt, grew up near the West Lake Landfill. He said in a statement that the “fight is far from over” and that he will look into other legislation to get victims compensation.

“The careless dumping of this waste happened across Missouri, including in my own backyard of St. Louis, and has negatively impacted Missouri communities for decades,” Schmitt said. “I will not stop fighting until it is addressed.”

Already, two state lawmakers have pre-filed legislation related to radioactive waste in advance of the Missouri General Assembly reconvening in January. One doubles the budget of a state radioactive waste investigation fund. The other requires further disclosure of radioactive contamination when one sells or rents a house.

In July, the U.S. Senate voted 61-37  to adopt Hawley’s amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act expanding the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include the St. Louis area. It would have also expanded the coverage area to compensate victims exposed to testing of the atomic bomb in New Mexico. The amendment included residents of New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Guam and expanded the coverage area in Nevada, Utah and Arizona, which are already partially covered.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that expanding the program could cost $147.1 billion over 10 years with St. Louis’ portion taking up $3.7 billion of that. 

The amendment would have also renewed the program for existing coverage areas. Without renewal, it will expire in the coming months. 

Hawley said, however, the “fight is not over.” 

“I will come to this floor as long as it takes. I will introduce this bill as long as it takes,” he said. “I will force amendment votes as long as it takes until we compensate the people of this nation who have sacrificed for this nation.” 

This story has been updated. 

An individual holds a lead pipe, a steel pipe and a lead pipe treated with protective orthophosphate. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a rule requiring water utilities to remove lead pipes decades after new ones were banned (Photo courtesy of EPA).

Utilities in Kansas and Missouri would have to pull hundreds of thousands of lead pipes out of the ground within 10 years under a proposed rule the Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday.

The EPA announced a proposed update to the lead and copper rule strengthening President Joe Biden’s earlier goal of eradicating lead pipes. The proposed rule also would lower the limit on lead in water by one-third.

“Lead in drinking water is a generational public health issue, and EPA’s proposal will accelerate progress towards President Biden’s goal of replacing every lead pipe across America once and for all,” EPA administrator Michael Regan said in a news release.

For much of the 20th Century, utilities were permitted to install lead service lines, the pipes that carry water from water mains under the street into homes. The EPA banned them in 1986, but utilities have never been required to remove existing pipes.

In fact, some utility companies don’t know where the remaining lead service lines are.

Estimates as to how many remain vary widely. The EPA estimates Missouri has 202,112 remaining lead service lines while the environmental nonprofit the Natural Resources Defense Council estimates more than 330,000.

In Kansas, the EPA estimates 54,107 lead pipes remain while the NRDC believes there are more than 160,000.

Lead is a neurotoxin that in high doses can be fatal. It was in pipes, gasoline and household paint for most of the last century, exposing generations of children to its effects.

Even at low levels, exposure to lead can hinder children’s brain development and cause behavioral problems and learning difficulties. Lead-poisoned children can have trouble with language processing, memory, attention and impulsivity. Later in life, it raises the risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

While the rate of lead poisoning has plummeted compared to the mid-20th century when leaded gasoline fumes exposed children in droves, thousands of children in Kansas and Missouri are found with elevated blood lead levels every year.

For older children, water makes up about 20% of lead exposure, but for bottle-fed infants, it’s the primary source of poisoning.

The NRDC estimated replacing lead service lines would lead to hundreds of billions of dollars in avoided health expenses, primarily from reduced cardiovascular disease.

“This is an urgent public health crisis, as tens of millions of people essentially drink water from a lead straw, unaware of the big risk to their health,” said Erik Olson, the NRDC’s senior strategic director for health.

The EPA will hold public information and listening sessions and accept comments into the new year. It plans to finalize the rule by October.

The Rush Island Energy Center on the Mississippi River will close following a federal court ruling (photo courtesy of Ameren Missouri).

Missouri’s largest electric provider hopes to use a state law meant to help utilities add renewable energy to close a coal plant found in violation of federal clean air laws. 

St. Louis-based Ameren Missouri, which serves 1.2 million customers, is planning to close its Rush Island Energy Center in Jefferson County next year under a court order forcing it to either install pollution controls or shut down the facility.

The company announced almost two years ago it would close the plant, saying the pollution controls would be too expensive.

Last week, it filed with the Missouri Public Service Commission seeking permission to use a new financing law known as securitization to recoup its investment at Rush Island. 

In testimony filed with the Public Service Commission, Ameren Missouri President Mark Birk said continuing to operate coal plants had become “extremely challenging.”

“Faced with these realities, the only prudent option was to shut down Rush Island instead of adding scrubbers,” Birk said. 

Less pollution, lower bills: Missouri, Kansas move ahead on utility securitization

Rush Island is a two-unit coal plant south of St. Louis on the Mississippi River. Ameren had planned to operate Rush Island until 2039 before the court order.

Rush Island is old enough that the company was not required to install pollution controls when the facility’s two units were put into operation in 1976 and 1977. A 1977 update to the Clean Air Act required new power plants to do so. Older coal plants were grandfathered into the rule until they made upgrades beyond routine maintenance in a way that increased emissions. 

Once Ameren overhauled the coal plant units in 2007 and 2010, it fell under the requirement, but it failed to apply for that permit, according to court filings. 

U.S. District Court Judge Rodney Sippel ordered Ameren in 2019 to obtain that permit, install scrubbers and meet standards for sulfur dioxide emissions. In 2021, the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld that ruling, though it struck down a requirement that Ameren also install scrubbers at the Labadie Energy Center in Franklin County.

Despite losing the argument in court, Ameren maintains its upgrades at Rush Island were not significant enough to trigger the required pollution control updates. 

“Given the facts and circumstances as they existed at the time, no rational utility would have done anything differently with respect to Rush Island,” Birk said. “Having made prudent decisions, the securitization of the cost of retirement for Rush Island is appropriate.”

For the Public Service Commission to approve Ameren’s request, it must find the utility is acting prudently in retiring the plant. Even in its decision not to seek a permit for the upgrades to Rush Island, Ameren argues it has acted prudently. 

“We believe we have a strong case that at the time the decision was made to (not) pursue a permit for this work, we had no regulatory directive to do so,” said Warren Wood, Ameren’s vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs. 

Asked if he had any misgivings about Ameren using securitization in the case of a coal plant found in violation of the Clean Air Act, Andy Knott, with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, said the environmental nonprofit supports the use of the securitization to shutter coal plants. 

“But Ameren must use the proceeds to invest back in renewables,” Knott said. 

The relatively new securitization law allows utilities to essentially refinance coal plants. A third party issues bonds to pay back the utility’s investment in building the plant. Then customers repay the bonds through their bills.

The policy — which was backed by an unusual alliance of environmental and consumer advocate groups and utility companies — is meant to incentivize companies to close coal plants early and invest the savings in renewable energy projects.

Ameren did not commit to additional clean energy investments if it is allowed to securitize Rush Island. Under its current “integrated resource plan,” filed with Missouri regulators, the company proposes adding 2,800 megawatts of wind and solar power, 400 megawatts of battery storage and an 800-megawatt natural gas plant by 2030. 

“I can’t speak to if it provides opportunities to accelerate some of those investments,” Wood said. “It may, but it would certainly be helpful to moving ahead with the IRP plan that we most recently issued.”

According to Ameren’s filing, it’s seeking to securitize the remaining value at Rush Island of $475 million and other costs associated with decommissioning the plant. Including financing costs, the company hopes to securitize costs of more than $519 million. 

Compared to recouping its investment at Rush Island from ratepayers, Ameren estimates customers will save almost $76 million in net present value over 15 years. 

The cost to ratepayers to pay back the securitization bonds, the company estimates will be about $1.71 per month for the average customer.

An undated photo of the Pomme de Terre River, which runs through Webster, Greene, Dallas, Polk and Hickory counties. A meat packing company near Pleasant Hope wants a permit to discharge its wastewater into the river, which is already proposed on the list of impaired waterways. (Shannon Henry photo via the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)

State regulators are poised to deny a request from a southwest Missouri meatpacker to discharge treated wastewater directly into a river already impaired by E. coli. 

Missouri Prime Beef Packers requested permission from the state to treat wastewater from its meatpacking operation near Pleasant Hope using a proprietary microbe technology and discharge it directly into the Pomme de Terre River. 

Right now, the company  applies its wastewater to surrounding land as fertilizer.

But the Missouri Department of Natural Resources last week posted a draft denial of the request to its website. It will accept public comments until early January before making a final decision. 

“Hearing the concerns from the public, we really started to dig in then on that technology, and there are a number of questions that we did not have answers for,” John Hoke, director of the Department of Natural Resources’ water protection program, said in an interview Monday. 

