RECA Town Hall Forum

St. Charles County residents can find out how to apply for federal radiation exposure compensation.

State Representative Tricia Byrnes, a long-time advocate on the issue, will MC. County officials, including Recorder of Deeds Mary Dempsey and Elections Director Kurt Bahr, will be present to explain the process for obtaining county records. Representatives of Hawley’s office will be there, along with staff of the St. Charles City-County Library system, which is hosting the event.

The town hall will be held at the Spencer Road Branch, 427 Spencer Road, on Tuesday, October 14, from 6-8 p.m. For easy access to the meeting space, SCCCL recommends entering through The Commons at Spencer Road entrance, which faces Boone Hills Drive.

Under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act program, which covers a total of 21 zip codes in the St. Louis region, people can apply for financial compensation from the federal government if they or a relative got cancer after exposure to radiation from the nation’s nuclear program.

The four St. Charles County zip codes covered by the law are:

• 63367 (Lake Saint Louis)
• 63368 (O’Fallon, Dardenne Prairie)
• 63341 (Defiance)
• 63304 (St. Peters, Weldon Spring, Cottleville)

The four zip codes were chosen to cover people who may have lived, worked, or gone to school near the EPA Superfund
sites in Weldon Spring, where Mallinckrodt Chemical Company refined uranium during the Cold War era. The site was
later closed and abandoned for many years before it was remediated and capped with a mountain of rocks.