Mid-Missouri

D.C. Drama Delays Farm Bill 

By Garrett Hawkins

Garrett Hawkins

The afternoon of September 30, 2023, came and went with its fair share of drama, including narrowly avoiding a government shutdown and the subsequent ousting of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. One significant item largely flew under the radar, which was the expiration of the 2018 Farm Bill. 

Despite not gaining as much media attention as a continuing resolution or the House Speaker’s removal, the expiration of the farm bill is a big deal in farm country. 

Earlier today, the House of Representatives elected Mike Johnson (R-LA) to be Speaker, so legislative business can now resume. The farm bill adds to a long list of items on Speaker Johnson’s “to-do” list as the year draws to a close. 

Congress must agree to a new farm bill or pass an extension prior to January 1, 2024, in order to avoid a lapse in farm programs. First on the chopping block are dairy programs, known to many as the “dairy cliff.” If Congress cannot come to an agreement before the calendar turns to 2024, the dairy program will revert to permanent law. This requires USDA to purchase dairy products in quantities sufficient to raise demand. Under permanent law, the mandated purchase price for milk would be $50.70 per hundredweight based on May 2023 data, which is more than 2.5 times (or 162% higher than) the current market price of milk ($19.30/cwt), according to the Congressional Research Service. Other crops like corn, soybeans, cotton and rice would not see impacts until later in 2024. 

While we don’t believe Congress will allow any farm bill programs to lapse, and is likely to extend the current farm bill, Missouri Farm Bureau (MOFB) is still committed to ensuring no disruption of services during this time of legislative uncertainty. 

On October 20, MOFB had the opportunity to share our farm bill priorities with Senator John Boozman, Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. Boozman led a forum in mid-Missouri hosted by U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt before the two visited a nearby farm to hear directly from farmers in the region about items of importance as the legislation is written. 

I had the chance to share some of our priorities with the senators, including maintaining and strengthening the farm safety net and bringing common sense to conversations surrounding climate-related conservation spending. At MOFB, we believe much can be done to promote on-farm resiliency without adopting one-size-fits-all mandates that make it harder for farmers and ranchers to go about their business. 

Despite the lack of significant news coverage drawing the public’s attention to the farm bill, Missouri Farm Bureau remains committed to delivering results for our members. We will continue to work with our Congressional Delegation to ensure a strong farm safety net in the next farm bill.

Garrett Hawkins is a farmer from Appleton City and serves as the President of Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization with a presence in every county throughout the state. 

Originally Appeared Here

COLUMBIA – In its sixth week, the United Auto Workers strike is causing delays in auto body shop services.

Despite a significant step forward Wednesday, after UAW reached a tentative contract agreement with Ford Motor, parts managers at auto body shops in mid-Missouri are feeling the impacts of the 42-day strike. 

Matt Weldon, the collision center manager at Joe Machens East Collision in Columbia, said the most common parts his shop that can’t get shipped are bumpers, bumper reinforcements, seatbelts and body control modules. A repair that would usually take one week is taking up to a month or even longer.

“When it’s a safety-related item, there [are] no alternative sourcing. … You have to wait,” Weldon said. 

Devin Fischer is the general manager at Fischer’s Body Shop in Jefferson City. He said his shop can’t get accurate dates for when parts will come in. That’s because there aren’t enough workers at local warehouses, Fischer said.

“We can’t guarantee anything like we used to because we don’t know when we’re going to see parts,” Fischer said.

The most common parts Fischer can’t get to his shop are structural. 

“Quarter panels, Ford F-150 hoods, you can’t get it [at] all. Like, there’s no ‘ETA’ on them,” Fischer said. “Getting them is about impossible because everyone is trying to get their hands on whatever’s out there right now.”

East Collision hasn’t seen significant delays on the parts it receives from Ford because the Joe Machens Ford dealership is one of the largest in the Midwest, Weldon said. The parts department stocks millions of dollars in parts from Ford dealerships, according to Weldon.

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In the tentative agreement with Ford, which local union leaders still have to approve, the company said it would give a 25% pay increase over the terms of the contract and cumulatively raise the top wage to more than $40 an hour, including increasing starting wages by 68%, to over $28 an hour, according to CNBC.

