Federal agency to study contamination at Missouri creek

ST. LOUIS -- A federal agency has announced it plans to study radiological contamination at a north St. Louis County creek some residents are concerned may be linked to several cases of cancer.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry announced plans last month to gather information on contamination at Coldwater Creek for the next 18 to 24 months. The agency met with residents for the first time Wednesday.

"Hopefully this helps us say these illnesses that we're seeing in this community may have been caused by this environmental contamination," said Erin Evans, an environmental-health specialist with the agency.

Evans tried to ease residents' fears the agency's findings would be influenced by other federal agencies wary of cleanup costs.

"We are an independent, non-regulatory agency," she said. "I get my pressure from you."

Since 2013, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been going downstream on the creek, removing soil contaminated by uranium-processing waste from a nuclear-weapons program in a government storage site near Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

The Corps had found contamination in residential backyards and parks along Coldwater Creek in Hazelwood, Missouri.

The agency said the processing waste is similar to material that was dumped in the West Lake Landfill, but it does not believe residents of Bridgeton, Missouri, have been exposed to the waste.

The Missouri health department also is looking at whether cancer cases in the area around the creek are connected to contaminated water.

The St. Louis County Health Department plans a health survey of people who grew up in the area in the 1970s and 1980s.

Some residents think the study will confirm what they already know about health issues some in the area have who grew up playing in Coldwater Creek and its contamination.

Residents have been collecting disease information from neighbors and relatives who grew up near Hazelwood and Florissant, Missouri, where the creek runs past backyards and sometimes flooded.

Maureen Kolkmeyer, who lived near the creek for 40 years, said, "We all know we've been contaminated. We don't need a department to come in and let us know."