Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
8/22/2014
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster called on the Environmental Protection Agency last week to move forward the construction of an isolation barrier at the West Lake Landfill near St. Louis in a timelier manner. Koster, along with members of Missouri’s congressional delegation, has been critical of the EPA’s unclear timeline on the project to construct an isolation barrier to prevent the spread of a smoldering fire to the radioactively-contaminated section of the landfill. The EPA has maintained that field and design work, along with other analysis, need to be completed before any construction could take place, but the Agency has remained vague on any timeline. “As always, the health and safety of the public, including those who live and work around the landfill and those who rely on the Airport to provide safe flights, is our highest priority,” Koster said in a letter to EPA Region 7 Administrator Karl Brooks. “We remain frustrated with the slow pace of progress thus far. It is critically important that all participants in this project move with greater dispatch to ensure that all members of the public are protected.”
In that same letter, Koster outlined a schedule he believed the EPA should adopt to get the project moving. The schedule included: within 30 days, EPA presents its formal analysis of the isolation barrier alignment alternatives to Republic Services, the owner of the site; within 45 days of the analysis presentation, Republic should submit is alignment selection with sufficient design specifications to the EPA; within 45 days following the submittal, the St. Louis International Airport should announce its consent with the proposal in light of its concerns with the project’s effect on increased bird activity, which may affect flights from the airport; and then following the airports consent, the EPA should within 30 days announce its approval of the plan. Koster’s proposed schedule would enable the project to move forward with construction in 150 days, which would put it at early 2015.
The EPA, in a response to Koster, said that its schedule appears to align with the one presented by the Attorney General. “Over the course of the next few months, the Agency expects to direct the Potentially Responsible Parties to submit more detailed plans for the isolation barrier and associated bird strike mitigation plans which could then be presented for evaluation by the COE, our technical advisers on this project, and the Airport,” Brooks wrote to Koster last week. “I believe this schedule aligns with that suggested in your August 11 letter.” The EPA, however, has not made any official timelines clear yet.
The West Lake Landfill cleanup project has taken on an added sense of urgency after recent reports revealed that the site contains more radioactive waste closer to a nearby smoldering fire than previously thought. Currently, the West Lake Landfill is under the supervision of the EPA’s Superfund program, which took over responsibility for the site in 1990. The EPA is conducting an engineering survey and groundwater analysis of the site to determine the best location to construct an isolation barrier to prevent the spread of the fire located near the radioactive part of the landfill. The EPA has also brought in the Army Corps of Engineers to help in the construction of the barrier, as well as with the cleanup of the site, after public outcry called for a more experienced approach to the cleanup.
