"About a week after the start of the partial government shutdown last month, Dawn Chapman and Karen Nickel emailed Environmental Protection Agency officials about what the lapse in funding meant for them and other residents of Bridgeton, Mo. who live near a nuclear waste dump.
The pair of activists said they were told they would no longer be able to reach officials they normally spoke with at the EPA’s regional office near Kansas City. They worried about what would happen if there were an accident at the nearby landfill contaminated with radioactive waste dating back to the World War II-era Manhattan Project. Just as recently as November, a surface fire broke out near the nuclear dump.
Steven Cook, a top-level Trump official at the EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Response, assured them that the agency’s emergency spill line would still be manned throughout the shutdown. But, he added in an email Chapman provided to The Post, “Please be mindful that we may be limited in our ability to provide a substantive response depending on the issue involved.”"
Dino Grandoni reports for the Washington Post January 18, 2019.
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