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An activist group of St. Louis area moms concerned about underground smoldering at the Bridgeton Landfill plans to picket outside the Environmental Protection Agency’s Washington, D.C. offices on Wednesday.
Members of Just Moms STL went to the nation’s capital this week in another attempt to get a meeting with EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. The group said it hoped to discuss the proximity of the subsurface fire to the nearby radioactive West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, where World War II-era nuclear waste is stored. Residents have worried for years about what could happen if the fire reached the nearby radioactive waste.
But, despite an onslaught of calls to the agency’s scheduling department, group co-founder Karen Nickel said its latest effort Tuesday was met with silence. She said the group has tried for two years to secure face-time with McCarthy.
“We are scared, we live in fear, we are prisoners in our own homes. We are afraid to let our children outside to play,” she said. “This is unacceptable. We live in the United States of America and in mid-Missouri, we are preparing for a Chernobyl-like event.”
The EPA previously said it plans to build a fire break to prevent the smoldering from reaching the waste, and it is also testing and studying what would happen if it does.
Just Moms STL’s trip to D.C. comes shortly after the U.S. Senate passed a bill to put the Army Corps of Engineers in charge of West Lake Landfill, instead of the EPA; many residents had called for such a change because they felt the EPA is taken too long to implement remediation. Group representatives met Tuesday with Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill and Republican Senator Roy Blunt.
But Russ Knocke, spokesman for landfill owner Republic Services, said the moms group’s efforts amount to a distraction.
“This sort of stunt, along with current attempts to move the site into the (Army Corps’) FUSRAP program, only serve to delay the fix for the site,” he said in a written statement. “The EPA should be allowed to finish its work, quickly.”
But Nickel said Just Moms STL wants to plead for the EPA to use its authority in overseeing the Superfund site to evacuate residents. She said many residents are also alarmed about the strong odors produced by the subsurface fire and health problems they have experienced.
“It’s hard to breathe, we have asthma, we have bloody noses, rashes,” Nickel said. “Our children are suffering from headaches.”
The EPA and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources both previously reported studies found no human health risks from air pollution from the site. Similarly, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) also stated that while it found higher radon levels in the air around the radioactive West Lake Landfill site, it posed no risk to human health.
But the St. Louis County health department announced Monday that in two weeks it will start a health survey of any respiratory symptoms experienced by residents living within two miles of the Superfund site.
Nickel said her group also wants the EPA to order a property assurance plan to buy out homes around the landfill at fair market value for residents who want to leave. The EPA did not immediately return a request for comment.
While in D.C., the organization is teaming up with Water You Fight For, a group made of residents affected by the water crisis in Flint, Mich. Nickel said the EPA turned “a blind eye on the children of Flint,” and it is now doing the same in St. Louis.
“Their community suffered through silence from the EPA just like we are here in Bridgeton, and I think it’s time for the moms of Flint and the moms of St. Louis to make a pact and stay strong to fight for our children,” she said.
Despite the unsuccessful attempts to get a meeting and no guarantees for the future, Ed Smith of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment is supporting the moms and their push.
“Gina is in Washington, D.C. and not St. Louis, so we have to go there to let her know that we want that meeting,” he said.
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[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”] In this Feb. 9, 2016 photo, JUST MOMS co-creator Karen Nickel criticizes what she says was inaction of EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, pictured over her left shoulder, in the West Lake/Bridgeton landfill fire and nuclear waste controversy. The group joined with activists from the Flint, Mich., water crisis, for a press conference at the National Press Club. Chuck Raasch, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
WASHINGTON • Activists around the West Lake Landfill controversy have joined with those from the Flint, Mich., water crisis to put pressure on the federal Environmental Protection Agency to respond more forcefully to both.
JUST MOMS stl, a group organized to force the EPA to reduce the threat of radioactive waste at West Lake Landfill, help families within a mile relocate, and assure property values for those within five miles, held a joint press conference with Flint activists here Tuesday.
The issue of whether, and how, to clean up waste from the federal government’s nuclear weapons programs at West Lake has been made more critical by an underground fire at the adjacent Bridgeton Landfill.
About a dozen representatives of the Maryland Heights-area group said they will also picket EPAheadquarters Wednesday, protesting what they say has been EPA administrator Gina McCarthy’s unwillingness to meet with them, or to act more urgently on their behalf to address exposure to cancer-causing agents and other health hazards from the sites.
That standoff with the EPA is not new, and McCarthy has previously refused to meet with representatives. What is new is the linkage between West Lake and Flint, where the EPA and other local, state and federal authorities have been under fire for allowing lead exposure in water there to persist, endangering the health of families in that community.
