The Environmental Protection Agency recently received more pressure to hand over West Lake landfill’s nuclear-waste cleanup to the Army Corps of Engineers.
On Feb. 28, U.S. Senators Claire McCaskill and Roy Blunt, along with U.S. Representatives Wm. Lacy Clay and Ann Wagner, sent a letter to EPA Region 7 Administrator Karl Brooks urging him to engage the Corps in the landfill’s remediation.
For decades, the landfill, west of Interstate 270 on St. Charles Rock Road, has been under the EPA’s jurisdiction.
Recently the EPA has led the effort to build a landfill “isolation barrier” – which is meant 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 at West Lake landfill.
Community members and environmental advocates have sharply criticized the EPA for failing to be transparent in the barrier plans and for the agency’s methods for handling the potential crisis overall. For many years, citizens have been asking the EPA to allow the Corps to lead the waste cleanup.
In the letter, the legislators urged the EPA to work with the Corps’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) operations in the St. Louis area. They said the Corps has successfully handled other sites impacted by radioactive waste material, including an area downtown and Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.
“Given the Corps’ expertise in this area and the local community’s faith in the Corps’ FUSRAP mission, we request that the EPA consider contracting directly with the Corps to handle any and all remediation needed at the site,” the letter stated.
In February, St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley also issued a letter to Brooks, encouraging the FUSRAP program. He said the St. Louis County Department of Health “continues to be concerned” about the presence of radioactive materials in the landfill.
“Since these materials are the result of transfers from other FUSRAP sites in the St. Louis metropolitan area, the proposed change of jurisdiction from the United States EPA to FUSRAP would be in keeping with equal treatment of all of these potentially hazardous materials,” Dooley wrote.
Recent EPA tests show that the radioactive waste is “hotter” in certain areas than expected, said Ed Smith, safe energy director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. The results also show that the radioactive material exists in places the EPA didn’t expect, Smith said.
“The Gamma Cone Penetration Tests really show that the EPA didn’t have a great understanding of the extent of the radioactive material when it made its decision to leave it there and cap it forever,” he said. “It goes to show why the Army Corps of Engineers needs to be put in charge.”