St. Louis Is Burning

[marmar]

By Steven Hsieh
May 10, 2013 10:00 AM ET


(Rolling Stone) There's a fire burning in Bridgeton, Missouri. It's invisible to area residents, buried deep beneath the ground in a North St. Louis County landfill. But the smoldering waste is an unavoidable presence in town, giving off a putrid odor that clouds the air miles away – an overwhelming stench described by one area woman as "rotten eggs mixed with skunk and fertilizer." Residents report smelling it at K-12 school buses, a TGI Fridays and even the operating room of a local hospital. "It smells like dead bodies," observes another local.

On a Saturday morning in March, one mile south of the landfill, several Bridgeton residents have gathered at a small home in a blue-collar subdivision called Spanish Village. Concerned citizens Karen Nickel and Dawn Chapman are here to answer questions posed by four of their neighbors. "How will I ever sell my house?" "Am I going to end up with cancer 20 years down the road?" "Is there even a solution?"

In February, the landfill's owner, Republic Services, sent glossy fliers to residents within stink radius claiming the noxious odor posed no safety risk. But official reports say otherwise. Temperature probes reveal the fire has already surpassed normal heat levels. Reports from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) indicate dangerously high levels of benzene and hydrogen sulfide in the air. In March, Missouri's Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) – which has jurisdiction over Bridgeton Landfill – quietly posted an Internet notice cautioning citizens with chronic respiratory diseases to limit time outdoors. A month after Republic distributed its potentially misleading flier, the state attorney general sued the company on eight counts of environmental violations, including pollution and public nuisance. And this week, as part of a settlement set to be announced Tuesday, Republic sent another round of fliers offering to move local families to hotels during a period of increased odor related to remediation efforts.

Nickel and Chapman are stay-at-home moms; Chapman has three special-needs kids. Neither of them wants to spend her time worrying about a damn landfill fire. But until someone higher up the power chain intervenes, they have sworn to call municipal offices, file Sunshine requests and post notices to the community's Facebook group, no matter how unsettling the facts they uncover. Scariest of all: The Bridgeton landfill fire is burning close to at least 8,700 tons of nuclear weapons wastes. .............................(more)

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/st-louis-is-burning-20130510#ixzz2TegZpbeE

[Buzz Clik]

1. This is pretty odd. If the landfill is following federally mandated guidelines ...

...it should have been prevented and would be almost immediately extinguished.

Somebody is letting this landfill get away with this.

[bluedigger]

3. Probably grandfathered in.

[Buzz Clik]

5. Perhaps. But if they don't put a stop to the pollution, they'll be shut down.

[datasuspect]

7. you think the rule of law still matters

how funny

[AnnetteJacobs]

16. Try walking in front of any police station with a joint in your hand

You'll have your answer very quickly.

[bread_and_roses]

21. The "law" is for the little people - smoking joints - NOT for Corps

and not for the 1%. So - your point? That the US has more citizens in jail than - I forget how much of the rest of the world - way too many at any rate, and many for minor pot offenses or stealing a candy bar or something - while the Corps lie outright, break the law, ignore regulations, and rob the rest of us blind and nothing happens. Hardly a testament as to the US being under "rule of law.'

[Buzz Clik]

19. I didn't know today was "Abandon All Hope" Day.

[CrispyQ]

4. Follow the money.

The Missouri Coalition for the Environment, which has advocated for the removal of West Lake wastes for more than a decade, in part blames Missouri's ties to the nuclear energy industry for the senators' lack of action. Both McCaskill and Blunt, as well as Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, have pushed for bringing more nuclear reactors to the state. Any more attention to a hazardous radioactive dump might get in the way of that messaging. "They won't touch this with a 10-foot pole," says the Coalition's safe energy director, Ed Smith. "It doesn't fit their narrative of clean nuclear power and 'jobs, jobs, jobs.'"

Blunt has yet to make any public statement on the issue, and his office has not responded to requests for comment. McCaskill, meanwhile, supported the 2008 cap-and-leave plan for the West Lake radwaste; on March 12th of this year, she sent a response to several concerned citizens, assuring them, "I will continue to monitor these situations and ensure that any proposal put forward to address them provides a safe, cost-effective solution for Missourians."