The proposed denial was a win for environmental groups who raised concerns about the effectiveness of the iLeaf microbe technology and the Pomme de Terre’s status as an impaired waterway. Hoke said the technology can be used in some systems, but the department hadn’t seen it used at the scale the meat packing facility would use it. 

The Pomme de Terre River, which winds through the Ozark region of southwest Missouri, provides clear, spring-fed water for canoeing, swimming and fishing, making it a popular destination. It was designated an impaired waterway in recent years but had improved and been removed from the list.

Missouri regulators proposed, and the Environmental Protection Agency approved, including it on the list again this summer.

The river was found in 2019 to have an average of more than 200 E. coli colonies per 100 milliliters of water, well above the limit of 126. At that level, fewer than one person per 1,000 is likely to get a gastrointestinal illness, according to the state.

E. coli data from 2020 are incomplete because of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on sample collection. Data from 2021 and 2022 are not yet available.

Pomme de Terre Lake, which is fed by the river, is also on the impaired waters because of high levels of chlorophyll-a. Presence of the chemical indicates a body of water is receiving too much phosphorus and nitrogen, which can lead to harmful algae blooms that reduce oxygen in the water and kill fish. Some blooms can lead to toxins and bacteria that can make people sick. 

Runoff from farms is a major source of nitrogen and phosphorus, which are found in animal waste. Untreated, the water from the meatpacking facility’s processing of 3,500 cattle per week may also contain those chemicals.

The Missouri Prime Beef Packers’ facility proposed using its microbe technology to purify the wastewater before discharging it into the river. But the state’s draft denial says the company didn’t meet all of the regulatory requirements to use an innovative technology, though an earlier review by the state found the technology sufficient to treat the wastewater.

Hoke said in August that the state could approve the discharge because the facility was required to disinfect the wastewater and, therefore, wouldn’t cause or contribute to the Pomme de Terre’s impairment. 

But on Monday, Hoke said the state didn’t have adequate assurance the facility wouldn’t contribute to the river’s water quality problems.

Following public comments saying the department needed to do more research on the iLeaf technology, Hoke said, the department realized it needed more information. It sent a letter to the facility seeking answers and didn’t get a satisfactory response.

Without that information, the department moved toward denying the permit. 

Ethan Thompson, an attorney representing environmental groups critical of the request, argued this summer that the Missouri Department of Natural Resources needed to wait to approve the permit until the state approved a cap on the amount of pollution allowed to enter the Pomme de Terre River in an effort to improve the water quality. 

Until that happens, Thompson argued allowing a new discharge into the river could violate the Clean Water Act. 

“The (Missouri Department of Natural Resources) should follow the law and either wait…before authorizing an additional discharge to the watershed or deny the discharge request altogether,” Thompson, an attorney for Great Rivers Environmental Law Center, wrote in a letter to the state earlier this year.

Missouri Prime Beef Packers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The El Niño weather pattern could bring more precipitation to drought-stricken Kansas and Missouri this winter. (Kansas Wheat/submitted)

The phrase “El Niño” can conjure up images of horrendous weather: severe storms in the southern U.S. and droughts in Asia and Africa.

But for Kansas and Missouri, El Niño, a months-long weather pattern that typically brings warm winters and extra precipitation to the central U.S., brings hope. 

Both states have been stuck in a stubborn drought, slashing farm yields and shrinking ponds for livestock. Aaron Harries, vice president of research and operations for Kansas Wheat, said the possibility of more rain and snow brought on by El Niño was welcome news. 

“Anything better than what we’ve had the last three years is good news,” Harries said. 

El Niño is a naturally — though irregularly — occurring phenomenon when the ocean’s surface warms in parts of the Pacific, bringing more rains to some areas of the globe while depriving others. Prevailing winds at the surface weaken and can reverse. 

The National Weather Service declared the globe had entered an El Niño period in June and predicts it could last through the spring.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research predicted the current period would be a “Super El Niño,” which, for Kansas State climatologist Matthew Sittel, creates an image of a “meteorological superhero.”

“As it turns out, a Super El Niño could indeed be a hero for Kansans,” Sittel wrote in a report about the phenomenon this week.

Sittel’s counterpart in Missouri, Zack Leasor, said the possibility of more precipitation was cause for optimism. Over the course of the drought, Missouri has built up long-term precipitation deficits, he said, so it needs significant rain or snow to catch up. 

But Missouri sits on a divide between the south, which typically gets above-average precipitation in an El Niño year, and the north, which sees less, making it difficult to know whether the state will see drought relief.

“So hopefully that forecast does hold because that would be good news for drought improvement,” he said.

Kansas and Missouri have both struggled through a months-long drought.

Severe drought triggers assistance in nearly all of Kansas, half of Missouri

A year ago, more than half of Kansas was in an “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, the most severe label given by the U.S. Drought Monitor. While it has eased, most of the state is still experiencing some level of drought.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in July that Kansas’ winter wheat production fell 15% from 2022. Bushels of wheat per acre fell from 32 to 27. 

On Thursday, the agency reported sorghum, a more drought-tolerant cereal crop, was planted in much higher quantities this year and the harvest was forecast to be 47% larger than last year’s.

While the situation is not as severe in Missouri, just over half of the state remains in a lingering drought.

A recent survey released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported 62% of livestock producers in Missouri are short or very short on hay and roughage supplies, and 43% are short or very short on stock water.

Huge swaths of the state have soil moisture levels far below historical averages. Corn yields are down 10% compared to 2022.

While an El Niño year typically brings more moisture than average for Kansas, that’s compared to a dry baseline. A couple extra inches of rain or snow won’t solve a 12-inch deficit in drought-stricken parts of the state.

“It is an absolute — I won’t say certainty,” Sittel said, “… but 99% chance that all of eastern Kansas, north, north-central, central Kansas will still be in drought conditions by April 1.”

Water levels in the Little Caney River in southeast Kansas are so low that the river isn’t flowing over the dam, leaving the stream dry (Allison Kite/Kansas Reflector).

CANEY, Kansas — It’s hardly a question of whether the water will run out for one town on the Kansas-Oklahoma border. It’s a matter of when.

The stubborn drought that has hung over southeast Kansas for close to two years has brought Caney, a town of less than 2,000 people, within weeks of reaching the end of its water supply. Without rain, Caney could run dry by Christmas.

“This is the worst it’s been since any of us have been alive,” said City Manager Kelley Zellner.

Signs of the crisis are everywhere.

At Eggbert’s, a diner at the edge of town, the price of bottled water is listed with the restaurant’s specials by the front door. Menus carry a notice that the staff can’t give out tap water.

Cases of bottled water, donated by Walmart, sit in front of City Hall. There’s a portable bathroom trailer outside the junior and senior high school. And the town’s primary water source, the Little Caney River, is so low that the water that remains is stagnant.

Downstream of the town, the riverbed is dry.

Even among the drought-stricken towns in southeast Kansas — where stock water ponds are half their normal size and creek beds are completely dry — Caney’s crisis stands out. It can draw water from its backup source, Timber Hill Lake, one more time, Zellner estimates.

The town is trying desperately to conserve the water it has left. But it’s not clear what will happen when that water runs out.

Local officials are in talks with state and federal agencies, said Rick Wihitson, Montgomery County’s emergency manager

“Everyone’s trying to figure out the best solution,” Whitson said, “but we have yet to find out what that’s going to be,” Whitson said.

An ongoing drought

Water hasn’t flowed over the dam in the Little Caney River — the point at which the town draws its drinking water — since July, Zellner said.

“We shut down the swimming pool that day,” he said.

Caney’s car wash also sits idle.

While the town has cut back, the drought persists .

At the beginning of the year, the entirety of Montgomery County was in an “extreme” or “exceptional” drought. That figure has fallen to 60% of the county, but it’s been over a year since any part of the county wasn’t in at least a mild drought.

Matthew Sittel, an assistant climatologist for Kansas, said a nearby precipitation gauge north of Havana received only half its normal rainfall since July. Another gauge in Chautauqua County got 9.2 inches of rain since July, which is 5.5 inches short of its normal.

And while much of southeast Kansas is suffering through the same drought, Caney, unlike other towns, doesn’t receive water from any of the reservoirs managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that supply other towns.

Caney is looking to long-term solutions to its water shortage. But right now, it needs to get by.

Scramble to respond

When Carney Mayor Joshua Elliott found out earlier this month that the city could only draw water one more time, he was gravely concerned.

He wouldn’t call it a “freakout,” but he felt a responsibility to try to make the town’s water last as long as possible. He immediately ordered all public restrooms closed.

“The town kind of freaked out on that,” he said.

