There’s good news for environmentalism coming out of St. Louis, near the radioactive West Lake Landfill: The community is safe, the EPA has a clean-up plan, and the company that owns the landfill is even paying for it. No one could stop this kind of progress!
Except, as it turns out, for a group of environmental extremists who think that isn’t good enough. They’re trying to stop the current EPA cleanup plan and restart the process by transferring the authority of the site to the Army Corps of Engineers.
Located about 20 miles from St. Louis, West Lake Landfill served as a limestone quarry when it originally opened in 1939. In the 1970s, the abandoned quarry became a dumping ground for illegally disposed-of Manhattan Project radioactive leftovers. The illicit disposals by third parties eventually came to light, and in 1990, it came under the Environmental Protection Agency’s umbrella as a Superfund site– a contaminated area marked for special clean-up after a natural disaster or other environmental emergency.
Superfund is a good program, though it’s not known for its efficiency: It’s taken more than 25 years to produce a plan to clean up West Lake. Slow and steady wins the race, I suppose, and at least there is now a plan to fix the problem. Best of all, tests show there’s been no contamination to the local community.
Good, right?
Not good enough for a coalition of environmental activists, despite air quality, soil sample, and plant sample tests that show no elevated levels of radiation. (All of these tests have been approved by Obama’s EPA, by the way.) Ignoring the facts, as though they’re just obeying an article of faith about environmentalist obstructionism, this coalition is attempting jettison the plan and restart the process.
But the current data – from an Administration that is apparently too environmentally conservative for some! – shows the contaminated site isn’t a threat to St. Louis and the surrounding area. Fortunately, the Obama Administration is pushing back with some inconvenient facts. In a recent letter to one of their chief opponents on this, the EPA wrote:
And then there’s this even more direct update on the process:
With radiation found on and around the site lower than “background,” a normal, acceptable level of radiation anywhere on Earth, one supposes the environmental left will want to declare all of Missouri a Superfund site! At least that would be the logical conclusion to an illogical war of fear mongering.
If this coalition succeeds in the Show Me State, environmentalists would then have a path into other states to declare safe areas Superfund sites, cheapening the designation where it’s necessary and needlessly harassing municipalities where it isn’t.
Dumping contaminated materials in West Lake was wrong, and that it took so long to just decide on a clean-up plan is wrong too. The process needs to be more efficient.
But the obstruction, fear mongering, and willful ignorance is exactly what the community around West Lake doesn’t need. The community around West Lake landfill should be allowed to move on. The process has already taken more than 25 years and it shouldn’t take another 25 years. Meanwhile the EPA’s current plan could be announced in 2016 and completed in just a few years if it’s allowed.
Environmental extremists need to get out of the way, so the EPA can move forward with – y’know – protecting the environment.
Charles Sauer, an economist, is the president of the Market Institute.
