By Julie Bierach, KWMU
SAINT LOUIS, MO – Environmental groups are anxiously awaiting a decision by the EPA regarding the West Lake Landfill in North St. Louis County. Since 1973, the landfill has been the home of radioactive waste that dates back to the Manhattan Project, a World War II plan to develop nuclear weapons. Environmentalists want the waste removed, while the EPA has proposed a plan to place an cap over the area and cover it with construction rubble.
The West Lake Landfill is located on St. Charles Rock Road in Bridgeton.
Snow may cover the grounds this time of year, but underneath a layer of soil is some of the hottest radioactive waste generated by the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in the 1940's. That's according to one very outspoken environmentalist.
"St. Louis has what I call some of the oldest waste from the Atomic age," said Kay Drey, an environmental activist and member of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment.
Mallinckrodt processed all the uranium that went into the Fermi reactor in Chicago on December 2, 1942. On that day, scientists proved they could harness the energy of the atom, but with that came radioactive waste with no place to go.
"We processed here in St. Louis, ore from the Belgian Congo, which, whereas, the United States ore is maybe 1% uranium, the Belgian Congo ore was 60 or 65%," said Drey.
According to Drey's assessments, the primary material at West Lake is Uranium 238.
After monitoring the site, conducting investigations and seeking public comment on the landfill, in 2006 the EPA determined that placing an engineered cap over the materials would provide sufficient protection from the radiation.
"The area will be a landfill in perpetuity and is going to be managed like a landfill. And the same management aspects for the landfill will be sufficient to manage the waste that's at depth out there at the landfill," said Gene Gunn, a regional official with the EPA in Kansas.
Environmentalists fear that if area levees were to be breached, it would send high-velocity water scouring the landfill. Gunn says the EPA has taken the levees into consideration.
"The 1993 flood in St. Louis was really a record event and both the Riverport levee and the Earth City levee that's actually surrounding the West Lake Landfill, both withstood that flood easily," assures Gunn.
In comments submitted to the EPA, Dr. Robert Criss, a geochemist at Washington University stated that several levees in St. Louis County have failed in the last fifteen years and he feels the risks are chronically underestimated. The EPA responded that during the 93 flood, all levees and floodwalls built to urban design standards withstood the onslaught, and no urban floodwall was overtopped.
Criss says that's an irresponsible statement.
"The floodwall at St. Louis, to my understanding, was within 6 inches of being overtopped. And for these guys to belittle this danger, I would just say we have a record and New Orleans is the finest recent example, where government officials tend to belittle these real dangers," said Criss, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University.
Senator Kit Bond is also concerned with the proposal. He's met with the EPA to voice his fear that if the levees were to fail it could contaminate the St. Louis water intakes.
"Levees can be overtopped and that's what we've seen before," said Bond. "So we want to look at the levels, at what happens if the levees are overtopped, where that water goes, what threat it proposed."
The EPA assures that experts have adequately assessed the site.
Gene Gunn with the EPA says they've even conducted an investigation to determine if it would be practical to excavate the waste, but the cost to do so, he says, would be significant.
"The cap itself is about a $25 million item and then the additional cost just to remove this targeted, say 85,000 cubic yards of materials that we might be able to identify although we were unable to identify such a mass of material, would be about an additional $50 million and to remove all of the waste, all of the radiation from the landfill, would increase that total cost to around $190 million," said Gunn.
The EPA says the Record of Decision will be issued in the near future