If the local union leaders oppose the tentative plan and the strike continues, East Collision’s luck with plentiful Ford parts could run dry, Weldon said. 

Negotiations with General Motors and Stellantis are reconvening midday Friday. East Collision has resorted to outsourcing parts it can’t acquire through dealerships in different cities or states, used parts or certified after-market parts, Weldon said.

If the strike ends, Weldon said it could take several months to get the supply chain built back to a healthy level.

The strike comes as auto body shops were starting to recover from supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“We were seeing more normalcy coming back, and then the strike happened, and it’s kind of back to the worst of what it was before COVID,” Weldon said.

Both shops asked their customers for one thing: patience.

“We strive to do our best to get cars turned around and back to you,” Weldon said. “Because ultimately, happy customers is what it’s about. And that means a speedy repair.”

Originally Appeared Here

COLUMBIA – MU Health Care Pavilion, home of the Columbia Farmers Market, got an upgrade.

Construction managers, CFM directors and Columbia residents gathered Saturday to cut the ribbon on the expanded pavilion. The additions include hundreds of feet of covered market space. 

The project’s completion, initially proposed in 1980, is a major milestone in the 43-year joint effort between CFM, the City of Columbia, MU Health Care and the dozens of Farmers who use the space to display their produce.

The final product added nearly 500 feet of covered market space, with industrial ceiling fans for the summer, and drop-down vinyl walls and heaters for the winter. 

“This pavilion will make a huge difference,” Corrina Smith, executive director of CFM said. “Now it’s kind of an even playing field for everybody where everyone will be under the roof, protected from the weather.” 

Before the expansion, two-thirds of the vendors in the market would be exposed to the elements, according to Smith. Now, they can operate in comfort. 

“It’ll protect the vendors, the products and the customers that are attending too,” Smith said. 

The market runs year-round, something Smith says surprises people. 

“A lot of people are like ‘Oh, a farmers market in the winter, like what’s even there?'” Smith said. “But I’ve been doing this for 11 years, and every winter I’m still blown away with the fresh produce that our vendors are able to bring year-round.”

While the products are great, Smith argues the community built through the market is just as important. 

“It’s this space where urban meets rural, and they get to connect with the farmers,” Smith said. “It’s really kind of this family event that takes place every Saturday.”

With the new upgrades, it’s easier to connect than ever, Smith said. 

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“It is much more comfortable, easier to navigate,” Smith said. “This is a space where everybody can come and have access to all this amazing food that our farmers and our bakers and our ranchers are producing within a 50-mile radius of Columbia.” 

Jim Thies has been participating in the market since 1995 when he founded his farm The Veggie Patch. 

“We started out with a little piece of parking lot when we started marketing here,” Theis said. “We’ve got pictures of where we had four to six inches of water coming washing across the parking lot after a big thunderstorm.” 

He said the new upgrades make business much more consistent. 

“If it rained, there was no market. Customers just didn’t show up,” Theis said. “Now, where we have cover and protection, customers will grab their umbrella, get under the shade, they’ll take some time… and keep on shopping.” 

Theis, and The Veggie Patch, can now look forward to year-long sales. 

“It makes it so much more functional, where we’re depending on having sales every week and making things work,” Theis said. 

One aspect of the market Theis said he was happy to see grow is the culture. 

“It’s become a center, it’s becoming a culture here and everything’s positive about it,” Theis said. “Getting to know that full community from the production to the consumers, that’s so important.” 

That producer, consumer communication is something he said he’s excited for in every week to come. 

“It’s an awesome place to come out and spend a Saturday morning for anyone in Columbia,” Theis said. “I’ve made so many friends it’s like a second family.” 

The market’s winter hours begin in November, operating every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Originally Appeared Here

harimont@lopers.unk.edu

Volleyball

Loper volleyball started the week off with a bang, defeating rival Washburn, 3-1, for the first time since UNK’s national runner-up season in 2019. After that, they faltered, dropping two straight on the road to #19 Central Oklahoma and Pittsburg State. The Lopers are now 21-3 on the year. 

