West Lake Landfill: A Radioactive Legacy of the Nuclear Arms Race

Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar, Institute for Policy StudiesRobert Alvarez (photo, left), Senior Scholar at Institute for Policy Studies, has prepared a report entitled "The West Lake Landfill: A Radioactive Legacy of the Nuclear Arms Race."

In 1973, the West Lake Landfill, in the Missouri River floodplain, and just upstream from a drinking water supply intake for St. Louis, became the illegal dumping ground for part of the Belgian Congo uranium wastes, leftover from the Manhattan Project, the race to build the first atomic bombs, tested in New Mexico, and dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. These wastes are loaded with Thorium-230, an alpha-particle emitting radioactive substance regarded as comparable, in radiological hazard, to Plutonium-239.

On Nov. 21st, Alvarez, along with Dr. Robert Criss of Washington University and Peter Anderson (Executive Director, Center for a Competitive Waste Industry), keynoted a presentation, sponsored by Missouri Coalition for the Environment, about an underground garbage dump fire now threatening the radioactive waste buried at West Lake Landfill. (See the event announcement and action alert). St. Louis Public Radio, KSDK, KMOV, KMOX, and the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported on the event. A video recording of the Westlake Landfill community meeting has also been provided by Missouri Coalition for the Environment.

In his summary, Alvarez reported:

"Of significance is the fact that the largest estimated amount of thorium-230, a long-lived, highly radiotoxic element is present at West Lake -- more than any other U.S. nuclear weapons storage or disposal site. Soil concentrations of radium-226 and thorium-230 are substantially greater than uranium mill tailing waste...The waste residues generated at the Mallinckrodt site were found to contain the largest concentration of thorium-230 from any single source in the United States and possibly the world. Thorium-230 concentrations were found to be some 25,000 times greater than its natural isotopic abundance. With a half-life of 77,500 years, thorium-230 makes up more than 80% of the measured radioactivity in soil at West Lake above cleanup limits set by the Department of Energy (DOE). Moreover, as the thorium-230 decays to radium-226, it will increase the radioactivity in the landfill 10 to 100 times over a 9,100 year period.

Given these circumstances, the West Lake landfill would violate all federal legal requirements, established over 30 years ago, for licensing of a radioactive waste disposal site...".

Criss has also prepared a report, earlier this year, entitled "Risk and Character of Radioactive Waste at the West Lake Landfill, Bridgeton, Missouri."

Kay Drey, a Beyond Nuclear board member, has long watchdogged the high-risk situation at the West Lake Landfill, along with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. They have long, tirelessly led the growing call for the radioactive wastes to be removed from this site vulnerable to flooding, erosion, and now underground fire. They are calling upon Missouri's U.S. congressional delegation to lead the effort to remove the decision making from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) -- which has previously called for the West Lake Landfill to simply be "capped" and abandoned to its fate -- and transfer it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Rolling Stone reported on the West Lake Landfill fire earlier this year, in an article entitled "St. Louis Is Burning." The article quoted Drey, Criss, Anderson, Ed Smith of Missouri Coalition for the Environment, as well as local residents.