The West Lake Landfill Superfund Site
Location: 200 acres near Earth City
Contaminants: radioactive Belgian Congo uranium, garbage, and construction wastes
Players: EPA Region 7
Progress: Initial cleanup plans were greeted with so much public outcry, the agency’s still studying its options. “We’re determining how much earthen cover will need to be brought in, what types of materials, in what amounts, in what layers, in what order,” says spokesman Chris Whitley. “We know that it is a very dangerous cocktail of material.”
Concern: “You can’t just leave it there with a little bit of clay and rubble on top—we are talking highly radioactive residues!” exclaims local activist Kay Drey.
Grade: C—for now
9200 Latty Avenue Superfund Site
Location: Hazelwood
Contaminants: radioactive uranium, radium, thorium wastes
Players: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Progress: Cleanup’s still under way, but the Corps did move two giant piles of radioactive material to a licensed facility out of state.
Bonus Points: “In September 2008, the site flooded, and if those big piles had still been there, they would have gone right into the Missouri River, right upstream from where St. Louis gets its drinking water,” Drey says.
Grade: A
Maplewood Commons Area
Location: Maplewood, where water flows underground beneath Hanley Road toward Bear Creek and a nearby residential area
Contaminants: benzene from bulk gasoline storage; cis-1,2-dichloroethene; vinyl chloride
Players: Missouri Department of Natural Resources, THF Realty
Progress: Tests of shallow groundwater in 2007 showed contaminants dropping by three to 10 times the original levels after THF capped the site and installed a treatment system. But they’re still well over the drinking-water standard.
Concern: As Dennis Stinson, DNR’s Superfund section chief, concedes, the contaminated groundwater can never be 100 percent contained, and nobody’s tested Bear Creek itself in years.
Grade: B
