After years of urging from legislators and residents, EPA Region 7 finally asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to assist in containing radioactive waste at the West Lake Landfill Superfund Site in Bridgeton, Mo.
The EPA and Army Corps signed an interagency agreement, effective April 15, allowing the Corps to help construct an “isolation barrier,” which is intended to keep a smoldering underground fire from contacting the radioactive wastes illegally dumped at the West Lake landfill in 1973.
In December 2010, an underground fire was detected in the “north quarry” of the inactive 52-acre Bridgeton Landfill – only 1,000 feet from where the wastes from 1940s atomic bomb production are buried. Under an order from the Missouri Attorney General, the landfill’s managing company, Republic Services, Inc., is required to install the barrier.
Ed Smith, safe energy director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, said the agreement does not satisfy all of their requests and concerns. Smith said the EPA has not done sufficient testing for radioactive waste at the site.
Last fall, the EPA conducted a Gamma Cone Penetration Test as part of a work plan for the isolation barrier. The results showed that the radioactive waste is “hotter” in certain areas than expected, Smith said.
Robert Criss, professor of Earth & planetary science at Washington University, said the results showed that the contamination has been spreading and diffusing through groundwater and other mechanisms. Criss believes that the contamination is widespread, and the EPA has been reluctant to require testing farther away from the site. The agency should have “established background” by testing the soil away from the contaminated site, he said.
The test results show that the radioactive material exists in places the EPA didn’t expect, Smith said, and they should not start building the barrier until the agency competes more thorough tests.
“How are you going to know if there are radioactive materials between that barrier and the fire if you don’t test in those areas?” Smith said.
For decades, the coalition has been advocating for the federal government to remove the radioactive waste, which is located in the river floodplain. Smith said the removal of the radioactive wastes is the “only guaranteed plan” to ensure the subsurface landfill fire will not hit the nuclear waste, now or in the future.
A copy of the interagency agreement is available online at: http://www.epa.gov/region7/cleanup/west_lake_landfill/pdf/west-lake-fy14-ia-sow.pdf
EPA has completed a legal order directing Republic Services to conduct pre-construction activities for the isolation barrier, such as site clearing and preparation, and staging of equipment.
A copy of the pre-construction order is available online at:
http://www.epa.gov/region7/cleanup/west_lake_landfill/pdf/west-lake-preconstruction-order-041614.pdf