McCaskill's reference to a "cost-effective solution" didn't sit well with the activists in Bridgeton. "I don't give a flying fuck how much it costs," says Chapman. "This is about my children."

[Buzz Clik]

6. How could this be related to the nuclear industry? What would they have to gain?

[Brother Buzz]

8. The nuclear mining industry is trying to suppress Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown's new and improved...

flux capacitor...fusion generator which uses garbage as fuel.

[Buzz Clik]

20. So they're burning deep underground

Now I get it.

[Phillip McCleod]

26. i love chapman's response..

'I don't give a flying fuck how much it costs..'

[awoke_in_2003]

15. If you have money...

you can do any damn thing you want in this country, especially when the only entity that might say anything about it is a neutered EPA.

[Buzz Clik]

22. Damn.

You know this to be true of municipal waste disposal? I mean with all the big money there is in burying garbage?

[awoke_in_2003]

23. Big money in waste disposal...

why do you think the mafia has its fingers in it in some states?

[CrispyQ]

2. Are human beings ever going to demand the corporate behemoths be reined in?

They are a tool for the elite to act without accountability or responsibility.

The EPA officially lists four potentially responsible parties for the West Lake Superfund site. One is the U.S. Department of Energy. A second is Cotter Corporation, a company whose contractors secretly dumped nuclear waste at West Lake in the Seventies, as uncovered soon after by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The others are Bridgeton Landfill LLC and Rock Road Industries LLC – both subsidiaries of Republic Services, which currently runs the landfill. Under Superfund law, these four parties must ultimately foot the bill for any remedial actions ordered by the EPA; at the same time, it is these same four parties that contract and pay for all EPA studies leading up to a decision. This might seem like a conflict of interest, but Gravatt insists it's all on the up and up: "We tell them what to do." It must be a coincidence, then, that the EPA's capping plan cost the potentially responsible parties only $41 million, compared to up to $415 million required to actually excavate the waste.

We are destroying our ecosystem for the profit of a few.

[awoke_in_2003]

14. People will wake up...

when it is too fucking late to do anything about it.

[FiveGoodMen]

25. My exact fear for the last 12 years.

[Liberal_in_LA]

9. i had no idea this was happening

[freshwest]

10. And the anti-nuke groups I was with in the seventies were mocked.

But I've never been able to bring myself to say 'I told you so.'

[zeeland]

12. Carter was the last President that gave a damn about this country.

We're on our own.

[MoreGOPoop]

11. K & R

Dammit

[zerosumgame0005]

13. so what will they do?

Complain while tossing away disposable diapers and enough food left to rot that could feed a small 3rd world country? The sad fact is we have been trained to throw away everything, no matter if it is perfectly usable. which is why we have floating garbage piles of plastic in the ocean...

[AnnetteJacobs]

17. Yes! Yes! This is all the little guys' fault!

Touche!

[zerosumgame0005]

24. well, yes in a large part it

IS our fault. people shop at Wal-mart and Amazon despite KNOWING how it destroys local business, we waste water and food and electricity and then we complain when the bills come in. WE have to stop being the grease for corporate wheels...IMHO anyway WE let them get away with this stuff by electing and re-electing morons feebs and crooks.

[Phillip McCleod]

27. as wendell berry loved to point out..

..even if every citizen stopped driving cars today, we'd barely make a dent in petroleum consumption .. thanks to agribusiness and transportation of goods consuming up to about 80% of the fossil fuels.

fact is we little people aren't the real source of the problem. it's a combo of corporations and the infrastructure itself.. roads, generators, cheap plastic diapers, just the *way things are*.. that makes it so very hard to change.

that said, i expect if we suddenly, as a united people, walked the walk.. that infrastructure and those corporations would change pretty fucking fast.

instead, almost half of america thinks climate change is a hoax, etc.

[siligut]

18. "It smells like dead bodies"

Good place to toss dead bodies then, I would think, no one would be the wiser.

But where is the benzene coming from? That stuff will kill you.

[tritsofme]

28. I was just outside of St. Charles last year, and I definitely encountered this smell.

Even in my hotel room with all the windows closed. It was disgusting.

[Buzz Clik]

29. That Rolling Stone article is filled with oddities.

I have emailed one of the experts quoted in the article to clear up a few points.

Not sure why, but when an economist starts waxing scientific about health and hydrology in front of a lay audience, I get nervous.