The Environmental Protection Agency said last week it is indefinitely extending the schedule for proposing a final soil cleanup remedy at the West Lake Landfill Superfund site in Missouri. The agency cited delays in submission of technical documents by the site’s potentially responsible parties (PRPs).
“We have been working very hard to achieve this goal and I know the community was expecting a decision soon. However, given the complexity of this site and potential community impacts, we must ensure that sound science is driving our decision-making,” EPA Region 7 Administrator Mark Hague said in a statement. The EPA had originally expected to deliver a final remedy by the end of this year.
Hague added that the agency will continue to require that the PRPs produce “quality work products” that account for the site’s complexity and can “withstand the scrutiny of agency experts.”
West Lake’s PRPs are Laidlaw Waste Systems (now known as Bridgeton Landfill LLC, a subsidiary of West Lake owner Republic Services), Rock Road Industries Inc., Cotter Corp., and the Department of Energy.
West Lake, which contains waste from the former uranium production facility at Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in St. Louis, is adjacent to the Bridgeton Landfill, where an underground fire has been burning since 2010. Missouri residents, lawmakers, and environmentalists have long criticized the EPA’s 25-year cleanup effort at the site, with many calling for Congress to take the agency off the job and replace it with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP).
The EPA also announced last week that FUSRAP has agreed to provide analysis for the agency’s review of technical documents as it works to deliver a final remedy decision.
“We are grateful to the Corps’ leadership and their experts for partnering with us on this critical decision,” Hague said in the statement.