The city ultimately relaxed that edict, saying restrooms needed to be reserved only for businesses’ paying customers.

At the barber shop near the north end of town, a customer who didn’t want to be interviewed complained that the water wasn’t worth drinking and still more expensive than anywhere nearby.

Eggbert’s was one of the businesses that objected to the restroom closures. General Manager Kim McMahan said within hours of the order, Eggbert’s lost customers.

“If we had to leave the restrooms closed … it’s going to cause businesses in this town to shut down,” McMahan said.

Most of Eggbert’s customers are elderly. Some wouldn’t be able to get in and out of a portable toilet with their walkers, McMahan said.

“Nobody’s going to want to come in and eat if you can’t wash your hands, can’t use the restroom,” she said.

Eggbert’s is trying to do its part. It has stopped giving out tap water. It charges $1 for bottled water. As McMahan starts to explain how customers have taken the news that the restaurant won’t give them free water, a server on her staff walks by.

“People are mad,” she said as she walked away with plates.

“Very,” McMahan said, chuckling.

Some people have understood, she said. Others were indignant.

“Some will not spend a dollar on water and turn around and buy a $3 soda,” she said. “It’s not my money, so it’s whatever you want to do.”

Starting Monday, Caney schools will move to a four-day week to help conserve water.

The district, Caney Valley Public Schools, announced that it would cancel several class days between now and the students’ winter break to help ease the demand for water. The schools are among the largest water users in town.

And last week, the Montgomery County Commission declared a state of emergency, citing the “extreme measures” the town had to impose to deal with the drought.

Jane Welch, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Emergency Management, said in an email that the state agency had been in contact with the city about the crisis and that the city indicated there “is not an immediate concern of the city being without potable water in their public water supply.”

It isn’t the first time that state emergency managers have been called in to deal with a water shortage in Caney, she said.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment did not answer questions about the crisis.

This story was originally published by the Kansas Reflector, a States Newsroom affiliate. 

A fishing boat sits at Lake No. 34 in August A. Busch Memorial Conservation Area. Lake 34 is one of several that were contaminated by a nearby uranium refining plant decades ago (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent).

Steve Allen and Eric Singsaas grew up hunting and fishing in August A. Busch Memorial Conservation Area and swimming in quarries along the Missouri River in St. Charles County, never knowing they were playing near nuclear waste. 

“Everything we did,” Allen said in an interview, “we did together.”

Allen said he and Singsaas even attended a tour of an old uranium plant nearby — put on by the federal government in 1991.

“For the most part, we trusted what the government told us,” Allen said, “and surely, in our brain, if there was something bad there, (the government) wouldn’t allow us to be there.”

Decades later, Singsaas woke up with a numb foot. Within a week, he found out he had three cancerous brain tumors. 

Two years later, he died. 

It’s unclear what confluence of factors may have caused  Singsaas’s cancer diagnosis and death in 2018, at the age of 50, or whether exposure to radioactive contamination played any part. But testing results from sampling conducted by the Department of Energy show that, in the 1980s and 1990s, three lakes within the Busch conservation area — almost 7,000 acres of some of the busiest fishing lakes and hiking trails in the state — contained higher-than-natural levels of uranium and radioactivity. 

Several of the uranium readings are much higher than the EPA maximum level for uranium in drinking water, which was first set in 2003. 

Health experts say the levels would only pose a measurable threat if someone drank the lake water regularly. 

But in a region where contamination from America’s nuclear age has been allowed to spread even when the federal government and private companies knew of the danger, and generations of residents watched loved ones suffer from rare cancers and autoimmune diseases, those assurances can ring hollow. After discovering contaminated water flowing from Burgermeister Spring into the lakes in the mid-1980s, the Missouri Department of Conservation resisted calls to install signs warning visitors of the risks, dismissing it as the “most drastic thing we could do” and arguing that people would inevitably disregard any state-mandated prohibition on swimming in the lakes or eating fish.

And while the plant started processing radioactive material in the 1950s, federal records of uranium monitoring only date back to the 1980s. Neither the Department of Energy nor the Department of Defense has records from the 10 years the Weldon Spring plant processed uranium. The plant sat shuttered, and the groundwater wasn’t monitored for at least 10 years after that.

Denise DeGarmo, a political science professor who has researched and written about nuclear waste in the St. Louis region, said the government has never done sufficient testing to identify all of the contamination. She said the community’s trust in the federal government had eroded over decades of being ignored or brushed off. 

“They know when something’s wrong,” DeGarmo said. “They know that when red water is showing up in a muddle somewhere, it shouldn’t be there. They know when their kids are getting sick.” 

A federal study in the late 1990s cast doubt on potential health impacts from Weldon Spring Chemical Plant, which manufactured TNT and DNT and later refined uranium for the federal government. Waste from the plant contaminated quarries by the Missouri River and made its way into the groundwater and, eventually, to the Busch conservation area. 

State officials monitored the waters and tested fish in the Busch conservation area, which abuts  property that held the Weldon Spring Chemical Plant. 

But when the Department of Energy demolished the uranium plant and emptied the pits where radioactive waste was stored — and which had been exposed to wind and rain for decades  — officials decided to simply monitor the contamination in groundwater and surface water until it naturally dissipated.

And while the federal government has known since at least the 1980s that surface water around the Weldon Spring uranium plant was contaminated, the Busch lakes and other publicly-accessible bodies of water nearby have no signs warning visitors of potential hazards. 

Starting in the 1980s and continuing into the 2000s, state officials repeatedly said signs weren’t needed because the contamination wasn’t significant enough. 

In addition to the conservation area, radioactive contamination showed up in the 1980s in about 150 private drinking water wells, though the state health department concluded the water was affected by “naturally-occurring radioactive material.” Seventeen wells had radionuclide concentrations high enough to need to be routinely tested until the early 2000s, Lisa Cox, a spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, said in an email. 

Almost 25 years later, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources told federal officials the contamination in some areas of the site isn’t going away quickly enough. The department noted in a 2021 letter to the U.S. Department of Energy that contamination levels in some monitoring wells near where radioactive waste was stored at the site aren’t decreasing.

“The department has expressed concerns with the long-term monitoring and surveillance since the record of decision…in 2004,” Connie Patterson, a spokeswoman for the department of natural resources, said in an email. The department doesn’t believe, however, that the Busch lakes pose a human health threat. 

Through a spokesperson, the Department of Energy insists the site is now safe, and following the state’s 2021 concerns, the federal agency created a working group to identify locations for additional monitoring wells and evaluate solutions for further decontamination.

Decades of contamination 

St. Louis played a pivotal role in supplying uranium for the Manhattan Project, the name given to the effort to develop the first atomic bomb during World War II.

Uranium processed by workers at Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in downtown St. Louis was used in the first sustained nuclear chain reaction in Chicago, a key breakthrough in research for the bomb.

But for decades after the war, radioactive waste from the project was improperly transported and stored, causing contamination that remains in St. Louis and St. Charles counties today.

Waste from Mallinckrodt was stored at the St. Louis airport following the war in open piles and deteriorating barrels. Contamination seeped into Coldwater Creek, which runs through busy suburbs in St. Louis County, and polluted its waters for miles.

In the 1960s, the waste was sold and transported to Hazelwood for a private company to extract valuable metals. At that site, too, radioactive waste was able to erode into Coldwater Creek.

Once all of the valuable materials had been processed and moved offsite, the rest was scooped up with contaminated soil and dumped into the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, where it remains today.

After World War II, Mallinckrodt started processing uranium in Weldon Spring for the federal government’s Cold War-era nuclear program. 

Waste from the plant was stored in open pits, and contaminated material from World War II was dumped in a quarry on the Missouri River.

Rainwater carried radioactive material from the disposal ponds, through streams and groundwater, more than a mile away into August A Busch Memorial Conservation Area, where uranium contaminated streamways and three fishing lakes.

“They said that it had been cleaned up already, even though there were little signs all over saying that the place was radioactive,” Lindsey said.

Lindsey said her unit once found an old train car full of 55-gallon drums in the woods near the site. They weren’t sure what was in them. 

It wasn’t until years later that Lindsey learned about the radioactive waste around St. Louis and its connection to the Manhattan Project. She said it was “lousy” her unit wasn’t made aware of what was around them.

“I don’t think most of us knew,” she said. “Because we would joke about, ‘Well yeah, if we step on this side of the barbed wire, we’ll be able to light our way home when we’re old.’ You know, it was funny.” 

She added: “Well, it’s funny in your 20s when you have no clue.”

Now 56, Lindsey said she sees a hematologist and an oncologist regularly, though the doctors don’t know what’s wrong. Her white and red blood cells take turns spiking and falling.

