The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday that it would require a barrier separating the radioactively contaminated West Lake Landfill from the smoldering Bridgeton Landfill. It’s a decision that has been under consideration for more than two years.
“Based on the information we have to date, we do think it’s prudent to proceed with the installation of the barrier,” EPA spokeswoman Angela Brees said.
Yet construction is still months away because the agency has yet to hammer out a legal agreement with the company that would lead the project.
While the announcement “seemed a little bit thrown together,” area activist and Maryland Heights resident Dawn Chapman said she was “happy that EPA has kept their promise.”
“To see them acknowledge a barrier is necessary, that was great to see,” said Chapman, a co-founder of JustMomsSTL, which advocates for the removal of the West Lake waste.
For years, landfill owner Republic Services and state and federal regulators have considered a subterranean firebreak separating the smoldering Bridgeton Landfill from the adjacent West Lake Landfill, just a few hundred feet away. Initial survey work on the barrier started in October 2013.
In February 2014, Karl Brooks, then-regional administrator for the EPA, said design of the barrier was nearly complete and construction would begin soon.
But uncertainty over the location and extent of West Lake’s radioactive contamination gave officials pause and prompted more studies of West Lake, which was contaminated 40 years ago with nuclear weapons processing waste.
Now, EPA says those assessments, conducted with assistance from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, are close to finished.
“We now have a better understanding of where those materials are located,” Brees said. “We’re at a point now where we had enough data where we needed to make a decision about a wall.”
The latest report on the radioactive contamination’s location is under final review and will be released soon, she said.
But a final route for the firebreak has yet to be decided. And there’s no construction timeline, nor is there a final legal agreement requiring the work from the private companies that would pay for it.
The announcement, which came via press release on Thursday afternoon, follows EPA’s commitment in October to announce plans on the barrier by the end of the year. EPA Regional Administrator Mark Hague, in a statement, called the announcement a “first step” in the installation of a barrier.
“We are now working through the highly complex details of implementing our decision and the associated legal steps,” he said in the statement. “Once the plan is finalized, we are committed to providing this information to the public.”
The EPA still has to reach an agreement with the potentially responsible parties that will fund and manage the construction project. Brees said EPA hopes to finalize the legal agreements in “early 2016.”
Along with Republic Services, uranium processor Cotter Corp. is a potentially responsible party, although Chicago power company Exelon retains Cotter’s financial liability because its Commonwealth Edison utility used to own Cotter. The U.S. Department of Energy is also potentially liable.
Brees said that, right now, the EPA was “solely working” with Republic Services on the project. Republic Services spokesman Richard Callow said the company was “ready” for the barrier project. He declined to discuss a construction timeline.
Republic Services agreed to build a barrier more than two years ago and has said it would proceed as soon as it has regulatory approval.
A spokeswoman for Cotter and Exelon said in a statement that “Cotter has not yet seen the EPA’s plan regarding the isolation barrier and plans to review it upon receipt.”
Brees indicated that the EPA would order the potentially responsible parties to perform the work, if necessary.
“We will use all available enforcement authorities to ensure implementation,” she said.
Though pleased with the decision, Chapman said she and her group would continue to support federal legislation that would add West Lake to a special Corps of Engineers nuclear cleanup program. The lack of a legal agreement on the barrier project is an example of why she’s frustrated with the EPA’s Superfund program.
“When you talk about wasting time, that’s where a lot of time is wasted in Superfund is getting responsible parties to agree and who pays what percent and all that, and that sounds like where we are,” she said.
The EPA’s plan will also require other engineering controls, such as additional cooling loops that cycle water through pipes as a way to control temperature. The EPA suggested in October that it was considering using only cooling loops instead of the underground barrier.
The agency has said the barrier is only a stopgap measure and won’t affect its proposal for a final cleanup at West Lake, set to be finished at the end of 2016. The agency could decide to remove the waste or cap or encapsulate it on site. The barrier won’t have any impact on any of those options, EPA said.
Ed Smith, who follows nuclear waste issues for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, doubts that.
“The one way to make sure a smoldering fire doesn’t reach radioactive material is to remove the radioactive material,” Smith said. “I see (the barrier) as a possible way for the EPA to rationalize leaving the radioactive waste there.”
Blythe Bernhard of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/epa-proceeds-with-barrier-between-burning-landfill-and-radioactive-waste/article_334a4ffa-1abf-5bd3-82c2-f34d95219087.html