Soccer

After a rough showing last weekend, the Loper soccer team was able to get back on track this weekend, going 1-1. They dropped their road contest at Central Missouri 5-0 on Friday but were able to bounce back with a 2-1 victory over Missouri Southern on Sunday. Kearney native Gracie Perez got the Lopers on the board with her first career goal in the 64th minute off a dual assist from Katie Pagel and Aspen Brandich. Missouri Southern answered back in the 73rd minute, but the Lopers quickly responded with another goal in the 76th minute from Aspen Brandich off an assist from Cammie Davis. The 3-11-2 Lopers are back at home this weekend to take on Emporia State Friday at 2 p.m. and rival Fort Hays State on Sunday at 2 p.m. The Lopers are ninth in the MIAA and the top eight teams make the MIAA tournament that begins Friday Nov. 3. 

Swimming and Diving

The Loper swimming and diving team was in Pueblo, Colorado, for the CSU-Pueblo Triangular. The meet included UNK, CSU-Pueblo and Western Colorado. The Lopers would fall to CSU-Pueblo 244-164 and also fell to Western Colorado, 341.50-84.50. Sophomore diver Shayann Parlier won the 3-meter board and was the runner-up in the 1-meter board. Junior Karley Bennett and sophomore Maggie Waddington also had runner-up finshes in the 100-butterfly and 50-freestyle, respectively. The Loper’s next event is their home invitational at Kearney High on Nov. 3-4.

Cross Country

Both the UNK men’s and women’s cross-country teams finished fifth at the MIAA championships Friday in Columbia, Missouri. For the men, All-MIAA honors would go to Nick Abdalla and Brett Schoenhofer. For the women, Jordan Soto-Stopak and Grace Bonsall would earn All-MIAA finishes as well. The Lopers will be in action next at the NCAA Central Regional on Nov. 4 in Joplin, Missouri. 

Tennis

Both the men’s and women’s tennis teams wrapped up their fall season in Topeka, Kansas, at the Washburn invite. On the women’s side, junior Masha Houtaka went 3-0 in her singles and doubles matches, where she was paired with senior teammate Jazmin Zamorano. Seniors Melissa Becerra and Narindra Ranavio would reach the “A/Blue” doubles finals, Ranavio and freshman Fabiana Gamboa would reach the “B/Red” singles finals and junior Alexis Berthal finished 3-0 in the “C/East” singles. For the men, freshmen Ahmed Abdelaziz and Tom van den Dungen made it to the “E/Orange” singles finals. Fellow freshmen Jip Mens and Andy Brisdon both finished 2-1 in the “C/Green” singles draw. Mens and van den Dungen also both picked up a win in doubles. The Loper tennis teams will now be off for the rest of the fall and will resume competition in February. 

Originally Appeared Here

COLUMBIA − The city of Columbia is doing more for its homeless community than it ever has before.

In 2016, Columbia spent just $68,200 on contracts for homeless services. By 2024, Columbia will spend at least $1,044,435, according to the city’s community trend manual. 

Two of Columbia’s new contracts for homeless services are with Turning Point and Room at the Inn. Turning Point, Columbia’s sole day center with showers and laundry services, will start staying open until 3:30 p.m. instead of 12:30 p.m. starting on Jan. 1, 2024. Room at the Inn, previously an emergency shelter open during winter months, will stay open year-round starting on Oct. 29. 

Columbia also has big plans for federal dollars in the form of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. The city has approved over $5.6 million of ARPA funds to be given to organizations helping homeless people. 

In another unprecedented step for Columbia, in May, Kari Utterback’s position in the county health department was shifted to focus solely on tackling homelessness issues.

Though Columbia is spending more on homelessness than it ever has, Utterback said the problem is getting worse. 

“With everything being so high, the cost of living is just going up,” Utterback said. “I only see those numbers [the homeless population] rising.”

Utterback said there is no silver bullet to solving homelessness.

“To get to affordable housing, we need so many people to be involved,” Utterback said. 

Utterback is not the only one who believes Columbia does not have enough affordable housing.

“Columbia doesn’t have a homeless problem, we have a housing problem,” said John Trapp, operations manager at Room at the Inn. “Being mentally ill or being addicted to substances doesn’t make you homeless, it makes you vulnerable to becoming homeless when there’s not enough housing for everybody.”

While Trapp said being open year-round at Room at the Inn is a big step in the right direction, he echoed a point shared by many of Columbia’s homelessness resource providers: many more steps need to be taken. 

