Missouri officials will move forward with testing for tritium in groundwater wells at the West Lake Landfill, despite property owner Republic Services’ attempt to block those efforts.
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said Monday that Republic Services is worried about “what the tests will reveal, and the public deserves to know why.” West Lake waste originates from 1973, when about 8,700 tons of leached barium sulfate cake residue was mixed with 39,000 tons of soil and deposited at the landfill, according to Environmental Protection Agency documents. Koster in February 2015 claimed contamination had spread to groundwater outside the landfill, citing a report from the Missouri University of Science and Technology.
Republic Services attorney Peter F. Daniel in an Aug. 19 letter to Koster’s office said the tests were unnecessary, given that a comprehensive groundwater evaluation was conducted in 2013 and the Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t requested further sampling since. Given that the portion of the landfill in question falls under EPA jurisdiction, the state had no place to conduct the sampling, Daniel argued.
The EPA has since said Missouri is free to conduct the sampling, which has been a regularly scheduled, quarterly test and is currently the only groundwater testing being conducted at the site, according to the attorney general.
Special Master William Ray Price, Jr. on Aug. 24 issued an order in St. Louis County Circuit Court directing Republic Services to allow the state to conduct sampling. The testing is “reasonably calculated” to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence, Price explained. He said the state should pay the added costs of testing the wells, while Republic Services will have to pay for retesting static water levels in eight other wells in order to establish a base-line measurement for any overall change in water level between the dates of the tests and retests.
“We understand EPA and not the State has jurisdiction over these three groundwater wells at the West Lake site,” Republic Services spokesman Russ Knocke said by email Monday. “But, the State has agreed to limit its sampling so it does not include radiologic constituents within EPA’s responsibility, and EPA has agreed the State may collect these samples and water level measurements. Given those agreements, we will be working cooperatively with the State to complete this work, along with the current regular groundwater monitoring event.”
The West Lake Landfill contains waste from the former uranium production facility at Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in St. Louis. It is located next to the Bridgeton Landfill, where an underground fire has been burning since 2010.
The sampling, which was originally set to begin Aug. 22, is expected to take about 10 days. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources, which conducts the sampling, could not be reached for comment.
Missouri attorney general spokeswoman Nanci Gonder said in an email Monday that the state does not know yet what it will cost to take the water levels and water samples from the three groundwater wells in question, located inside the landfill’s OU-1 Area 1. A Republic Services contractor will sample those wells and bill the state. Republic Services spokesman Richard Callow said by email that the bill will include costs to comply with health and safety requirements for entering OU-1.