When she was training at Weldon Spring, Lindsey struggled with uterine fibroids and ovarian cysts. She had a total hysterectomy about 10 years ago because she was at risk of uterine cancer, she said. 

“When I was younger, it didn’t even bother me,” Lindsey said of the radioactive waste around her, “but I just keep thinking about how many other people that were out there training with me…are there people that are sick?”

Uranium in public lakes 

Sampling from the 1980s and ‘90s show uranium levels in the lakes and springs around the Mallinckrodt site and within Busch often exceeded what is now the Environmental Protection Agency’s limit for drinking water: 30 micrograms per liter. 

At that time, the EPA didn’t have a limit for uranium alone, though it had standards for radioactivity.

Testing conducted by the Department of Energy in 1989 showed uranium levels in Busch Lake No. 34 were as high as 57.6 micrograms per liter, almost twice the modern limit for drinking water. At Busch Lake No. 36, uranium levels reached almost 80 micrograms per liter in 1987. They fluctuated over the years but hit almost 80 again in 1996. 

Uranium levels were typically lowest in Busch Lake No. 35. Except for one extraordinarily high reading the department determined was an outlier, they never rose above the modern EPA drinking water standard once testing commenced. 

Burgermeister Spring, named after the family that lived there before World War II, feeds into the Busch conservation area and was found to have concentrations of uranium as high as 250 micrograms per liter, almost nine times the modern EPA drinking water limit, according to a 1987 report by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Uranium concentrations in Burgermeister have fallen over the years, but routinely exceeded 30 micrograms well into the 2010s. It repeatedly exceeded 100 micrograms until the early 2000s. Detections over 150 micrograms per liter would trigger contingency efforts.  

A risk assessment performed by the Department of Energy in 1997 found the contamination at that time would not pose a risk for recreational visitors. The EPA’s limit of 30 micrograms per liter for drinking water is based on someone drinking two liters of water a day for decades. 

Even then, Kathy Higley, a distinguished professor at Oregon State University who teaches courses on radiochemistry and dosimetry, said consuming water every day at the EPA limit of 30 micrograms per liter would only result in a dose of 4 millirem per year. The average annual dose of radiation from everyday sources — such cosmic radiation, X-ray machines and traveling by airplane — is 620.

That 4 millirems is “kind of in the noise,” she said.

“At really, really low doses…we can’t measure observable risks of cancer because there’s such a high natural background,” Higley said. 

Finding out about the cleanup at Weldon Spring years later made Dwain Jansen wonder if he ate contaminated fish when his family frequented the Busch conservation area in the 1980s. He said his family caught about 200 pounds of fish every year, primarily at Lake No. 34. 

His wife’s family fished there a lot, too. Jansen’s wife, Amber, died from complications related to cancer in 2011 at the age of 42. 

“It’s too young for someone to die,” Jansen said. “Can I point this toward Weldon Spring or the fish or well water? No, I have no definitive answer.”

Public awareness and cleanup

For decades, there have been no signs warning visitors the Busch lakes contained uranium.

Starting in the 1980s, the federal Department of Energy and the Missouri Department of Conservation simply said that they weren’t needed. John Vogel, who managed the Busch conservation area for the conservation department, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2003 the department didn’t want to put up signs and create a panic.

By then, uranium concentrations in the lakes had fallen compared to the high readings of the 1980s and 1990s. Asked if the department would make the same decision today, conservation department spokesman Dan Zarlenga said any agency communication about human health would be informed by the department’s state and federal partners, including the state health and natural resources departments and the EPA, which “have the expertise to make these determinations.” 

When officials began studying the site and preparing to remediate it, they looked into strategies to decontaminate the groundwater, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement.

But both “conventional and innovative techniques for active remediation were ineffective due to the site’s complex hydrogeological features,” EPA spokesperson Kellen Ashford said in an email.  

Zarlenga said the department was planning to collect fish from the Busch lakes this fall to test for uranium and other heavy metals.

What remains unclear is how dangerous the waters in Busch conservation area were in the years during — and just after — Mallinckrodt’s uranium operations in Weldon Spring.

Data provided by the Department of Energy show sampling started in 1987. But the department’s remedial investigation, released in 1992, references studies from the late 1970s and mid-1980s.

In an email, a Department of Energy spokesperson said the first samples the department performed were released in a report in 1986. It took control of the site from the Department of the Army in 1985.

The report says records “of routine environmental monitoring by (the Army) during previous years are unavailable.”

Asked about monitoring data, the Department of Defense referred questions back to the Department of Energy, saying it was not aware of any uranium monitoring by the federal government before 1985.

Ste. Genevieve County residents have been fighting efforts by NexGen Mining Inc. to mine silica in their county (Niara Savage/Missouri Independent).

A plan to build a silica mine in southeast Missouri suffered yet another setback on Tuesday when an appeals court ruled state regulators were within their authority to deny the project a permit. 

The Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District sided with the Missouri Mining Commission, which denied NexGen Silica a permit in January because it submitted an incomplete application. 

“NexGen’s permit application did not identify all parties with any interest in the land and did not contain the written consent of all parties prior to approval of the mining permit by (the Missouri Department of Natural Resources),” the unanimous ruling says.

NexGen Silica had planned to mine silica sand, which is commonly used for fracking, near Hawn State Park in Ste Genevieve County. News of the project sparked blowback in the community. Residents feared the operation would kick up toxic sand, pollute their drinking water and keep the community up all night with bright lights and traffic.

But NexGen has struggled to obtain — and keep — permits for the project. 

Residents ask Missouri legislators to halt silica mine, don’t want ‘our futures ruined’

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources initially granted NexGen a land reclamation permit last year despite the missing information in its application that the appeals court noted in its Tuesday ruling. 

But Operation Sand, a group formed by residents near the proposed mine, challenged the permit, arguing it was incomplete and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources hadn’t adequately scrutinized the application. 

Operation Sand prevailed. The state’s Administrative Hearing Commission recommended the decision to grant NexGen a permit be reversed, and the Missouri Mining Commission followed suit. NexGen appealed that decision, resulting in Tuesday’s denial.

Jillian Ditch Anslow, who helped establish Operation Sand, said in a press release that the organization formed to protect residents from the potential health effects of silica sand mining. She said she was thankful the appeals court affirmed the denial of the permit.

“Ste. Genevieve County is abundant with natural resources, including clean air, clean drinking water, as well as Hawn State Park, and all these deserve to be protected,” she said.

NexGen’s attorney did not immediately return an email seeking comment. A NexGen employee’s email had seemingly stopped functioning, and the company’s website was offline.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the company would try again to obtain a permit.

In May, the company wrote to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to withdraw its request for a water permit, which was also challenged by Operation Sand. 

Operation Sand’s attorney, Stephen Jeffery, said his clients would be happy to hear the appeals court’s decision.

At the same time, NexGen is suing Ste Genevieve County over a law prohibiting new mines close to schools, towns, churches and other sites important to the community and environment. That lawsuit is still pending. 

The proposed mine also attracted criticism last year because the state didn’t require an environmental review before issuing the initial land reclamation permit. 

Residents flooded the Missouri Department of Natural Resources when it allowed public comments on the permit, fearing the mine would harm their drinking water, native wildlife and Hawn State Park.

One person who wrote to the department said: “If there is even a chance of it contaminating our water, using up our water table or affecting anyone’s health (including the wildlife) why allow it? Why chance it? There’s too much at stake here.”

The department said, at that time, that the statute gave the agency little flexibility in whether to decline permit applications. And it doesn’t require an environmental review. 

Coldwater Creek runs by the St. Louis airport and through Florissant and Hazelwood before flowing into the Missouri River. The creek is contaminated by nuclear waste left over from the effort to build the first atomic bomb during World War II (Theo Welling/Riverfront Times).

Cleaning up Coldwater Creek and other radioactive waste sites in St. Louis County will cost more than twice what federal officials thought six years ago, a new federal report finds. 

A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office released Tuesday finds the government’s financial liability at the sites ballooned from $177 million in 2016 to $406 million last year, primarily because of additional contamination that forced the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to expand the investigation and cleanup to include the creek’s 10-year floodplain. 

The report takes to task the Army Corps, which is overseeing the cleanup of Coldwater Creek, a tributary of the Missouri River that has been contaminated for decades by radioactive waste leftover from the development of the first atomic bomb during World War II. 

GAO auditors found the Army Corps didn’t sufficiently meet several best management practices, which could help prevent cost overruns or identify risks with cleanup projects. The Army Corps largely agreed with the findings of the report. 

Tuesday’s report follows the GAO’s earlier findings that the U.S. government’s environmental liabilities pose a high risk. 

