February 11, 2019
The City of St. Louis has a little known nuclear past as a uranium-processing center for the Atomic bomb. Government and corporate negligence led to the dumping of Manhattan Project uranium, thorium, and radium, thus contaminating North St. Louis suburbs, specifically in two communities: those nestled along Coldwater Creek – and in Bridgeton, Missouri adjacent to the West Lake-Bridgeton landfill. In the Coldwater Creek area, residual radioactive waste was left outside in piles along Latty Avenue, a street very close to the creek. St. Louis is a flood plain so when it rained, dangerous radionuclides flooded into the creek. And inundated homes, gardens, public parks and businesses. For decades, children played in or alongside the radioactively-contaminated creek. Residents have now documented their illnesses: high rates of very rare cancers, birth defects, and various autoimmune disorders. These illnesses are potentially linked to ionizing radiation poisoning although what is required is a epidemiological study on how low-level radiation effects humans over decade. Another tragic and bizarre occurrence has been unfolding in Bridgeton, Missouri. In 1973, approximately 47,000 tons of the same legacy radioactive waste was moved from Latty Avenue and was illegally dumped into a neighborhood landfill named West Lake. This landfill became an EPA Superfund site in 1990. For the last seven years, an uncontrolled, subsurface fire has been moving towards an area where the radioactive waste was buried. The community’s fear is that fire will meet the radioactive particles. These particles will then attach to smoldering vapor and become airborne, migrating off-site and contaminating communities miles away. Remarkably, Republic Services, the company that owns and operates the landfill continues to state that the landfill is in a “safe and managed state.” The company also states that the underground fire is contained and not approaching the radiation.
