On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced the details surrounding their planned radiation screening of the Bridgeton Municipal Athletic Complex – a screening which comes after the community organized private testing of the complex and raised concerns.
EPA Region 7 Administrator Karl Brooks and Bridgeton Mayor Conrad Bowers said the screening is expected to begin the week of May 19, at a Friday news conference held at Bridgeton City Hall.
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 were buried illegally.
Community members recently contacted the EPA after they used donated equipment to test for radiation. The results showed high radiation levels in drainage areas near the ball fields.
Brooks said that the Missouri Department of Natural Resources screened the fields for radiation exposures last year. The sampling results did not indicate the presence of radionuclides above background levels. The ball fields remain suitable for use, he said.
“EPA certainly understands what residents and athletes are going through,” Brooks said. “This is why EPA will be screening the complex. It’s unfortunate that questionable information in the place of scientific data has created public worry; and we want to complete this screening so the public can be assured the facility is suitable for use.”
Ed Smith, safe energy director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, was pleased to hear that the EPA was going to use a “grid system” to test the fields. However, he questioned why the agency did not use that method at the Bridgeton/West Lake landfill. The coalition is among several groups who have highly criticized the EPA for their methods in testing for radiation at the landfill.
Under an order from the Missouri Attorney General, the landfill’s managing company, Republic Services, Inc., is required to build an “isolation barrier,” which is intended to keep the smoldering underground fire from contacting the radioactive wastes illegally dumped at the West Lake landfill in 1973.
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.
At the landfill, the EPA is using the “step out method,” Smith said. That’s where test conductors follow a trial of radioactivity until they find no more radioactive material on that trial. That method is not as foolproof as the grid method, he said, and has left “gaping holes” in the risk analysis at the landfill site.
The field survey work is expected to require at least a week to complete, Brooks said, and results should be available about 30 to 60 days after that.
Mayor Bowers said, “It is our hope the screening results will confirm there is no health risk and any fears concerning the use of Bridgeton Municipal Athletic Complex can be laid to rest.”
EPA Region 7 will make final results of the screening activity available to the public, both online at its website, http://www.epa.gov/region7/cleanup/west_lake_landfill/index.htm.
