By John Stang
The owner of the radioactively contaminated West Lake Landfill is suing to recoup some cleanup costs from a company that generated radioactive waste sent to the site.
Bridgeton Landfill LLC, a subsidiary of Republic Services, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Eastern Missouri against Mallinckrodt LCC, seeking an unspecified amount of money to help defray expenses for both prior and future environmental remediation at the property near St. Louis.
“Bridgeton Landfill, LLC has incurred, and will continue to incur, significant response costs to investigate and otherwise respond to the hazardous substances contained at the West Lake Landfill,” according to the lawsuit. “Mallinckrodt LLC is responsible for the release or threatened release of hazardous substances at West Lake Landfill and, therefore, should bear the costs to clean up the resulting contamination.”
Mallinckrodt used to be Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, which processed uranium in St. Louis at part of the Manhattan Project and into the Cold War. Wastes from that plant went to two other St. Louis-area facilities before ending up at the West Lake Landfill in 1973.
Among its responsibilities, Bridgeton LLC cited “removal actions” directed by a 2015 order from the EPA that included surface fire prevention and development of an incident management plan for a radiologically contaminated area.
A Mallinckrodt spokesman suggested the liability at West Lake lies with the U.S. government rather than the company.
“Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Government approached Mallinckrodt to refine uranium ore as part of America’s nuclear program, and Mallinckrodt did so,” the spokesman said by email. “The U.S. Government owned all the raw materials, in-process product, byproducts and residues and determined site locations where work was performed. Mallinckrodt’s work on this government program ended in the 1960s.”
He later added in the email that Mallinckrodt did not send any residues or other materials from its nuclear work directly to the West Lake Landfill. Also, “the EPA did not order Mallinckrodt to participate in the cleanup, the investigation and/or remediation of Westlake Landfill.”
Two contaminated zones at the landfill, part of a larger Superfund Site, hold 8,700 tons of leached barium sulfate dating to the Manhattan Project, which were mixed with 38,000 tons of soil for use in 1973 as cover for trash at the landfill.
West Lake’s groundwater was found to have unsafe levels of radioactive uranium, radium, and thorium-230 during tests from 2012 to 2014. The majority of the radioactive material is thorium-230, which is a decay product of uranium, which was processed at the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works facility during World War II.
In September, the EPA completed an amendment to a record of decision that calls for excavating the West Lake Landfill down to 20 feet in the contaminated areas of the 200-acre Superfund site. The agency’s plan calls for digging out of radiologically impacted material greater than 52.9 picocuries per gram down to a depth of 12 feet in most cases. In some cases, excavations could go as deep as 20 feet or as shallow as 8 feet. The EPA predicts the project will take three years to accomplish after on-site work begins.
The Environmental Protection Agency named the Department of Energy, Republic Services, Bridgeton Landfill, Exelon Corp. and Cotter Corp. as the potentially responsible parties in the cleanup. It will be up to the parties to divide up the estimated $205 million cost and hire contractors to tackle the work.
“Mallinckrodt, a prime participant in the war effort that led to the contamination of West Lake Landfill, belongs at this table. We have asked a federal court to include them,” Richard Callow, a spokesman for Bridgeton Landfill, said Wednesday by email.
Bridgeton Landfill LLC has opposed the excavation approach because it argues the risks are too great of accidental radioactive dispersal with no proportional benefits, while extending the time to do the cleanup. The company supported the cap-and-monitor approach set out in the EPA’s original 208 record of decision for West Lake cleanup.