Ed Stansberry is the executive director of Voluntary Action Center, which received $3 million in ARPA funds to help construct and open The Opportunity Campus, a year-round shelter with wrap-around services, such as a medical clinic. Stansberry says VAC can finally begin construction on The Opportunity Campus this year after years of working up enough funding. 

“It is a critical piece to the puzzle that is homelessness,” Stansberry said. “We want to be surrounding them with resources that can get them up and out of homelessness.”

Stansberry said the campus could be fully built in a year and a half, but he still does not believe the campus represents a complete solution to Columbia’s homeless problem. 

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KOMU 8 News spoke with Gayle Rich, a homeless person using Turning Point’s resources. Rich said many barriers stand in the way of Columbia’s homeless population and getting the help they need.

“There are so many people with [housing] vouchers, and landlords will not take them,” Rich said. “Nobody wants us on the street, but nobody wants to give us a place to live either.”

The vouchers she mentions are federal vouchers from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which come in a variety of different forms. 

Utterback said Columbia doesn’t have much control over how those vouchers are handled, and many landlords refuse to accept them from homeless people, which leads to them going to waste.

“The federal government often is not very innovative with its funding dollars,” Utterback said.

Another complication for Columbia’s homeless population is the clearing of the homeless camps earlier this year.

“You got to uproot everything, and that’s hard, you can’t fit it all on the bus,” Rich said. “It’s not easy when they’re making you move all the time.”

Transportation, specifically buses, are another concern. Bus driver shortages has led to combined routes, meaning much longer wait times. 

“Right now I have to catch a bus for an appointment two hours ahead of time,” Rich said. 

Rich said homelessness leads to a variety of health issues that all compound. Being outside in the cold, having little access to healthy food and having no means to travel quickly all create dangerous situations, especially as winter approaches, she explained. 

“In bad weather people don’t leave their tents,” Rich said. “You can go all day with no food.”

She said help is out there, but it’s hard to get it. While Rich expressed excitement at the work Columbia is doing for its homeless population, she said a lot more effort needs to be made.

The Opportunity Campus won’t be open for over a year, Room at the Inn can’t take people with pets, and while Turning Point will be open longer, it is the only day center with shower and laundry services. 

More resources are becoming available, but Rich said landlords still aren’t taking vouchers, and there are no affordable housing alternatives.

“Everyone passes the buck,” Rich said.

Originally Appeared Here

A joint investigation by The Independent and MuckRock.

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.

Kim Lindsey remembers passing the old buildings of the shuttered chemical plant in the 1990s when her Army Reserves unit trained near the Weldon Spring site. She didn’t go in them, but she often passed containment domes that held radioactive waste.

“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?”

Barrels containing atomic waste from uranium ore processed in St. Louis are stacked at a storage site near Lambert International Airport in this undated photo. (State Historical Society of Missouri, Kay Drey Mallinckrodt Collection, 1943-2006).

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.

Originally Appeared Here

COLUMBIA − One local organization, COMO 411, brought the popular Netflix series “Bridgerton” to life. 

COMO 411 utilizes digital media to showcase the community of Columbia, specifically nonprofits and small businesses. 

The organization annually hosts one big event, and this year, Adonica Coleman, founder of COMO 411, wanted the dearest readers of Columbia to be invited to the ball on Oct. 19.

“Bridgerton” is set during the Regency-era in England and focuses members of the Bridgerton family’s attempt to find love. An important part of the culture during that time was to host balls. 

Organizers wanted to base the ball specifically to encompass season two of the show, Queen Charlotte’s season, due to its focus on blending cultures and building community. 

“We want to get a bunch of different people in one space because I truly believe when people meet each other and talk to each other, it just creates better community,” Coleman said.

The interactive experience that encompasses ball gowns, ballroom dancing and food, is upholding a greater purpose toward the community. 

Part of the proceeds raised at the ball will be given to three art-based nonprofits: The WE Project, Mareck Center for Dance and The Missouri Symphony (MOSY). 

“I hope people leave saying wow, ‘I learned so much about Mareck, our orchestra MOSY and The WE Project,” Coleman said. “We hope people walk away with new knowledge and make connection with people they wouldn’t normally make.”

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Karen Mareck Grundy, founder of Mareck Center for Dance, explains how the profits they are receiving from the ball weren’t the only driving factor. 

