House committee hears bill to expand radioactive testing to water and boost funding

House Bill 516, sponsored by Representative Mark Matheson, was the subject of a hearing before the Missouri House Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs on 2025-02-01. The bill would expand the existing Radioactive Waste Investigation Fund to allow sampling of water as well as soil and dust, and would raise the potential annual funding level from the fund's original appropriation of $150,000 toward a target of $1 million.

Representative Mark Matheson, sponsor of the bill, told the committee, "This is House Bill 516. I'm Representative Mark Matheson from District 107, which includes Southern O'Fallon, Missouri and Darden Prairie." He described a decade-long concern about radioactive materials associated with Coldwater Creek, the Westlake Landfill, the St. Louis airport site and the Weldon Spring Munitions Site, and said the bill aims to make more testing resources available for communities with contamination concerns. "Because the easiest way to determine there's no problem, the easiest way not to fix the…