“In our most recent high-risk list update, we found that departments and agencies, including the Department of Defense, need to take additional steps to monitor, report on and better understand their environmental liabilities,” the report says. 

The GAO’s report focuses on sites within the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program, which was created in the 1970s to clean up areas contaminated in the course of the Manhattan Project, the name given to the World War II nuclear weapons program.

A monthslong investigation by The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press published earlier this year found radioactive waste was known to pose a threat to people living near Coldwater Creek as early as 1949, but federal officials repeatedly wrote potential risks off as “slight,” “minimal” or “low-level.”

St. Louis was pivotal to the Manhattan Project, resulting in a decades-long radioactive contamination problem. Uranium was refined in downtown St. Louis during the war, contaminating surrounding properties.

Records reveal 75 years of government downplaying, ignoring risks of St. Louis radioactive waste

After the war, waste from the downtown site was trucked to St. Louis County, sometimes spilling along the way, and dumped at the airport. Decaying barrels released radioactive waste into Coldwater Creek, and despite acknowledging the risk of contamination, the private company that produced the waste thought it was too dangerous for workers to put the material in new barrels.

Eventually, the waste was sold to another private company and moved to a property on Latty Avenue, also adjacent to Coldwater Creek. The material was stored in the open where it could continue to contaminate the creek. 

The Cotter Corp., which purchased the waste to extract valuable metals, dried and shipped most of it to its facility in Colorado before dumping the rest in the West Lake Landfill, where it remains today. 

The Army Corps has authority through FUSRAP over the downtown, Coldwater Creek, airport and Latty Avenue sites, but cleanup of the landfill is being overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency. 

U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, D-St. Louis, requested the GAO investigate the Army Corps stewardship of the sites in 2021. She noted in a statement the report found that, compared to other FUSRAP sites, the St. Louis sites are near some of the most underserved communities.

“The federal government bears full responsibility for ensuring that this waste is expeditiously cleaned up and that all those harmed are made whole,” Bush said.

The Army Corps’ liability at the downtown site where Mallinckrodt Chemical Works refined uranium during World War II also rose precipitously. 

The GAO report evaluated the cleanup efforts and costs at 19 FUSRAP sites spread across eight states, totaling $2.6 billion in environmental liabilities. Four of those sites make up about 75% of that total amount: the North St. Louis County sites; the Niagara Falls Storage Site in New York; the Shallow Land Disposal Area, in Parks Township, Pa., outside Pittsburgh; and Guterl Specialty Steel, also in Niagara County, N.Y. 

These four sites generally require complex cleanup work or cover large areas; for example, the Niagara Falls Storage Site has several types of buried radioactive waste that will be exhumed, packaged and shipped to an offsite location, officials say. In addition, eight of the 19 sites are within or adjacent to underserved racial or ethnic populations or have high rates of poverty compared with the rest of the county where they are located. 

All told, the liability estimate for all 19 sites has grown by nearly $1 billion, or roughly 63%, over the past seven years, the GAO found.

Difficult cleanups

For years, contaminated soil at the downtown site wasn’t accessible to the Army Corps, the report says, because it was under a building that was in use by the property owner. The owner of the site decided to grant access, and the Corps found it had additional cleanup work to do, increasing the liability for the site from $17 million to $96 million within a year. 

The GAO also found the Army Corps sites in St. Louis city and county are all situated in underserved communities. 

While 53% of the residents of St. Louis are from underserved racial or ethnic groups, the report says, 80% of individuals near the downtown Mallinckrodt site are. The area’s poverty rate is 1.5 times higher than the rest of the city. 

In St. Louis County, 29% of residents are from underserved groups compared to 63% of residents near the radioactive sites. Like downtown, the area suffers from a poverty rate 1.5 times the rest of the county. 

The Government Accountability Office found the Army Corps could benefit from better management practices, including a risk management program. 

While Army Corps conducts risk management operations on individual projects, the GAO found it doesn’t have a risk management plan for the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program as a whole. Doing so could help it more efficiently allocate resources, the report says. 

“Furthermore, better risk management could help the Corps plan for uncertainties, such as the discovery of more contamination requiring cleanup, that may affect future environmental liability,” the GAO says. 

The report says a risk management program could also identify potential opportunities affecting the entire program. The report gives, as an example, the $182 million the Army Corps received in appropriations but hasn’t spent because of its limited staffing. 

In a response included in the report, the U.S. Department of Defense largely concurred with the GAO’s recommendations and said it would work with the Army to implement several management practices.

Bush said the report shows the Army Corps is “leaving money on the table as a result of mismanagement” and needs to build trust and improve communication with the community.

“This report validates concerns people have been raising for years,” Bush said. “The Corps must heed their recommendations without delay.”

Congressman Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland, ranking member on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, said in a statement that the long delay in remediating Manhattan Project sites is “unconscionable.” 

“Decades after the federal government generated large amounts of toxic nuclear waste as a result of nuclear weapons production,” Raskin said, “America’s most underserved communities still bear the brunt of deadly contamination from one of the most significant environmental disasters in our nation’s history.” 

Grain Belt was previously envisioned as a 4,000 megawatt line that would drop off a small portion of its power in Missouri. But with Thursday’s approval, Invenergy can construct a 5,000 megawatt line and drop half of its power in the state (Robert Zullo/States Newsroom).

State regulators gave final approval Thursday to the owners of the Grain Belt Express transmission line to drop off thousands of megawatts of clean power in Missouri. 

The decision by the Missouri Public Service Commission was the final regulatory approval Chicago-based Invenergy needed to begin the first phase of the line, to be built in Kansas and Missouri. 

For years, Invenergy has been working through regulatory approvals and acquiring land easements to build the 800-mile high-voltage transmission line, which will carry renewable energy from wind-swept western Kansas across Missouri and Illinois to the Indiana border. 

“Securing the necessary state regulatory approvals is another critical step toward Grain Belt Express bringing lower electric bills and greater reliability to consumers in Missouri and across the Midwest,” said Shashank Sane, executive vice president and head of transmission at Invenergy.

Grain Belt was previously envisioned as a 4,000 megawatt line that would drop off a small portion of its power in Missouri. But with Thursday’s approval, Invenergy can construct a 5,000 megawatt line and drop half of its power in the state. 

The line’s total capacity is expected to equate to roughly four new nuclear power plants, Invenergy says. 

The company plans to construct the line in phases with Kansas and Missouri first. The line, Invenergy says, will result in $11 billion in savings over 15 years across those two states as well as Illinois. 

But the Grain Belt had to overcome strong political headwinds to reach this point. The project sparked opposition from farm groups and landowners because it will cut across private property. 

Invenergy must either sign voluntary deals with landowners or use its power of eminent domain to build on the property of landowners who don’t agree. In both cases, Invenergy will compensate property owners. 

Republican legislators and agricultural groups tried repeatedly to essentially strip Grain Belt’s right of eminent domain, which would have killed the project. But last year, lawmakers passed compromise legislation requiring, in the event of future large transmission lines, greater compensation for landowners and setting a seven-year time limit for companies to build transmission lines after obtaining their easements. 

In a news release Thursday, Invenergy said it had acquired 95% of the easements it needs in Kansas and Missouri. 

Previous versions of the legislation would have required that at least 50% of power carried by a transmission line stay in Missouri. The compromise version would require that an amount of power proportional to the length of the line through Missouri be made available to residents. 

Shortly after the bill passed, Invenergy announced it would drop off more power in Missouri. 

Invenergy received approval this summer from the Kansas Corporation Commission to build the project in phases.

Evergy headquarters in downtown Topeka, Kansas (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector).

Missouri regulators approved Evergy’s request to change customers’ default plan days before its mandatory time-of-use pricing goes into effect.

The Missouri Public Service Commission last week approved the Kansas City-based electric utility’s request to change the default selection for customers who fail to select one of the company’s four time-of-use pricing plans. 

The commission, which regulates Missouri utilities, ordered Evergy to implement time-of-use pricing, which places a premium on electricity used during periods of high demand. The new pricing takes effect this month. 

Initially, Evergy would have enrolled customers in the Standard Peak Saver if they didn’t pick another plan. Under that plan, electricity on summer afternoons will be four times the price that it is the rest of the day. But now, the default plan will be closer to Evergy’s traditional pricing with smaller differences between its highest and lowest rates.

The mandatory time-of-use pricing sparked frustration over the summer as Evergy began advertising the new program and instructing customers to select their preferred plan.

Missouri Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina, accused state regulators of trying to ration power, gouge customers and force a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. O’Laughlin threatened to take legislative action if the Missouri Public Service Commission didn’t suspend or reverse their order requiring that Evergy’s make time-of-use pricing mandatory.

