Associated Press
ST. LOUIS (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency has announced plans to clean up a St. Louis area landfill where Cold War-era nuclear waste was illegally dumped four decades ago by partially excavating it.
The EPA said Thursday that the plan calls for removing the majority of radioactive contamination that poses a health risk and installing an engineered cover system at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton. The plan is projected to cost $236 million.
Republic Services, the company that owns the landfill, is responsible for much of the cleanup cost.
The site, added to the Superfund list in 1990, is particularly concerning to nearby residents because it sits next to another landfill where an underground fire smolders. State and federal officials have downplayed the risk that the smoldering could reach the radioactive material.
