People from New Mexico, Utah and Missouri, including Just Moms advocates and others from St. Louis who had been harmed by nuclear contamination, gathered at the U.S. Capitol

A proposed expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Program could add thousands of new claimants and cost hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds.

The St. Louis region has struggled for decades with contamination left over from the effort to develop the atomic bomb in the 1940s.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm visited a contaminated site in St. Charles County, saying: “There is no doubt that we have to clean up these sites and there’s no doubt that the testing and remediation is ongoing now…We’ve got to make sure that people feel safe.”

Private companies and the federal government for decades failed to take actions to protect St. Louis residents from nuclear waste, an investigation by The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press finds.