“It’s important not just for the fundraising part, but also the exposure,” Mareck Grundy said. “There’s going to be a lot of people who haven’t heard of us and haven’t seen us.”

Mareck Center for Dance was formally known as Missouri Contemporary Ballet. The company changed its name in 2020 to show that they encompass more than just ballet. 

“We go with three main things, and that is our company, school and the community,” Mareck Grundy said. “We give back to the community as they have given to us.”

For Trent Rash, executive director of the MOSY, the Bridgerton Ball allowed the symphony to showcase their work. MOSY was founded in 1970 and the mission of the organization is to provide symphonic music and music education to the mid-Missouri area.

“It gives us so much visibility in the community,” Rash said. “We’ve been around for 53 years, but we are still trying to reinvigorate who were are and we are trying to find a younger demographic for what we do.”

Valerie Berta, founder of The WE Project, also believes that this event helped inform the community on the importance of her organization. The WE Project seeks to shift the narrative around marginalized communities through visual representation and storytelling. 

“The goal is to amplify The WE Project and get people to know about what the vision is and also get more people to participate plus tell their stories in their own words,” Berta explained. 

The event sold around 200 tickets and is now looking to make the Bridgerton Ball an annual event. All three nonprofits can still receive donations via their websites. 

Originally Appeared Here

ST. LOUIS (Oct. 23, 2023) – Ameren Missouri has been awarded a $47 million Smart Grid Grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) Program to accelerate infrastructure upgrades to support reliability for customers in rural and disadvantaged communities statewide. Coupled with the company’s own investment of $54 million, Ameren is implementing a $101 million total investment in the energy future of rural Missouri.

These upgrades are part of Ameren Missouri’s Rural Modernization program, which is designed to improve energy resilience, simplify operations and deploy smart technology to increase capacity and service reliability across northeast, southeast and central Missouri.

“Revitalizing rural energy infrastructure has been a key focus as equipment in those regions gets older, while demand simultaneously increases,” said Mark Birk, chairman and president of Ameren Missouri. “This federal grant will help us accelerate the crucial grid resilience upgrades we’re already making across the state as part of the Smart Energy Plan. The funds will also serve as an economic catalyst that enables business and job development that helps our rural communities thrive and grow.”

Anticipated upgrades in Ameren Missouri’s Rural Modernization program include:

• Modern, smart technology, including upgrades to 16 aged substations with improved grid controls for real-time monitoring.

• Advanced outage detection and restoration technologies.

• Increased grid capacity to support resiliency, economic growth, attract businesses, and enable workforce development opportunities in rural and disadvantaged communities.

The 16 substations identified for upgrades are located in the following counties in Ameren Missouri’s service territory: Cooper, Iron, Lincoln, Livingston, New Madrid, Pemiscot, Pike, Randolph, Scott, Stoddard and Washington.

The GRIP Program is an initiative under the DOE’s Grid Deployment Office and seeks to enhance grid flexibility and improve the resilience of the power system against growing threats of extreme weather and climate change. Funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and administered by DOE’s Grid Deployment Office, the GRIP program leverages federal and private investments to ensure that communities across the nation have a reliable grid that’s prepared for extreme weather while also delivering affordable, clean energy and creating robust local opportunities for economic investment and jobs.

About Ameren Missouri

Ameren Missouri has been providing electric and gas service for more than 100 years, and the company’s electric rates are among the lowest in the nation. Ameren Missouri’s mission is to power the quality of life for its 1.2 million electric and 135,000 natural gas customers in central and eastern Missouri. The company’s service area covers 64 counties and more than 500 communities, including the greater St. Louis area. For more information, visit Ameren.com/Missouri or follow us at @AmerenMissouri or Facebook.com/AmerenMissouri.

Originally Appeared Here

The following is a list of general highway maintenance and construction work the Missouri Department of Transportation has planned in North Missouri for the week of Oct. 23-29.

Inclement weather may cause schedule changes in some of the planned work. There also may be moving operations throughout the region, in addition to the work mentioned below. 

Andrew County

• Interstate 29 – Pavement improvement project from south of Business Route 71 to just south of Route O (Buchanan County) through October 2023. (Contractor: Herzog Contracting Corp.)
• Route 48 – Pothole patching from Route C to Route P, Oct. 23-27.

