WASHINGTON • Environmental Protection Agency Director Gina McCarthy said Monday her agency has done “extensive work” to safeguard residents near the nuclear-waste contaminated West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, but she gave no indication of when a proposed “record of decision” on the agency’s cleanup plans for the site will be finalized.
McCarthy will be leaving the government after Donald Trump becomes president on Jan. 20. She spoke Monday at the National Press Club, where she tried to make the case that, despite environmental groups’ concerns that her Trump-appointed successor will deny scientific evidence that climate change is related to human activity, that the impetus for cleaner air, water and energy is too enmeshed in everyday lives — and too big of a part of the American economy — to be reversed.
“The clean energy economy, folks — that train has left the station,” McCarthy said in an appearance that twice was interrupted by protesters, including one calling for the halting of the 1,170-mile Dakota Access Pipeline that is now the subject of protests on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota. It is being built by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Crude Oil to move crude oil from North Dakota oil fields to Patoka, Ill.
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At the National Press Club event, McCarthy was asked specifically about the West Lake situation. The Post-Dispatch reported last week that the EPA may not meet an end-of-the-year goal of publicly releasing its “record of decision” on what to do, long-term, about cleanup at the site.
Just because the plan has not been released “doesn’t mean that we haven’t been hanging out there and doing the work we are supposed to do, because we have,” McCarthy said.
“We have done extensive work, we have done remedial work to take care of the biggest challenges,” McCarthy said. “I have actually met with some of the mothers from that area who have come in and talked about what we can do.
“I don’t know the exact timing. We are confident that it is going to come soon, but I do know it is a significant concern of that community,” she said.
McCarthy added: “It is a big deal for that community and we are being as responsive as we can and will get the record of decision as quickly as we can.”
The Post-Dispatch also reported last week that an effort to transfer West Lake oversight from the EPA to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to pass the current Congress. Nearby residents now are suing the companies responsible for the waste after getting what they said were alarming results of radiation tests of their home. (Chuck Raasch)
BY THE NUMBERS:
4 — Possible cleanup options the EPA has currently outlined for West Lake.
16 — The depth in feet to which one cleanup option would excavate West Lake's contents, removing the bulk of known radioactive waste.
700 — The distance in feet that known radioactive contamination at West Lake is from the underground fire smoldering in the adjacent Bridgeton Landfill. The "smoldering event," as landfill officials call it, is reportedly moving at about six inches per day.
8,700 — Tons of leached barium sulfate — one of the main radioactive pollutants at West Lake — said to be contained at the site.
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SHE SAID IT: “There are thousands mayors who have signed climate pledges … because they are afraid … of wildfires, they are afraid of floods, they are afraid of running out of drinking water, which is particularly frightening. These things are happening all across the country.” — EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, who will leave at the end of the Obama administration, on why she thinks demand for action on climate change will continue during the Trump presidency.