BRIDGETON • The West Lake Landfill Community Group and environmental activists launched a stepped-up political campaign Thursday night to try to get radioactive waste in the landfill removed.
Residents and the Missouri Coalition for the Environment urged people at a public meeting to sign petitions and contact Missouri’s U.S. senators and congressmen as well as Gov. Jay Nixon and state Attorney General Chris Koster. They also urged those at the meeting to immediately report odors emanating from the landfill to the state Department of Natural Resources, collect signatures on petitions and attend municipal government meetings.
Several elected officials or their representatives attended the meeting, including County Councilman Steve Stenger, who this week announced he’ll run against County Executive Charlie Dooley. Stenger said: “We need to use the bully pulpit we have as county officials.â€
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In an interview, he said that the problems at the landfill have grown worse “because of a failure of leadership by the county administration.â€
Although federal agencies have main oversight of the landfill, “we’ve needed to bring more attention to this issue, to our state officials and federal officials so they will do something to fix the problems,†Stenger said.
A spokesman for Dooley at the meeting said later that Dooley had asked the health department early this year to contact the EPA to check into the problems, had held a phone meeting with the regional director of the EPA and had his aides address the issue.
Ed Smith, safe energy director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, told the more than 60 people who attended that he had recently learned of a fire in the landfill close to the radioactive waste that had existed in the 1990s. Another fire now is smoldering in the landfill, causing alarm among residents.
“We’d like to get our federally elected officials to stand up for what’s right and get the Army Corps in here†for removal of the radioactive waste, Smith said. The corps already is involved in removing radioactive waste at other sites in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ area.
The citizens group, which has about 2,500 friends on Facebook, has been meeting monthly since spring to generate support to lobby elected officials.
“We have a high school and a grade school near this,†Dawn Chapman, one of the organizers of the group, told the crowd. “I know they call us alarmists, but we’re just moms and people who are worried.â€
Another community member, Douglas Clemens, said that even without the radioactive waste, “this is one of the worst combinations of substances on the planet.†He said the site contained pesticides, dyes and other materials.
North County residents and environmental activists have been fighting for years for removal of radioactive waste buried at West Lake Landfill. It was dumped there in the 1970s.
In 2008, the EPA approved a plan to cap radioactive material at West Lake. But residents and environmental advocates said then and continue to push for removal of the waste. Several local governments, including ºüÀêÊÓƵ and ºüÀêÊÓƵ County, already have passed resolutions asking for the waste to be removed.
The residents’ fears were exacerbated when a smoldering fire was discovered in 2010. Smith said that the general public didn’t know of it until last year. The DNR has said the subsurface fire is about 1,200 feet from West Lake.
EPA officials have told residents they face no health risk from the West Lake site, provided they stay outside the fenced area. The agency planned to conduct more testing but was delayed by the government shutdown. Republic Services Inc., owner of the land, plans to build a trench as a fire barrier to the fire.