On June 29, owners of the Bridgeton Landfill agreed to pay $16 million to settle a 2013 state lawsuit over its handling of a smoldering underground fire that residents have for years blamed for respirator health issues and foul odors. The agreement terms approved by St. Louis Circuit Judge Michael Jamison, state that Bridgeton Landfill LLC, Allied Services LLC and waste-management company Republic Services will put $12.5 million in a Community Project Fund, administered by St. Louis Community Foundation, to “prioritize projects which promote the betterment of the environment, public health and safety, and the welfare of the people in the communities near the Bridgeton Landfill.” The owners agreed to pay $3.5 million in penalties and damages to the state, totaling a $16 million settlement. The smoldering underground waste is near buried radioactive waste.
A few miles north, in a set of public meetings held June 27 and 28, hundreds of former and current residents who live or grew up near Coldwater Creek in Hazelwood, Berkeley and other areas in North St. Louis County, came to St. Mark United Methodist Church in Florissant to hear from the CDC what residents have been telling federal authorities for years – that people who grew up and played in the creek have higher incidences of certain types of cancers.
The report concluded that residents who regularly played or lived along Coldwater creek for many years in the 1960s to 1990s, downstream from historical radioactive waste storage piles, may have an increased risk of bone or lung cancer, leukemia, or to a lesser extent, skin or breast cancer. For more recent years (2000 and onward), the ATSDR said there may be increased risk of bone or lung cancer for persons living in those areas.
Robert Liddell told the data evaluators and meeting attendees that he has had both knees and several fingers removed due to bone cancer. The Florissant resident grew up in Berkeley, Mo.
“Nobody in my family has cancer and I started getting cancer at 39 years old,” Liddell told the American. Liddell also said he was the only one in his family that, as a child, played in Coldwater Creek.
“No medical history for him – and his doctors were like, ‘We don’t know how you ended up with this cancer,’” his wife, Dionne Liddell said. “The type of cancer that he has, the bone cancer – they said it’s a childhood cancer and he got it at 39.”
The creek and nearby grounds along it were contaminated with uranium processing residue left from the development of atomic weapons, which were improperly stored near the creek and in other locations in the St. Louis area starting in the 1940s.
Remediation has been taking place in recent years to clean up contamination found in yards and businesses along Coldwater Creek from FUSRAP, the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
At the meetings in Florissant, residents wanted to know, “Is this another Times Beach?” or “Who can we sue?”
However, representatives of the federal public health Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which is part of U.S. Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, went over its recently released draft health assessment report, “Evaluations of Community Exposures Related to Coldwater Creek,” its conclusions and recommendations.
One ATSDR recommendation is that potentially exposed residents or former residents share their potential exposure related to Coldwater Creek as part of their medical history and to consult their physicians promptly if new or unusual symptoms develop. It also recommends that the state consider updating analyses on cancer incidence, cancer mortality, and birth defects, as feasible and the ATSDR will provide technical support, upon request, to update cancer incidence or mortality studies in the area and identify public health actions needed.
They do not recommend general disease screening of past or present residents living by Coldwater Creek, because “predicted increases in the number of cancer cases from exposures are small, and no method exists to link a particular cancer with this exposure.”
ATSDR recommends that the FUSRAP program continue investigating and cleaning up Coldwater Creek sediments and floodplain soils to meet regulatory goals and recommended areas for future sampling. Those locations include places that received soil or sediment moved from the Coldwater Creek floodplain; areas where sediment deposited by flooding of major residential tributaries to Coldwater Creek; sediment or soil remaining in basements that were directly flooded by Coldwater Creek in the past; and indoor dust in homes where yards have been cleaned up or require cleanup.
The ATSDR recommends signs to inform residents and visitors of potential exposure risks in areas around Coldwater Creek not yet investigated or cleaned up.
The draft report is open for public comment until the end of August, and ATSDR invited the public to comment on the report. The public comment process gives residents the opportunity to review the report and provide their input. ATSDR’s responses to those comments will be included in the appendix of the final report. Comments on the report must be submitted in writing by August 31, 2018 to ATSDRRecordsCenter@cdc.gov, or mailed to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Attn: Records Center Re: Coldwater Creek, North St. Louis County, MO; 4770 Buford Highway, NE (MS F-09), Atlanta, GA 30341.
In response to the Coldwater Creek recommendations, the St. Louis County Council is drafting legislation that, if approved, will post warning signs along the creek.
During regular business hours, a copy of the draft ATSDR report on Coldwater Creek is available for review at the Florissant Valley branch of the St. Louis County Library, 195 New Florissant Road, Florissant, Missouri, 63031.
Alternatively, read the Coldwater Creek report online at https://tinyurl.com/coldwatercreekrecs.
