By Bill Raack, KWMU
Bridgeton, MO – The Environmental Protection Agency wants to permanently cover the contaminated soil at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton. Environmentalists want the radioactive material removed instead.
"If you dig it up, it introduces a lot of potential exposures, both worker and public exposures" says EPA project manager Dan Wall, "if you leave it in place, there really is no potential for exposure unless someone were to actually dig into the landfill, which is something we can reasonably protect against."
Originally from the production of nuclear weapons at the old Mallinckrodt plant in St. Louis, the waste was dumped in the West Lake landfill in 1973. The Environmental Protection Agency wants to permanently cap the soil at a cost of about 22-million dollars.
Opponents of the EPA's plan say the waste from the old Mallinckrodt plant in St. Louis is too dangerous to leave in the floodplain of the Missouri River.
"There's no question that this stuff should not be left in the floodplain of the Missouri River", says Kay Drey of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment.
"Even though there's a levee there, we don't really know the quality of that levee. It's supposed to protect against a 500-year flood but it didn't have typical Corps of Engineer surveillance during its design or construction."
EPA project officials say the site is safe and not at risk from Missouri River flooding. The comment period for the project ends this Friday (12/29).