The lobbying arm of the company that owns the radioactive West Lake Landfill has escalated its efforts to keep the waste buried in Bridgeton.
New ads on local radio and social media, and telemarketing calls and emails from a group called Coalition to Keep Us Safe encourage residents to call their members of Congress to support a 2008 Environmental Protection Agency plan to put a cap over the landfill.
for lack of progress on West Lake and sponsored a bill that would transfer authority over the landfill to the Army Corps of Engineers.
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The coalition is funded by Bridgeton Landfill LLC, a subsidiary of Phoenix-based Republic Services. The company spent between $10,000 and $100,000 on the recent advertising blitz, said spokesman Russ Knocke.
Republic’s opposition to the proposed transfer to the corps is the reason for the heightened promotional efforts, said coalition spokeswoman Molly Teichman, a political commentator based in Lafayette County, Mo., outside Kansas City. The corps’ other nuclear cleanup projects around ºüÀêÊÓƵ use a more expensive remedy of shipping waste out of state.
The coalition’s campaign has gotten heated on social media. Teichman, who is paid $1,500 a month from Republic Services, fights regularly on Twitter with members of the group , which wants the waste hauled away.
“, your reality tv show is over. Go home and hangout with your kids — they miss you,†she wrote recently.
Dawn Chapman, a co-founder of JustMomsSTL, said Teichman “declared war on these moms without taking the time to get to know us.â€
Ed Smith of the nonprofit Missouri Coalition for the Environment, which supports transporting the waste, said he’s frustrated that some residents have confused the two groups.
“They’re trying to confuse people about what’s happening at West Lake Landfill. We have unanimous bipartisan support from St. Charles and ºüÀêÊÓƵ county councils for (transfer to the corps),†he said.
Republic Services launched the Coalition to Keep Us Safe in 2014 with a few supporters from Lafayette County, where company spokesman Knocke grew up. Now the group has grown to include 28 members of the Missouri Legislature, all Republicans except Michele Kratky, a Democrat whose district includes south ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
Kratky did not return messages seeking comment.
Nearly all of the state legislators listed are from outside the metro area.
House Speaker Todd Richardson, R-Poplar Bluff, who is listed as a supporter, received $2,500 from Republic Services in September.
In the last two years, Republic reported total donations of $100,000 to two Republican campaign committees — $50,000 to the Missouri House Republican Campaign Committee and $50,000 to the Missouri Senate Campaign Committee.
In 2014, Republic also donated $20,000 to the Missouri Democratic State Committee.
Republic has put money into Missouri politics since 2008, the year after its purchase of Allied Waste gave it ownership of Allied’s substantial business in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ region — and the radioactive West Lake Landfill.
As the second-largest waste hauler in the country, Republic is dependent on municipal contracts and state solid waste laws. It often donated to both parties at the state and local levels in the years following its purchase of Allied.
But the four $25,000 donations to Missouri Republican legislative committees in the last two years are by far the largest single donations made under the Republic Services name.
Richardson’s office didn’t address the donations when asked whether they played a role in his support of the Coalition to Keep Us Safe. But he reiterated his support for keeping the waste in place.
“The West Lake Landfill issue needs to be solved,†Richardson said in a statement. “Moving the waste is not an option. It is time for the public and private sector to come to an agreement to bury the waste forever and to let the community move on.â€
Some state legislators whose districts include the landfill support neighbors who want the waste removed. Rep. Bill Otto, D-Maryland Heights, and Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, regularly attend community meetings and have advocated for the corps to take over cleanup.
Rep. Anne Zerr, R-St. Charles, who represents constituents right across the Missouri River from the Bridgeton Landfill, is a coalition supporter.
Zerr said she will wait to see what the EPA proposes as a cleanup remedy, which the agency has promised to do by the end of 2016.
The Republic Services donations, she said, had nothing to do with her support of the coalition. “This is scientific fact that we have to deal with.â€
It’s not just elected politicians who support the coalition. Jeff Aboussie, executive secretary-treasurer of the powerful ºüÀêÊÓƵ Building and Construction Trades Council, has lent his support. The construction union umbrella group supported EPA’s initial 2008 proposal to cap the West Lake waste in place because “that puts our people to work,†Aboussie said.
“We do disagree with taking that material out in teaspoons and trucking it across our neighborhoods,†he said. “We definitely don’t believe that’s the right way to do this.â€
The corps handles the cleanup of other nuclear waste sites around ºüÀêÊÓƵ, including work on Coldwater Creek in North County. More than 1 million cubic yards of contaminated material have been shipped by rail through Missouri to disposal sites in Western states since the 1990s. West Lake contains an estimated 150,000 cubic yards of radioactive waste, according to the state health department.
If the corps takes over, it would have to create its own cleanup proposal. It also could propose capping or encapsulating the waste in West Lake, an option the corps considered at some of its other cleanup projects in the ºüÀêÊÓƵ area.
Under either federal agency, Republic could be partly responsible for the cleanup costs. It has estimated a cost of $400 million to excavate the waste and transport it by railroad to an nuclear storage facility. The cost of the cap is estimated at $60 million, according to Chicago power company Exelon, which may also be liable for some cleanup costs.
Paul Davis, a commissioner in Cooper County outside Columbia, Mo., said he also supports leaving the waste in Bridgeton rather than hauling it to a dump site in the West “primarily because Interstate 70 and Union Pacific railroad run right through Cooper County where I live.â€