December 1, 2000
Energy Department officials meet with residents worried by infant death rate
http://www.postnet.com/postnet/stories.nsf/ByDocID/1ECE5DF8FFD9D9CD862569A800362851

A group of St. Charles area residents searching for explanations in the deaths of eight infants in one parish are pointing to the U.S. Department of Energy's cleanup site near Weldon Spring.

Some believe that site has contaminated area drinking water. But Department of Energy officials who work at the Weldon Spring Site Remedial Action Project deny that notion.

Energy officials met Wednesday night with about 30 area residents, including the Rev. Gerald Kleba of the Immaculate Conception Church of Dardenne, at the parish school on Hanley Road.

"It's clear to me that a surprisingly high number of children die in this area," Kleba said. Eight of the 163 infants that have been baptized at Immaculate Conception over the past 12 months have died.

Kay Drey, an advisory board member of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, urged residents to push for a study of medical problems among county residents.

The Energy Department has spent $800 million cleaning the site since 1986. The federal government used the site to make TNT in the 1940s and to process uranium for nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s.