Evergy said in filings with the Missouri Public Service Commission that it saw blowback on social media where customers accused the company of “trying to spike customer bills to increase profits.”

The power company requested last month to make the pricing program optional, setting off a new round of frustration from customer and environmental advocates who say the program will overwhelmingly benefit customers. 

In the filing, Evergy requested the Missouri Public Service Commission allow it to make the program optional, change the default plan and limit customers’ ability to switch between rate plans.

The company received criticism from the Missouri Office of the Public Counsel, which represents ratepayers in proceedings before the Public Service Commission. In a filing, the Office of the Public Counsel said Evergy had presented two studies that show most customers will either be unaffected or benefit financially from the time-of-use pricing program. 

Clean energy advocacy group Renew Missouri said Evergy should work on its marketing and outreach efforts “rather than succumbing to negative Facebook comments by reversing course and attempting to upend a binding commission order.” 

Evergy withdrew the requests to make the program optional and restrict customers’ ability to switch plans and left in place the request to change the default pricing mechanism, which regulators approved last week. 

Lesser prairie chicken perform dancing or “drumming” on a lek (mating display) in northern Oklahoma. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has listed the lesser prairie chicken as threatened in Kansas and endangered in other portions of its range (Getty Images).

U.S. President Joe Biden vetoed legislation meant to undermine federal protections for the lesser prairie chicken, a previously ubiquitous bird that is now endangered in several states.

The legislation, introduced by U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, and co-sponsored by fellow Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran and four other senators, sought to undo a listing by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In his veto message, Biden said the legislation would “overturn a science-based rulemaking that follows the requirements of the law.”

“The lesser prairie-chicken serves as an indicator for healthy grasslands and prairies, making the species an important measure of the overall health of America’s grasslands,” Biden said. “If enacted, (the legislation) would undermine America’s proud wildlife conservation traditions, risk the extinction of a once-abundant American bird and create uncertainty for landowners and industries who have been working for years to forge the durable, locally led conservation strategies that this rule supports.”

Biden’s veto Tuesday sparked outrage from supporters of the legislation, with Marshall saying “we shouldn’t be shocked at this continued attack from President Biden on rural America.”

U.S. Rep. Tracey Mann, a Republican representing western Kansas, claimed voluntary efforts to conserve the lesser prairie chicken had been effective.

“At a time when record-breaking drought is crushing rural communities, crop production and native grasslands, we need more rain, not more regulations,” he said.

Listing the lesser prairie chicken as threatened or endangered has been a controversial prospect in Kansas for years.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service previously listed the bird as threatened in 2014, but the decision was reversed under a court order.

In 2019, three conservation groups sued the federal government to force a decision on the lesser prairie chicken. The groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, claimed the Department of the Interior and USFWS were in violation of the Endangered Species Act by failing to make a ruling on a 2016 petition to list the birds.

The bird was ultimately listed in November as threatened in Kansas and endangered in southwestern states.

The lesser prairie chicken, which lives in prairie grass and shrubs in western Kansas, once numbered in the hundreds of thousands. But U.S. wildlife officials estimated at the time they listed the bird last year that 90% of the habitat the birds once inhabited is gone and only about 32,000 lesser prairie chickens remain.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas meets with Missouri Gov. Mike Parson in October 2019. Lucas is challenging a November 2022 election that allowed the state to force Kansas City to spend more on police (photo courtesy of Missouri Governor's Office).

A state law raising the minimum funding Kansas City must provide its police department doesn’t impose any cost on the city or violate the state constitution, the Missouri attorney general’s office argued Wednesday.

Deputy Solicitor General Jeff Johnson, representing the state auditor and secretary of state, told the Missouri Supreme Court Wednesday that legislation forcing Kansas City to spend at least 25% of its budget on policing simply removes City Hall’s discretion, since Kansas City already routinely spends that much on police.

“It doesn’t represent an additional cost if now the discretion to fund the police department is removed from City Council and given to the (Kansas City) Board of Police Commissioners,” Johnson said. 

Jim Layton, representing Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, argued the legislation is an unfunded mandate barred by the Missouri Constitution. The city was previously only required to spend 20% of its budget on police. 

“This mandate costs millions, not nothing,” Layton said. “It costs millions.”

Layton and Johnson’s arguments before the Missouri Supreme Court come in a challenge — by Lucas — of a November 2022 statewide vote that increased the minimum percentage of its budget Kansas City must spend on its police department. Lucas’ challenge, filed in the months after the vote, argues a fiscal note summary accompanying the ballot was misleading and the results of the election should be tossed.

The fiscal note summary accompanying the November ballot said the amendment would result in “no additional costs or savings,” though the city argues the amendment has a negative financial effect on its budget. 

“Missouri voters should have the opportunity to make an informed choice about their Constitution — a choice they can make only if they are presented with accurate information regarding the amendment’s fiscal impact on the city,” Lucas’ attorneys argued in a brief filed with the Missouri Supreme Court last month.

Lucas is seeking a new election on the issue. 

Kansas City is the only major city in the U.S. that doesn’t control its own police department. Instead, the city’s police department is governed by the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, which includes the mayor and four members appointed by the Missouri governor. That means while the City Council writes the checks, it doesn’t control how police funds are spent.

Gov. Mike Parson last summer signed legislation to force Kansas City to spend at least 25% of its annual budget on the police department.

State control of Kansas City’s police has roots in the Civil War

But for the legislation to take effect, voters also had to pass an amendment to the Missouri Constitution to bypass a provision barring the state government from imposing spending requirements on local governments without providing funds. The amendment, which the city is challenging, exempted police funding in Kansas City from the ban on unfunded mandates.

Missouri voters passed that amendment 63% to 37% in November. 

This spring, Kansas City passed its first budget under the new spending requirement. Out of the city’s $2 billion budget, the Kansas City Police Department received $284.5 million.

The legislation, the mayor argued in a Supreme Court brief, followed a heated exchange the mayor had with Nathan Garrett, then a member of the Board of Police Commissioners. The Kansas City Council had attempted to exert some discretion over how police funds are spent, which a judge ultimately determined it wasn’t authorized to do.

When city officials tried to exert influence over how police funds were spent, according to Lucas’ petition, Garrett told the mayor the “state swings a bigger stick” than City Hall.

“Mr. Lucas understood that to be a threat that the state, or at least those closely connected to Mr. Garrett, would attempt to punish the city for attempting to exercise discretion over funds it had allocated to the board as a matter of discretion,” the brief says. 

In the runup to the November vote, the state sought clarity from the city regarding what the amendment might cost City Hall. The city responded that the increased funding requirement could remove its budgeting flexibility and potentially result in cuts to other departments of up to $38.7 million.

The state’s brief calls that calculation “entirely illusory” because the city had funded the police department at close to 25% during that budget year. Police funding would have represented an even larger share of the budget had the city not received an influx of cash from federal stimulus spending. 

The mayor’s desire to retain discretion over police funding is “understandable,” the brief says. 

“That does not justify telling voters that (the amendment) would cost the city $38.7 million annually — when three weeks earlier the city had calculated that it had funded the KCPD at roughly 25 percent for the last three fiscal years,” the brief says. 

Aside from the question of whether the fiscal note was unfair, the court is set to consider whether the dispute over the fiscal note is severe enough to warrant holding a new election and whether Lucas has the authority to bring the case after the amendment has taken effect.

The state argues Lucas brought the challenge to the election in his official capacity because he is being represented by the city’s own lawyers and outside counsel paid for from the city budget. Elected officials can’t bring challenges to fiscal note summaries in their official capacities.

Ameren Missouri plans to add 1,800 megawatts of solar power by 2030 (Photo courtesy of Ameren Missouri).

Ameren Missouri announced plans Tuesday to burn more natural gas in the coming years, though it claims the decision doesn’t undermine pledges to reduce its carbon emissions. 

The St. Louis-based utility, which serves more than 1.2 million Missouri customers, says it is still planning to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2045. 

Ameren announced its plans to add another natural gas plant to its fleet of power generators at the same time that it laid out new investments in clean energy and vowed a quicker timeline for adding utility-scale battery storage.

Ajay Arora, chief renewable development officer for Ameren Missouri, said in an interview Tuesday that the company was adding natural gas primarily to burn intermittently to help meet periods of peak demand. 

“Since our customers are electrifying more in order to meet their decarbonization goals, while we accelerate the deployment of renewables, we also want to ensure that we are meeting reliability under all conditions, in all hours — even under extreme weather conditions,” Arora said.

Ameren disclosed its upcoming investments in its “integrated resource plan,” which it files with Missouri regulators. 

The Missouri chapter of the Sierra Club panned the announcement in a press release, saying the company is “not serious about acting on climate change or being a good community partner.”

