Hazelwood School District to test for radioactive contamination near Jana Elementary out of ‘abundance of caution’

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOV) - It’s been a multi-year struggle for answers for parents with students attending Jana Elementary in Hazelwood, like Ashley Bernaugh.

“We have to protect the kids, we have to protect our staff,” said Bernaugh, who is also the PTA President of the school.

She has been pushing for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to test and remediate the presence of radioactive waste that was once dumped along the Coldwater creek area during the height of the development of the nuclear bomb. Coldwater creek sits behind the school’s property.

“It’s been here since 1940s and it is long past time to make it go away,” said Bernaugh about radioactive contamination.

“It’s never too late to do the right thing, but we wish we wouldn’t have to go through these hoops to get here,” said Christen Commuso, who is the Community Outreach Specialist for Missouri Coalition for the Environment.

Commuso has been working with parents like Bernaugh to get answers from the district and USACE on testing, as well as helping file Freedom of Information Act requests.

“We certainly don’t think that a parent should have to FOIA information or pay $800 just to get the data that there’s radioactive bomb waste on our child’s school,” said Commuso.

This month, Hazelwood School District made it formally known to all families with students attending Jana Elementary that USACE did perform soil testing and found low levels of radioactive contaminations in the banks of Coldwater Creek on the edge of the school’s property. All this was outlined in a letter distributed to families on August 5, less than two weeks from the start of classes.

The district says they were informed about the findings back in January and cited that the Army Corps did not see an immediate risk to the public based on those findings.

USACE tells News 4 that soil sampling started in August 2018, followed by additional delineation sampling in June 2019 and July 2021, with over 200 soil samples collected from the property.

Now, the district plans to conduct their own testing inside and outside the Jana Elementary school property out of an abundance of caution and is giving parents the option to move their kids to virtual learning while they wait for results. The results will not be in before students return to classes this fall.

“To learn two weeks before that they’re going to have to make a choice to either send their kid virtually or on the property, where there is potentially radioactive contamination, I can’t imagine as a parent myself and a cancer survivor and a person that has been affected by this waste, I can’t imagine having to make that decision, and have to make it hastily,” said Commuso.

Bernaugh says she plans to keep her kid in the classroom, though she does have some concerns about the potential presence of additional contamination.

While she appreciates the district for stepping up and being transparent, she is frustrated as to why it has taken so long for USACE to make its findings known, when testing had already been done years prior.

“We could’ve had the entire COVID-19 pandemic while we were locked out of these schools to be cleaning up these spaces,” said Bernaugh. “I really do feel like the Army Corps of Engineers really put our school at a significant disadvantage in being able to protect their children adequately.”

The district declined to be interviewed about their letter to parents and referred to questions about the timeline of tests results to the Army Corps.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers referenced a number of things as it relates to the testing by the school:

At the time, sample results were being combined into an overall comprehensive document that takes a significant amount of time to produce. Once finalized, these types of documents are shared with property owners. The USACE has recently started to send status letters to property owners in an effort to provide results in a more timely fashion. These letters are meant to inform property owners of the presence of contamination with recommendations for precautions up front, rather than waiting for full data collection and finalization of full data reports as in previous years.

USACE also says their testing found no immediate risks to the community:

Any contamination posing a high risk or immediate threat to human health or the environment would be made a priority for remediation. In addition, USACE conducted a thorough evaluation and data collection exercise from within the entire length of Coldwater Creek (CWC) within site boundaries. The data is still being evaluated, but early indication is that no sample results will be above RGs (Remediation Goals). Radioactive contamination in the general area is below the surface, low-level radiation, and does not pose immediate health or safety risks to the public in its current configuration.

However, Commuso says any bit of radioactive contamination is concerning, even if the effects are not immediate.

“We’ve never been concerned about an immediate threat, we’re concerned about long-term low-level exposure to this,” said Commuso. “These kids aren’t here once in a blue moon, they attend this property 8 hours a day, 9 months out of the year.”

In the district’s letter, it states if the test results are negative for unsafe levels of radiation, the school year will remain unchanged and parents who opted for virtual learning until those test results came in would need to send their students back to the classroom immediately.

If testing finds unsafe levels of radioactive contamination, the rest of the first semester will move to virtual learning and the district will look to alternative solutions for where students can attend school in the future.

A district spokesperson tells News 4 as of Tuesday morning, their office has not received any calls related to families asking to switch their child to virtual learning.

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