The City of St. Louis won a major victory recently with our selection by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) as its Agency Preferred Alternative for its new West campus. This project is a major step forward for our city and came as a result of the hard work, commitment, and focused voices from many in our community, including The St. Louis American.
The next NGA West has the once-in-a-generation potential to be truly transformative for the city, creating jobs and driving new investment and development into North St. Louis.
The next step in this process is the announcement in early June of NGA’s formal Record of Decision. As we work toward that announcement, we are providing NGA with all the information its staff has requested to make the final decision.
Once NGA has made its official announcement, we will engage in community-outreach efforts designed to get input from residents and businesses in the surrounding neighborhoods and to share how this project connects with other development efforts designed to benefit the city and the region.
Our efforts, however, have been made more taxing due to misinformation included in recent communications from the supporters of the location in Southern Illinois. While the enthusiasm behind their support of the Southern Illinois location is understandable, we can’t allow incorrect information to be communicated to the public and to the NGA about the city’s location or NGA’s selection process.
So I want to set the record straight.
To support its critical mission in the future requires NGA to recruit a diverse set of talent from across the entire country. This includes various skill sets from across academia, at the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as those leaving the military.
The North St. Louis site best provides this needed environment with growing numbers of high-tech commercial startups along Washington Avenue and in the Cortex Innovation District – with which NGA has already established a presence and relationship – and at our leading-edge research universities, including Washington University, Saint Louis University and Webster University.
Despite these well-established and well-known assets, the Illinois delegation recently wrote the director of NGA and stated that Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville “is the only college or university in the region offering a degree in cartography or geography.” Saint Louis University has an outstanding Geographic Information Science program, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, to which NGA has sent students.
Additionally, there are a number of universities in the St. Louis region that have programs in Cyber Security, including Washington, Saint Louis and Webster universities. And Saint Louis University has a program in Security and Strategic Intelligence. All of these support NGA’s workforce and mission.
Supporters of the Southern Illinois location have also alleged that the North St. Louis location does not meet NGA’s stated standoff requirements. According to the federal regulation quoted by the Illinois contingent and by NGA, the site more than meets the stated requirement.
There has also been criticism of areas next to the location that are not part of the footprint the NGA used in its selection process. Though originally included in the proposed footprint of the North St. Louis site for NGA West, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided the former Pruitt-Igoe site was not required to meet the needs of the NGA.
The Pruitt-Igoe site was removed from the proposed NGA site well before the issuance of the draft Environmental Impact Statement in October 2015. The Pruitt-Igoe site was removed by NGA because the mission requirements could be met on the site to the north of Cass Avenue. Environmental concerns at the Pruitt-Igoe site were not a factor in the decision to remove Pruitt-Igoe from the NGA site.
Furthermore, supporters of the Southern Illinois location have repeatedly promoted the unproven claim that the Pruitt-Igoe site may contain radioactive waste. The Pruitt-Igoe site has been tested numerous times over the years for soil and groundwater contaminants; a minimum of 20 studies – including environmental assessments, feasibility studies, and engineering studies – have been completed at the site. The most recent report done for the site was completed in 2015. None of this testing has indicated any sign of radioactive or nuclear contaminants on the Pruitt-Igoe site or the surrounding area.
There are numerous other erroneous claims being made by the supporters of the Illinois location, some of whom have threatened congressional investigations and the withholding of federal funding for the project as retaliation for not being selected. With so much at stake in terms of our national security, they should not be playing political games with our national security.
At the end of the day, however, we are confident that NGA’s decision to name North St. Louis as its Agency Preferred Alternative came after much deliberation, research and thought about the current and future mission of NGA. We believe that a straightforward review of the facts will again show that St. Louis is the best location to meet the mission of NGA and appreciate the confidence NGA has placed in St. Louis as its partner for the future.
Otis Williams is executive director of the St. Louis Development Corporation.
