The Environmental Protection Agency announced a $236 million plan on Thursday to clean up a suburban St. Louis landfill where Cold War-era nuclear waste was illegally dumped four decades ago.
The EPA released a statement saying the five-year plan calls for partially excavating the site and removing all of the radioactive contamination that poses a health risk at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton.
The plan also calls for installing a permanent cap, also described as an "engineered cover system," that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said would provide "additional protection to the community over the long term."
The site, which added to the Superfund list in 1990, is especially concerning to nearby residents because it sits next to another landfill where an underground fire is smoldering. State and federal officials have downplayed the risk that the smoldering could reach the radioactive material.
The plan was met with criticism by environmentalists, who said it didn't go far enough, and lawmakers who said it took too long to craft.
"Partial removal is not acceptable. It means high levels of radioactivity will be left behind with the potential for water or airborne contamination into the future, creating unnecessary long-term risks to the St. Louis region," Ed Smith, the policy director with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, said in a written statement.
U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, released a statement saying families "should not have had to wait 27 years for a plan to clean up the site."
Republic Services, which acquired the landfill through a merger, is among three entities responsible for the cleanup costs. The company said it would work to "ensure that the final remedy performed is based on science" and "fully protective of human health." The statement said it could take years for the work to begin.
The federal government has been wrestling with how to remediate the site for years. A plan announced in 2008 called for capping the nuclear waste with rock, clay and soil. But that proposal drew strong opposition from residents and environmentalists, who wanted the waste to be dug up and taken to an out-of-state nuclear disposal site. As a result of the opposition, the plan was discarded.
The EPA was given a deadline of 2016 to come up with a revised plan. The agency cited the complexity of the problem for delays that pushed the deadline back to this year.
The delays also drew angry responses from some activists and lawmakers. U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, a St. Louis County Republican, was among those who called for the Army Corps of Engineers to take over cleanup from the EPA. The corps agreed to work alongside EPA on the project, but the EPA continued to oversee it.
West Lake Landfill was contaminated in the 1970s after a contractor illegally dumped uranium processing waste. Uranium was processed in St. Louis for the Manhattan Project, the top-secret government program that produced the first nuclear weapons.
Adding to the worry is the underground smoldering that has burned in recent years at the adjacent Bridgeton Landfill, also owned by Republic Services. The company has spent more than $200 million to both contain the smoldering and to reduce a significant odor caused by it.
Capping and gas collection improvements have been installed, more than 40 gas wells added, and other steps have been taken to eliminate the odor. A lawsuit over the odor filed by 34 nearby residents was settled in 2016. Terms were not disclosed.
The EPA has said all along that neighboring residents faced no risk from radiation. The agency's testing has found no evidence that radioactive material has migrated beyond the landfill.
But the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in July found radioactive contaminants in stormwater just outside the landfill. EPA said the testing didn't signal a public health risk because stormwater doesn't represent a source of drinking water.