Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
9/12/2014
The smoldering fire near the West Lake Landfill may be spreading closer to the radioactively contaminated section of the site, according to a report by a landfill consultant for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. This news follows on the heels of a recent Army Corps of Engineers’ analyses that the construction of an isolation barrier to separate the fire from the contamination would not start for at least 18 months. The report, prepared by Todd Thalhamer, suggests that temperature spikes in monitoring probes and gas interceptor wells spread throughout the South Quarry indicate the fire may be spreading to the ‘neck’ area that connects to the West Lake portion of the site. “Temperature, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen all continue to trend upwards,” Thalhamer said in his report. “Again, this month I observed some of the highest recorded temperatures in a number of gas extraction wells. Gas interceptor wells, and temperature monitoring probes located in the ‘neck’ and south quarry at the Bridgeton Landfill. Overall, the subsurface fire continues to expand in the South Quarry and into the ‘neck’ area.”
The Environmental Protection Agency this week disputed the claims made in the report, but it did say it would take a closer look. “The EPA’s ORD at present says based on information available to this Agency we don’t have conclusive evidence that the SSE is behaving as suggested by Mr. Thalhamer in his latest report,” EPA spokesman Ben Washburn said. “The ORD receives regular SSE data from our Missouri partners and will certainly examine the data in light of this new report. What’s important to underscore is that the public remains protected from the radioactive waste at the West Lake Landfill adjacent to the Bridgeton SSE. This agency continues to exercise its authorities to ensure the protection of public health and safety.”
Republic Services, the owner of the site, took a harder stance against the report, asserting that the fire is, in fact, moving in the opposite direction of the neck area. “Yet again, Mr. Thalhamer is using limited data to manufacture an argument which the totality of data refutes,” Republic spokesman Russ Knocke said. “He ignores the lack of settlement and absence of carbon monoxide in the North Quarry. Both are scientific indicators of the reaction’s location and movement. All data continues to confirm that the reaction is in the South Quarry, moving away from the adjacent West Lake Landfill and the neck in-between the two sites.”
Thalhamer acknowledged he does not have the up-to-date data that Republic does, but the data he did obtain still points to a spread of the fire. In his report, he called on Republic to increase its transparency on the data. “While the Bridgeton Landfill team may evaluate the data on daily, weekly, and monthly basis, the submitted data must be transparent with operational issues so an independent review of the GIW system can be performed,” Thalhamer wrote. “This ability to determine if the smoldering event is contained to the neck is based on having the proper data. The community depends on the department to independently evaluate, confirm, and verify the data submitted by Bridgeton Landfill is complete and accurate.”
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 assist on the project by providing technical review and oversight of the site owner’s cleanup plans and activities at the site, after public outcry called for a more experienced approach to the cleanup.