Atchison County

• U.S. Route 136 – Resurfacing project from the Missouri River to G Avenue through November 2023. A 12-foot width restriction and 14-foot height restriction are in place. (Contractor: Phillips Hardy, Inc.)
• Route 46 – Shoulder work from U.S. Route 59 to Route EE, Oct. 23-29.
• U.S. Route 59 – Shoulder work from the Holt County line to Route 46, Oct. 23-27.

Buchanan County

• I-29 – Pavement improvement project from south of Business Route 71 (Andrew County) to just south of Route O through October 2023. (Contractor: Herzog Contracting Corp.)
• Route Y – CLOSED for a bridge replacement project at both the south and north Bee Creek Bridges through December. A signed detour is in place. (Contractor: Phillips Hardy, Inc.) 
• I-229 – CLOSED northbound for a bridge rehabilitation project from Sixth and Atchison Streets to Lake Boulevard through December 2023. (Contractor: Comanche Construction, Inc.) 
• Route VV – Scrub seal project Oct. 23-27. (Contractor: Vance Brothers, Inc.)
• Route MM – Scrub seal project Oct. 23-27. (Contractor: Vance Brothers, Inc.)
• U.S. Route 169 (Belt Highway) – Permit/utility work southbound from U.S. Route 36 to Pickett Road, Oct. 23-24
• Route A – Scrub seal project, Oct. 23-25. (Contractor: Vance Brothers, Inc.)
• Route 752 – Scrub seal project, Oct. 25-28. (Contractor: Vance Brothers, Inc.)
• Route JJ – Scrub seal project, Oct. 25-30. (Contractor: Vance Brothers, Inc.)

Caldwell County

Route 13 – CLOSED from Mill Creek Drive to Route P for the first stage of a resurfacing project from the south city limits of Hamilton to just north of Route HH in Kingston through December 2023. (Contractor: Phillips Hardy, Inc.) 

Carroll County

• Route J – CLOSED at the Mound Creek Bridge for a rehabilitation project, on Oct. 23.
• Route M – CLOSED daily at the Big Creek Bridge for a rehabilitation project, Oct. 24-26.
• Route M – CLOSED daily at the Wulf Creek Bridge for a rehabilitation project, on Oct. 27.

Chariton County

Route 11 – Shoulder work from Route 24 to Route E, Oct. 23-27.

Clinton County

• Route NN – CLOSED for a bridge replacement project at the Castile Creek Bridge through December. (Contractor: Capital Paving & Construction, LLC) 
• I-35 – Concrete replacement northbound from mile marker 44 to mile marker 47, Oct. 23-Nov. 17. The road will be narrowed to one lane around the clock with a 12-foot width restriction.
• I-35 – Concrete replacement southbound from mile marker 46.5 to mile marker 43, Oct. 23-Nov. 17. The road will be narrowed to one lane around the clock with a 12-foot width restriction.
• Route VV – Scrub seal project Oct. 23-27. (Contractor: Vance Brothers, Inc.)

Gentry County

Route YY – CLOSED until further notice at the Bear Creek Bridge due to deterioration. A project to replace the bridge was awarded to Gene Haile Excavating, Inc. A construction start date has not yet been determined.

Holt County

• I-29 – Bridge rehabilitation project at the southbound bridge over the Nodaway River through mid-November. The bridge will be narrowed to one lane with an 11.6-foot width restriction. (Contractor: Capital Paving & Construction, LLC)
• Route A – Bridge maintenance at the Nodaway River Bridge, Oct. 23-26. The bridge will be narrowed to one lane with a 12-foot width restriction.
• U.S. Route 159 – Bridge maintenance at the Squaw Creek Bridge, Oct. 24-27. The bridge will be narrowed to one lane around the clock with a 14-foot width restriction.

Linn County

Route 5 – Sidewalk/ADA improvements in Purdin between A Street and Ada Street through mid-November. (Contractor: Stanton Contracting, LLC)

Livingston County

Route D – CLOSED until further notice at the Rattlesnake Creek Bridge due to deterioration. This bridge is included in the Northwest Bridge Bundle which is scheduled to be in the December 2023 letting for contractor bids. 

Nodaway County

Route 148 – Shoulder work from U.S. Route 71 to the Pickering city limits, Oct. 23-27.

