Residents on West Lake Landfill: Move the Radioactive Waste

After two public forums from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, North County residents banded together Monday afternoon on what they want done.

The message was plain and simple from the crowd of 35 -- move the radioactive waste out of West Lake Landfill and away from them.

“We want this waste gone,” Dawn Chapman, a Maryland Heights resident and co-administrator for the West Lake Landfill Facebook page, said. “People are scared and panicked and it’s emotional abuse.”

With the stench from the Bridgeton Landfill growing stronger with each passing wind, residents--with some in masks--gathered at the Spanish Village Park to implore community members and others who want to be involved to write their Congressmen about the growing problems.

For the past six months, residents have grown wary of a subsurface fire beneath the Bridgeton Landfill that could be moving toward radioactive waste in West Lake Landfill, which sits across from the Bridgeton Landfill.

According to the EPA, the 200-acre site of West Lake was originally home to limestone quarrying for more than 45 years. In 1973, though, two areas of the site became contaminated with radioactive waste from uranium ore processing residues.

No officials or representatives of the EPA or DNR were present at this gathering as the focus steered toward a new call to action.

“We want it gone or we want out,” Kirbi Pemberton said, a North County resident who held up a sign of her daughter during the press confernece.

Pemberton said her daughter had a rare brain tumor and passed away shortly after her 12th birthday in 2004. She said she’s concerned for her two other children who have also battled health issues, including her 18-year-old daughter who hasn’t had a menstrual cycle in two years.

Cold Water Creek activist Jennifer Smith and others were also on hand to lend their support of the issue. North County residents say  nuclear waste was improperly disposed of near North County's Coldwater Creek in the 1950s and 1960s as part of The Manhattan Project, leading to the unusually high incidences of cancers, birth defects and early deaths; and in some cases conjoined twins.

Smith said that the group has concerns that the high rate of cancer and other health problems will be exhibited around West Lake Landfill in the next 15-20 years.

The next step for a number of residents is to get legislators involved, such as Congressman Lacy Clay, Congresswoman Ann Wagner and Sen. Claire McCaskill and Sen. Roy Blunt, Chapman said.

She said that they have gotten their attention, but they want action and if it takes sitting outside of their offices in Washington D.C., they could look into it.