“Ameren’s announcement reeks of greenwashing because its energy plan is to burn a lot of potent greenhouse gasses,” said Jenn DeRose, a Missouri representative for the group’s Beyond Coal Campaign.

Ameren announced plans last year to construct a natural gas plant by 2031 capable of producing 1,200 megawatts.

Now, according to its filing, it expects to build a smaller 800 megawatt plant by 2027 and a combined-cycle plant in 2033 that could later be converted to run off on hydrogen rather than methane or “natural gas.”

The plan also moves up investments in battery storage, a developing technology that could boost grid reliability. 

Adding batteries to the grid would allow renewable energy to be banked at times when generators are producing plenty and spent when demand is high, making clean energy more flexible. Without storage, solar and wind power are available as the weather permits.

Ameren’s filing says the company will add 2,800 megawatts of solar and wind power by 2030 along with the 800 megawatt natural gas plant. In the 2030s, it plans to add another combined 1,900 megawatts of wind and solar power while retiring coal plant units.

CoreCivic's Leavenworth Detention Center was a hotbed for drugs and violence before it closed in 2021 (Allison Kite/Missouri Independent).

Leavenworth County officials voted unanimously Wednesday to halt discussions over whether to convert a former private federal jail into a detention center for immigration enforcement. 

For years, CoreCivic, the nation’s largest private prison operator, ran a federal pretrial detention center in Leavenworth for individuals charged with — but not convicted of — federal crimes from Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and western Missouri. It closed at the end of 2021 under an executive order banning renewal of federal contracts with private prisons. 

County officials have been approached several times over the last two years about converting the facility to hold detainees of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. The county would potentially act as an intermediary between the company and federal agency.

But members voted Wednesday to “immediately stop negotiations” with CoreCivic and ICE about serving as a party to an agreement between the company and federal agency. 

It’s not clear that the county’s participation would be necessary under federal rules.

The vote comes after two years of speculation about the future of the CoreCivic facility, called the Leavenworth Detention Center. ICE told KCUR in 2021 it was not pursuing a contract for the Leavenworth facility. 

CoreCivic said earlier this month that the federal agency was in the midst of procuring space for detainees in the Midwest but declined to comment further on an active contracting process.

On Wednesday, the company’s spokesman, Ryan Gustin, said in an email that CoreCivic would “continue to have an open dialogue with Leavenworth County commissioners and the City of Leavenworth to address any concerns that they might have regarding this opportunity.”

The vote came after the city expressed opposition to county officials.

Opposition to the idea of CoreCivic becoming an ICE facility ran the spectrum from anti-immigration sentiments about releasing “illegal aliens” into the community to immigration attorneys and civil rights advocates’ concerns about the facility’s history of violence and safety issues.

When CoreCivic’s Leavenworth facility held pretrial detainees under a contract with the U.S. Marshals Service, the private jail struggled with staffing crises, rampant drug use and persistent violence. It’s being sued by a former inmate whose lawsuit includes allegations of at least 10 stabbings in 2021 and two deaths by suicide.

In 2019, CoreCivic settled with 500 detainees for $1.45 million for illegally recording phone calls with their defense attorneys and providing them to prosecutors.

The facility closed at the end of 2021 when CoreCivic’s contract with the U.S. Marshals Service expired. President Joe Biden, in his first week in office, signed an executive order barring the Department of Justice from renewing contracts with private criminal detention facilities. 

But ICE falls under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas said in a statement that it was glad the commission realized allowing CoreCivic to house ICE detainees “would be an unsafe, inhumane decision.”

“Kansans and the Leavenworth community expect better than allowing a company to continue operations in this state,” the organization said, “after CoreCivic has maintained a long and proven track record of flagrant human and civil rights violations of the people in its custody.”

Evergy headquarters in downtown Topeka, Kansas (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector).

Just 10 days after seeking permission to allow customers to opt out of controversial time-of-use pricing, western Missouri’s major electric utility withdrew its request with state regulators. 

Under an order from the Missouri Public Service Commission, Evergy is expected next month  to implement time-of-use pricing, which places a premium on electricity prices at times of high demand. 

Citing considerable blowback from both the public and elected officials, the company requested earlier this month that the Public Service Commission grant permission to make the program optional. 

But in a pleading filed Monday, the utility — which serves about 640,000 Missouri residents — withdrew its request, citing concerns from the Missouri Office of the Public Counsel, which represents ratepayers in utility regulatory proceedings, and others.

The Missouri Public Service Commission canceled a public meeting about the issue scheduled for Tuesday. The Office of the Public Counsel said in a filing last week that parties weren’t given enough time to prepare for the meeting.

The Office of the Public Counsel said in a separate filing with the commission last week that it “strongly opposed” Evergy’s request. 

Among other issues, the OPC criticized Evergy’s request to fundamentally change its time-of-use pricing program just weeks before it is set to go into effect. 

The OPC’s filing said it understood the public sentiment surrounding the mandatory time-of-use rates.

“However, Evergy itself has presented two studies to the commission that show that a significant portion of its customers will either benefit from the transition to TOU rates or will be unaffected by them,” the OPC’s filing says. 

The rates should go into effect, the filing says, “even aside from the legal and policy concerns that arise with changing the tariff sheets at this late stage.” 

Clean energy advocacy group Renew Missouri also urged the commission to reject Evergy’s request.

“While an understandable fear warrants specific education efforts by the company, customer misunderstanding or political agitation is not a sufficient justification to allow Evergy to reverse course at the eleventh hour, circumventing proper procedure and creating poor precedent for the weight given to commission orders,” Renew Missouri said in a filing Friday. 

Noting the customer blowback, the Renew Missouri argued that the company should adjust its marketing and outreach efforts “rather than succumbing to negative Facebook comments by reversing course and attempting to upend a binding commission order.”

Renew Missouri said while Evergy’s filing was purportedly about customer feedback, it was also driven by politics.

Missouri Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina, railed against the program in interviews with The Independent, claiming the Public Service Commission wanted Missouri residents to ration their energy to compensate for the switch to green energy and threatening to take legislative action if the commission didn’t reverse course. 

“If the commission decides to reverse course based on this campaign of generating anger through social media posting,” Renew Missouri said in its filing, “no commission decision will be safe from political meddling.”

Evergy is still asking the Public Service Commission to change the default time-of-use pricing plan from its “Standard Peak Saver,” which nearly quadruples the price of energy on summer afternoons, to the “Peak Reward Saver,” which has a much smaller price increase at that times and a discount for power used between midnight and 6 a.m.

A soybean field is seen on deforested land in Para state, Brazil (Mario Tama/Getty Images).

A Missouri-based agricultural giant is helping fuel rapid deforestation in Brazil’s eastern savanna, a report by environmental activists claims.

Bunge Limited, headquartered in Chesterfield, is the world’s largest soybean producer and sells the overwhelming majority of inputs to Brazilian soy farmers. 

The report, released Tuesday by a trio of environmental and human rights groups, says Bunge’s near-monopoly hold over financing soy producers in parts of Brazil — a characterization that the company disputes — incentivizes the expansion of plantations. And establishing soy plantations in Brazil, the report says, routinely involves deforestation and illegal land grabbing. 

“It is this business model that is incentivizing the type of environmental and human rights abuses that we’re discussing here,” said Guarav Madan, senior forest and land rights campaigner for Friends of the Earth U.S., one of the organization’s behind the report. 

He added: “This can be seen as an oversight, but I think it’s really a failure.” 

In a response included in the report, Bunge said it was aligned with Friends of the Earth “that deforestation and human rights abuses are critical concerns”

“We devote considerable effort and resources to promote sustainable agriculture, disincentivize native vegetation conversion and incentivize the uptake of certified products that provide assurances of no deforestation or native plant conversion,” the company said.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening. 

The report is also critical of the role Harvard University and retirement fund manager TIAA play in deforestation of the Brazilian savanna, known as the Cerrado. 

The Brazilian Cerrado, the report says, is the world’s most biodiverse savannah and home to 5% of the world’s plant and animal species. While often overshadowed by the neighboring Amazon Rainforest, the Cerrado is a significant biome, the report says. 

The investigation — published by Friends of the Earth U.S., ActionAid USA and Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos, or the Network for Social Justice and Human Rights — comes just weeks after Bunge announced it was raising its earnings outlook for the year following a record soybean crop in Brazil.

Last year, 10,688 square kilometers — or more than 2.6 million — acres of native vegetation were destroyed in the Cerrado, according to the report, which says that represents a 25% jump compared to 2021. 

In the city of Santa Filomena, where Bugne owns and leases out silos, the report says deforestation nearly quadrupled in one year. 

