Documents: Hazardous waste illegally trucked to Missouri

BERGER, Mo. -- Thirteen million pounds of hazardous waste has been illegally stored in a building in an eastern Missouri flood plain for nearly four years, according to federal and state documents obtained by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The newspaper reports a federal indictment was filed this year in St. Louis against companies from Missouri and Ohio and their officers. It alleges 9 million pounds of the waste first was dumped in Mississippi before being dug up and illegally taken to Missouri.

A lawyer for Penny Duncan, owner of Missouri Green Materials, said Duncan was unaware the material was hazardous. She was told by her husband, Daryl Duncan, the material was recyclable and could be used as a concrete additive, lawyer Paul D'Agrosa said.

A lawyer for the Ohio company, U.S. Technology Corp. of Canton, and its president, Raymond Williams, 70, declined to comment to the Post-Dispatch. A phone message left by The Associated Press on Tuesday was not returned.

At issue is "bead blast" waste created by the removal of paint from tanks, planes and other equipment on military bases. It contained cadmium, chromium, lead and other heavy metals used in paint pigments, the indictment states.

U.S. Technology leased the blasting materials to clients and was supposed to dispose of the waste, the indictment states, adding the waste is not "hazardous" if 75 percent of the blasting materials are recycled within one year.

The indictment claims on 20 days in 2013, as much as 300,600 pounds of waste a day was shipped from Mississippi to the Missouri Green Materials warehouse in rural Franklin County, near Berger. The indictment states no permit was obtained to move the material to Missouri.

The warehouse is in an area overgrown with weeds. It is across the road from Little Berger Creek, which empties into the Missouri River less than a mile away. A state water permit unrelated to the hazardous waste states the building is in the flood plain.

The potential health risk of the waste isn't clear. An email message left with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources on Tuesday was not returned.

A September 2016 consent agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calls for U.S. Technology and Williams to forge a plan to properly remove the waste from the Missouri facility and test for any soil contamination.

But federal prosecutors said in the April indictment the waste still was there. D'Agrosa said he had not been informed of any leaks or contamination.