Lawmakers want Corps, not EPA, to remediate landfill

ST. LOUIS -- Four members of Missouri's congressional delegation called Thursday for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take over remediation of the West Lake Landfill site in St. Louis County, saying the Environmental Protection Agency is moving too slowly in addressing concerns about nuclear contamination.

Sens. Roy Blunt and Claire McCaskill and Reps. Ann Wagner and William Lacy Clay introduced legislation to transfer remediation authority and put the site in the Corps' Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program.

Blunt and Wagner are Republicans; McCaskill and Clay are Democrats.

Residents who live near West Lake have grown frustrated with delays in remediating the site.

An EPA spokesman declined to comment on the bill but said the agency is making "significant progress" at West Lake.

West Lake, in the town of Bridgeton, Missouri, was contaminated 40 years ago after a contractor for a uranium processing company illegally dumped waste there.

It was declared a Superfund site in 1990.

In 2008, the EPA announced a plan to cover the landfill with a cap of rock, clay and soil.

The agency decided to reconsider after opposition to that plan, but seven years later, no new plan has been announced.

Adding to the concern is an underground fire burning no more than 1,200 feet away in the adjacent Bridgeton Landfill.

The owner of both landfills, Republic Services, has spent millions to build interceptor walls and install other safeguards to ensure the fire does not make it to the nuclear waste.

The company insists there is no risk.