According to the report, under Bunge’s business model, farmers take out loans to purchase chemicals for farming and then give their soybean crops to Bunge to pay off the loans. That drives the expansion of soybean farming, “which is often carried out through the destructive use of fire, deforestation and land grabbing,” the report says. 

Bunge has committed to ridding its supply chain of soy obtained through deforestation by 2025. That’s five years later than a group of dozens of nonprofits had called for in a joint “Cerrado Manifesto.”

The delay and the escalating deforestation, the report says, raise “serious questions about whether Bunge’s 2025 target date will tacitly fuel intensifying destruction of the Cerrado up to January 2026.” 

Bunge has disputed the groups’ findings, saying it has monitored its sourcing in the Cerrado for years. Earlier this year, the company announced it could trace more than 80% of its soy supply in the area.

But it’s unclear, the report says, whether that tracing effort accounts for land grabbing and deforestation common in the establishment of a new soy farm. 

Bunge pushed back on a number of the report’s claims, including that it holds a near monopoly in the state of Piauí. It said 87% of its Brazilian soybean volumes have no ties to deforestation or conversion.

“Since we established our non-deforestation commitment in 2015, we have developed the industry’s most expansive and transparent system of traceability and monitoring, giving us unprecedented insight into our supply chain and strengthening relationships with our suppliers,” the company said. 

The company said its contracts in Brazil require that suppliers protect human rights. Credible allegations of abuse and exploitation, Bunge said, “are not tolerated.” 

The report calls for a halt to expansion of soy farms in the Cerrado, like that in the Amazon Rainforest, and for the Brazilian and U.S. governments to hold companies accountable. 

Madan said it’s time to shift food systems away from industrial agriculture, “which is too often predicated on deforestation, land grabbing and violence against indigenous peoples and local communities.” 

Evergy asked Missouri regulators to allow customers to opt out of controversial time-of-use pricing, which places a premium on electricity used during times of high demand. (Courtesy of Evergy)

The largest utility in western Missouri has requested permission to allow customers to opt out of controversial time-of-use pricing plans imposed by state regulators.

Evergy is expected under an order from the Missouri Public Service Commission to implement time-of-use pricing, which places a premium on electricity prices at times of high demand, starting next month.

This summer, as customers were asked to select one of the new plans, Evergy saw blowback from those concerned their bills would skyrocket. Under one of the plans, power used on summer days between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. — when residents are most likely to be using their air conditioners — would be almost four times as expensive as the rest of the day.

The company also drew fire from Missouri Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, who in July accused state regulators of trying to ration power, gouge customers and force a transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. 

Missouri utility regulators plan for peak pricing prompts pushback from top Republican

In a request to alter the program, filed Friday with the Missouri Public Service Commission, Evergy said it received a “substantial” number of complaints on social media about the new pricing mechanism. 

“The tone of the comments is mostly negative and speaks to customer frustration with being forced to move rates because Evergy is trying to spike customer bills to increase profits,” the filing says. 

And in June, Ameren Missouri, which serves the St. Louis area, was allowed to roll out optional time-of-use pricing for its electric customers. 

Citing customer discontent and commissioners’ suggestions at a meeting last month of possible amendments to the time-of-use pricing program, Evergy asked the commission’s permission for several changes. 

In a news release, Evergy said it believed a traditional flat-rate plan should be an option for customers who may not be able to shift their electricity usage.

“Evergy has always advocated for customer rate choice and does not support mandated time-based rates,” said Chuck Caisley, the company’s chief customer officer. “Customers, elected officials and other stakeholders have clearly voiced their concerns about mandating summer peak pricing, and we appreciate that the commission is willing to listen to this feedback.”

Most significantly, Evergy asked permission to allow customers to return to a traditional flat-rate pricing plan starting in May. With the new plans going into effect next month, offering a return to a traditional plan in May “would have the added advantage of allowing all residential customers to experience one of the (time-of-use) options before choosing to return to the traditional residential rate structure,” the company’s filing says. 

The company also asked permission to change the default plan from its “Standard Peak Saver,” which nearly quadruples the price of energy on summer afternoons, to the “Peak Reward Saver,” which has a much smaller price increase at that times and a discount for power used between midnight and 6 a.m.

The reward saver plan, according to Evergy’s website, is the closest to its current standard plan. But prices per kilowatt hour can increase throughout the month depending on the amount of energy used. 

In its Friday filing, Evergy also asked the commission’s permission to restrict customers’ ability to switch rate plans. Specifically, if a customer switches from one rate plan to another, the customer wants to require that they wait a year before switching back. They could switch to a third plan at any time. 

“Evergy is concerned that customers may move from one of the three ‘high differential’…rates…and into one of the two ‘low differential’ rates…to take advantage of seasonal differences in the rates,” the filing says.

Evergy said it “cannot recover its costs to serve if customers take seasonal advantage of this difference.” 

The commission initially instructed Evergy to implement mandatory time-of-use pricing because while  the company has been installing smart meters in customers homes for years, most of the benefits, including being able to remotely disconnect customers who haven’t paid their bills, have flowed to the utility. 

In an interview with The Independent last week, O’Laughlin said she’s asking regulators to suspend the decision or reverse it. 

“If they do not, then you will see legislation coming through, which I believe both Democrats and Republicans will support, that will remove some of their power and likely make it much more difficult for people to get on that commission,” she said.

The Missouri Public Service Commission scheduled a hearing to discuss Evergy’s request for Sept. 19.

The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed to this report. 

Portageville is located in both New Madrid and Pemiscot counties (screenshot courtesy of Google Earth).

Two counties in Missouri’s Bootheel suffer from cancer mortality rates drastically higher than the state or national average. 

On the border between them lies a manufacturing facility in Portageville that for more than 50 years has pumped out parts for cars — and according to some residents, also released carcinogenic metals and chemicals into the local drinking water. 

SRG Global Coatings LLC, the company that owns the factory, has denied any misconduct or negligence. But in recent weeks, attorneys and environmental experts have sought records from the city of Portageville, which is in both New Madrid and Pemiscot counties, and held a public forum with residents about possible exposure to toxic materials.

They filed a lawsuit earlier this year against SRG and asked the court to grant class-action status for possible plaintiffs.

“SRG has acted with complete indifference and conscious disregard for the health and safety of…class members who have been exposed to hazardous chemicals and metals that are carcinogenic and/or hazardous to human health,” says the lawsuit.

While the allegations against SRG are new, southeast Missouri is no stranger to its biggest industries causing massive environmental harm.

The region, starting just south of St. Louis and into the state’s Bootheel, encompasses the Missouri’s old lead belt, where mining and smelting operations poisoned children and left waterways contaminated. An aluminum smelter and coal plant have filled the air above New Madrid County with triple the limit of sulfur dioxide set by environmental regulators.

Seven of the 10 Missouri counties with the highest cancer mortality rates are located in southeast Missouri, including three in the Bootheel.

Filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Missouri in February on behalf of Portageville resident Michelle Peeler and other unnamed plaintiffs, the lawsuit against SRG contends that contaminants have migrated from its manufacturing facility into the groundwater the town draws from for drinking. Those contaminants include hexavalent chromium, chromium, nickel and per- and polyfluorinated substances, or PFAS.

According to a flier from an environmental consulting group that held a town hall late last month in Portageville, those contaminants can increase individuals’ risk of developing several types of cancers, increased cholesterol, skin problems and issues with their respiratory, reproductive or gastrointestinal systems.

Already, New Madrid and Pemiscot counties suffer from cancer mortality rates 40% and 60% higher than the national average, respectively, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Peeler and other Bootheel residents allege SRG withheld information from residents about the extent of the contamination, the lawsuit says. 

Initially, the lawsuit sought damages on three counts, but the judge assigned to the case dismissed a charge. It requests class action status, compensatory and punitive damages and orders from the judge requiring that SRG disclose any studies or reports it has performed related to the contamination and that SRG resolve the problem. 

Neither the plaintiffs’ attorneys nor SRG and its attorneys immediately responded to requests for comment Thursday afternoon.

The lawsuit against SRG claims the company was negligent in failing to sample soil and drinking water for contamination, warn plaintiffs, prevent migration of the contamination plume and characterize and remediate the pollution. It also claims the facility has created a nuisance in the community. 

SRG denied the allegations in its answer to the lawsuit, filed in April. 

The company said in its filing that it did not cause any damages to the plaintiffs, has always followed regulations governing its operations, used state of the art technology and acted “reasonably, in good faith,” and with “skill prudence and diligence.” 

“Plaintiff’s claims are barred, in whole or in part, because the injuries and damages alleged were not known to SRG, nor did SRG have reason to know of the alleged risk of harm,” the company’s response says.