On Oct. 8, U.S. House Rep. Russ Carnahan sent a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator Lisa Jackson asking questions about the West Lake Landfill.
In 1942, Mallinckrodt Chemical Works started producing uranium for atomic bombs. Dumped illegally in 1973, the waste landed right next to the Missouri River floodplain in the West Lake Landfill, which is west of Interstate 270 on St. Charles Rock Road.
It’s buried eight miles upstream from Missouri American Water Company’s intake for drinking water in Florissant that supplies all of North County. That’s also upstream from the Chain of Rocks water intake, a main supplier for St. Louis city’s water.
As the radioactive waste gets older, it becomes more dangerous, said representatives of Missouri Coalition for the Environment.
The St. Louis City Board of Aldermen has passed Resolution 10, sponsored by Alderwoman Kacie Starr Triplett, requesting that Congress transfer jurisdiction over the cleanup of the site from the Environment Protection Agency to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Now it’s up to Congress to authorize the transfer of responsibility.
In Carnahan’s letter to Jackson, he wrote:
“The Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) has cleaned up a number of radiologically contaminated locations in the area. What reasons does EPA have for not transferring control of this site from the EPA to the Corps in order to remediate the contaminated waste?
Does EPA consider this location be permanent or temporary storage for this radioactive waste?
Even if there is a cap to stop water from entering the fill, what is there to stop radioactive particulate from seeping into the groundwater, given that there is no protective layering below the fill?”
Kay Drey, with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, said she hopes Carnahan’s actions will inspire the federal government to clean up St. Louis’s one remaining site of highly radioactive, nuclear weapons waste – the West Lake Landfill.
She said Carnahan’s letter “of excellent questions makes that essential goal undeniably clear.”