Sullivan County

• Route 5 – Intersection improvement project at Mid-Lake Road, Route N, and Mayapple Road through early November. (Capital Paving & Construction, LLC) 
• Aug. 21 – early November: Intersection improvements at Route 5 and Mid-Lake Road.
• Traffic Impacts: The roadway will be narrowed to one lane with flaggers directing motorists through the work zone. Motorists may face travel delays.
• Sept. 5 – early November: Intersection improvements on Route 5 at the intersections of Route N and Mayapple Road.
• Traffic Impacts: The roadway will be CLOSED during construction. Motorists will be directed to follow the signed detour on Routes 6, J, Y, N, and B.

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Originally Appeared Here

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri’s board of education will decide Tuesday whether to implement social-emotional learning standards for K-12 students.

Although board members praised the potential guidelines during an August meeting as teaching “the basics of what it means to be human,” the proposal has also inspired plenty of negative feedback among the 1,800 public comments submitted in the run-up to Tuesday’s meeting in Jefferson City.

The negative comments, which made up roughly a third of those submitted, include accusations that the department is trying to raise “emotionally fragile snowflakes” and establish “critical race theory.”

Five respondents indicated that they were state legislators — all with negative reviews.

Positive feedback was shorter, with comments like, “Looks good to me.” Some were hopeful that students’ mental health would benefit but worried about adding a burden to educators.

Public comments

Missourians had a 30-day public comment period through the department’s website. The survey prompted participants to identify their title and county of residence.

The groups more likely to hold a negative view than a positive or neutral response were community members, employers, legislators, school board members and superintendents.

Social-emotional learning, according to the August board meeting, is “the direct attempt to build children’s social and emotional competencies in school settings.”

Of the five Missouri lawmakers who offered comments, one repeatedly described the standards as “psychobabble group think,” and another wanted to “teach the Bible and the Bill of Rights.”

Rep. Hannah Kelly, a Norwood Republican who recently announced a campaign for state Senate, said parents are responsible for the emotional well-being of their children.

“This is the role of the family kitchen table. Absolutely inappropriate expansion of government education,” she wrote in the survey.

Speaking to The Independent, she said she was worried the standards could become a performance measure for teachers and eventually be attached to money.

“Missouri families need to address these issues at the kitchen table,” Kelly said. “These issues should not be added to the demands in the classroom for teachers to perform on.”

Kimberly Bailey, a member of the Missouri State Board of Education from Raymore, said during the August meeting that neither the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education nor the state board is advocating for anyone to change their values.

“Like reading, writing and arithmetic, this is just the basics of what it means to be human,” she said. “Then if a community wants to teach values in addition to that… We’re not teaching values; we’re teaching basics.”

Bailey pushed for more words to be defined in the standards, worried people would “weaponize” the guidelines if not clearly explained. The proposal contains a lengthy glossary, defining words like “fair” and “kindness.”

‘What teachers need’

Board President Charlie Shields knew social-emotional learning would create controversy. But he said he sees these traits outlined in his friends on either side of the political spectrum.

“People are just going to attack and say, ‘Well, this has no part in education,’” he said during the August meeting. “Given all the challenges we face… if we can’t (have these standards), how do you expect learning to happen?”

DESE administrators told board members that districts with social-emotional learning have less teacher turnover as the standards for respect improves discipline.

The Plato School District in south-central Missouri, which recently adopted a policy improving school climate and culture, saw teacher turnover decrease from 40% to 11%, said Chrissy Bashore, coordinator of school counseling and student wellness.

Potosi teacher Kim Greenlee, who worked on the standards, said social-emotional learning is “what teachers need.”

“When we spend time and are given permission to spend time with the (social-emotional-learning) standards, we’re going to see that student achievement comes up,” she said. “Because if students feel like they belong, attendance is going to start to rise in a school setting. And if students are there more, we’re going to see that their learning grows.”

Of the 321 K-12 educator responses, 52% were in favor of the standards and 20.4% were neutral.

The largest group of commenters were parents, comprising 46% of respondents, of which 52% were positive.

The geographic spread of public comments was disproportionate to the state’s population, with over 28% of respondents identified as living in St. Louis city and St. Louis County and 12.8% in St. Charles County.

Originally Appeared Here