THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Way back in WWII uranium processing for the atomic bombs was done in St Louis. It made a pile of radioactive waste that has been kicking around the area ever since. In 1973 some of it was illegally dumped in a landfill and has remained there ever since. Since 2010 there has been an underground fire in an adjacent landfill that is spreading in the direction of the radioactive waste.

The underground fire was discovered in an adjacent landfill in 2010 and has continued to move toward the known radioactive waste, according to the state reports. The landfill’s owner, Arizona-based Republic Services, maintains that the fire is not spreading. A representative for the company told The Missouri Times that the state’s reports were scientifically inaccurate, overstated and irresponsible.

One of the reports released by Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster concluded that the underground fire could reach the West Lake Landfill’s known radioactive waste in three to six months — the consequences of which remain largely unknown.

“I don’t understand why we’re just sitting back, as a city and as a nation, just letting this happen,” said Dawn Chapman, a resident who has been organizing to raise awareness about the situation.

More than 3 million people live in the St. Louis metropolitan area.

“Not only does the landfill emit a foul odor, it appears that it has poisoned its neighbors’ groundwater and vegetation,” Koster wrote in a statement released with the reports on Sept. 3. “The people of Missouri can’t afford to wait any longer — Republic needs to get this site cleaned up.”

He is taking Republic Services to court over the landfill, with the trial set to begin in March 2016, near the end of the state’s predicted three to six month window when the fire could reach the radioactive waste.

Nearby residents want to see the waste located, excavated and shipped out of the area before the smoldering fire hits it, while Republic Services and the Environmental Protection Agency have, so far, opted for containing the waste where it is.

“If you removed the radioactive waste from at least that portion of the landfill,” Chapman said, “it makes this site less complicated, and it also makes it so they can deal with this fire in an appropriate way. Everything is complicated with that radioactive waste. You take that off the site, and suddenly you just have a landfill fire."...

In a statement emailed to Al Jazeera in May, a representative for the EPA wrote, “There is no credible scientific data indicating off-site human exposure to radiological contaminants from the West Lake Landfill” and “if off-site contamination of the groundwater exists, there is currently no documented evidence of exposure to that groundwater nor definitive confirmation of the radium source.”

There is no lining between the waste and the groundwater or any cover on the surface of the landfill’s contaminated areas, which are feet from an artery road and a quarter-mile from the nearest residential area.

The EPA dismissed results of a 2014 test at a neighborhood ballfield, commissioned by residents, which found a radioactive form of lead that can result from decaying uranium particles.

However, the new state reports, which will be used as expert testimony in the state’s lawsuit against Republic Services, found that trees on neighboring properties contain radioactive materials and that chemicals, including carcinogens, were found at elevated levels in groundwater beyond the perimeter of the complex and can be traced to the landfill’s leachate.

The EPA has assumed a See No Evil attitude toward this site despite efforts in the region to clean up radioactive contamination. We can only wonder if this is a black neighborhood.