Flint activists say recalcitrance and stonewalling from government agencies, and especially the EPA, have left residents exposed to cancer-causing lead and other health problems.
“Their community has suffered through silence from the EPA just like we are here in Bridgeton,” said JUST MOMS stl co-founder Karen Nickel at Tuesday’s press conference. “I think it is time for the moms of Flint and the moms of St. Louis to make a pact and stay strong and fight for our children.”
Melissa Mays, a founder of a Flint group called Water You Fighting For, said, “I can only imagine the fear and anger that the Bridgeton families feel, because we feel it for you. We are right here with you and we are going through the same thing. To this day, no one is helping us.”
The two women said their groups planned to share share health and other information, and continue to join forces to pressure the EPA.
A special counsel appointed by the state of Michigan said Tuesday that civil and criminal charges were possible, including manslaughter, in Flint. The federal Department of Justice is also looking into that crisis.
JUST MOMS stl, a group organized to force the EPA to reduce the threat of radioactive waste at West Lake Landfill, help families within a mile relocate, and assure property values for those within five miles, held a joint press conference with Flint activists here Tuesday.
The issue of whether, and how, to clean up waste from the federal government’s nuclear weapons programs at West Lake has been made more critical by an underground fire at the adjacent Bridgeton Landfill.
About a dozen representatives of the Maryland Heights-area group said they will also picket EPAheadquarters Wednesday, protesting what they say has been EPA administrator Gina McCarthy’s unwillingness to meet with them, or to act more urgently on their behalf to address exposure to cancer-causing agents and other health hazards from the sites.
That standoff with the EPA is not new, and McCarthy has previously refused to meet with representatives. What is new is the linkage between West Lake and Flint, where the EPA and other local, state and federal authorities have been under fire for allowing lead exposure in water there to persist, endangering the health of families in that community.
Flint activists say recalcitrance and stonewalling from government agencies, and especially the EPA, have left residents exposed to cancer-causing lead and other health problems.
“Their community has suffered through silence from the EPA just like we are here in Bridgeton,” said JUST MOMS stl co-founder Karen Nickel at Tuesday’s press conference. “I think it is time for the moms of Flint and the moms of St. Louis to make a pact and stay strong and fight for our children.”
Melissa Mays, a founder of a Flint group called Water You Fighting For, said, “I can only imagine the fear and anger that the Bridgeton families feel, because we feel it for you. We are right here with you and we are going through the same thing. To this day, no one is helping us.”
The two women said their groups planned to share share health and other information, and continue to join forces to pressure the EPA.
A special counsel appointed by the state of Michigan said Tuesday that civil and criminal charges were possible, including manslaughter, in Flint. The federal Department of Justice is also looking into that crisis.
Sens. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo; and Reps. Ann Wagner, R-Ballwin, and William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, last May wrote McCarthy asking that she meet with the JUST MOMS group. But Nickel said they got no response. She said the agency was flooded this past week with about 1,000 calls from St. Louis area callers, but got no response in another request for a meeting with McCarthy.
A spokesman for the EPA pointed to efforts the agency said it is doing to confront both problems. A spokesman highlighted EPA Regional Administrator Mark Hague’s Jan., 11 report on what the agency did in 2015 at West Lake.
“We’ve completed field investigations necessary to further define the extent and location of he radio-logical materials at the site, which is a critical step to move us toward proposing a final remedy by the end of 2016,” Hague said. “We also recently announced our decision for the installation of an in-ground, physical isolation barrier on site along with other engineering controls.”
Of Flint, EPA spokesman Curtis Carey said the agency’s top priority in ‘Flint “is the safety of residents. The agency is part of a larger, on-the-ground, federal response focused on developing short- and long-term solutions to the crisis. ”
Clay, Wagner, Blunt and McCaskill have also sponsored a bill that would transfer authority over the landfill from EPA to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It has passed the Senate, but not yet the House. Members of the group were expected to meet with both Wagner and Clay, the two members of Congress’s spokespersons said.
In addition, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster wrote Clay and Wagner on Tuesday saying he supported their bill, charging that “the EPA has time and again made promises but failed to deliver results.”
But landfill owner Republic Services warned that the transfer could delay a cleanup the EPA has promised to have in place by the end of the year and could cost taxpayers more money.
Republic spokesman Russ Knocke called the press conference a “stunt” that, coupled with the authority transfer bill, would prevent the EPA from being “allowed to finish its work, quickly.”
A Wagner aide said that under the bill pushed by the Missouri delegation, cleanup costs would still be on Republic even if federal control shifted to the Corps. Missouri’s congressional delegation is pushing for the change because the EPA “has clearly dragged its feet on this issue,” said Wagner’s spokesperson Meghan Burris.