Latest news with #MarkMatthiesen
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Yahoo
Daycare safety concerns spark push for QR code access to inspection reports
ST. PETERS, Mo. – Viewer response has been overwhelming following our March 12 report on a St. Peters childcare center. FOX 2 revealed multiple inspection reports by state regulators in 2024 at Peanuts Gang Learning Center, including a case where inspectors alleged a 4-year-old child walked outside alone, and made it all the way to a Phillips 66 nearly a third of a half mile away before anyone knew he was missing. Several parents followed up after our report, saying they had no idea about inspectors' findings at that center, including the mother of the child who reportedly walked to a gas station. She did not want to talk on camera but asked us to send her the inspection report involving her child. 'We need parents to know what's happening so they can choose the best site for their kid,' Missouri State Representative Mark Matthiesen said. Matthiesen says inspection reports should be easier to find. 'Your report online, included a link to that website. We need more education and more avenues for parents to reach that link,' he said. Police identify officer struck by car on I-70 Daycare inspection reports are compiled by an obscure office called the Missouri Office of Childhood under the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. 'Most parents don't even know it exists,' Matthiesen said. 'I thought the most effective way of handling that would be for the Office of Childhood to require QR codes to be posted at the entrance where parents could scan it when they go and view, look up that daycare or any daycare and see what has happened within those walls.' Grandmother Pam Franke, who picks up her grandkids from childcare, said, 'You just don't know what can happen out there when you're not there.' Franke likes the QR code idea. 'That would be great. I mean, nowadays everybody's got cell phones. You just put that out there and no problem,' she said. Matthieson believes the tool could also lead to daycares trying harder to do better. 'We need to hold them more accountable,' he said. He's introduced HB 637 which he says will be discussed next Tuesday during the Childhood Committee meeting in Jefferson City. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Missouri lawmakers consider funds for radioactive waste testing in St. Louis
A photo taken in 1960 of deteriorating steel drums containing radioactive residues near Coldwater Creek, by the Mallinckrodt-St. Louis Sites Task Force Working Group (State Historical Society of Missouri, Kay Drey Mallinckrodt Collection, 1943-2006). Missouri lawmakers are again considering legislation that would increase funding to allow local governments to test for additional radioactive waste around contaminated sites in the St. Louis region. The Missouri House Special Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs on Monday discussed the bill sponsored by Republican state Rep. Mark Matthiesen of O'Fallon. It's similar to legislation Matthiesen proposed last year but includes even more money for testing. 'There's a lot of concern that the testing that has already happened…was not sufficient enough — that we need to go farther, that people are still in harm's way right now, today,' Matthiesen said. Matthiesen, whose district includes a nuclear waste disposal site supervised by the U.S. Department of Energy, proposed legislation in 2018 that established the fund, but money was never appropriated to it. This fiscal year marks the first time the state has allocated any funding. 'High likelihood' of radioactive waste in smoldering landfill, Missouri officials say Last year, Matthiesen proposed $300,000 a year for investigations, but this year's bill would transfer $1 million into the fund each year. 'I would throw any amount on this so that we can do the testing that's needed,' he said. 'However, realistically speaking, if a million got funded every year for a handful of years, we could address the most pressing concerns that a lot of people are having right now today.' St. Louis has struggled for decades with remnant radioactive waste from the World War II-era effort to build the world's first atomic bomb. Uranium was refined in downtown St. Louis for use in the development of the bomb. After the war, it was trucked to St. Louis County, often falling off of trucks along the way. It was dumped at the airport, susceptible to the wind and rain, and contaminated the adjacent Coldwater Creek. As suburban neighborhoods sprung up along Coldwater Creek, generations of children and families were exposed to the radioactive waste, elevating residents' risk of certain cancers. The waste was sold and moved to a site in Hazelwood, also along Coldwater Creek, so that a company could extract valuable metals. Eventually, the remnant radioactive material was dumped in the West Lake Landfill where it remains today. Coldwater Creek is being cleaned up by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers while the Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing the cleanup of the West Lake Landfill. The EPA announced earlier this month that it expanded the area of the West Lake Landfill that requires remediation by 40 acres after discovering contamination was more widespread than the agency previously thought. Crews will need to dig up an additional 20,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris. The cost of the project is now nearly $400 million, up from $229 million. Following the EPA's decision, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources wrote the federal agency warning of a 'high likelihood' of radioactive contamination in the adjacent Bridgeton Landfill, which is experiencing a 'subsurface smoldering event,' a chemical reaction that heats and consumes waste like a fire but lacks oxygen. The EPA said it 'has no new evidence or information to support any claim that radiologically-impacted material … is present anywhere else in the Bridgeton Landfill.' Asked about the EPA's statement, a spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources said the state agency and EPA 'are in full agreement regarding the presence and location of radiological material at the Bridgeton.'
