Two lawsuits have been filed against parties representing the Waste Lake Landfill and Coldwater Creek storage sites in Bridgeton, Missouri, a report by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch says. The lawsuits, filed by a business owner and homeowner in Bridgeton, say damages were caused by negligent handling of radioactive waste at the landfill and storage sites.
Both lawsuits seek class action status and were filed in St. Louis County Circuit Court. Defendants named in the lawsuit include Republic Services, Phoenix, Exelon Corp., Chicago, Cotter Corp., Denver, and the St. Louis Airport Authority.
The lawsuit states, “Defendants treated these hazardous, toxic, carcinogenic, radioactive wastes with about the same level of care that a reasonable person might give to common household garbage, dumping it without authority from the state of Missouri and in violation of the law.”
Neither lawsuit states the amount of compensation being sought by the plaintiffs.
One plaintiff is John Kitchin Jr., owner of North West Auto Body Co., who claims he purchased his property next to the West Lake Landfill in 1995 and did not learn of contamination until 2017. The report says he is seeking damages on behalf of all property owners within an 11-square-mile area of the West Lake Landfill, including Bridgeton and Earth City.
Tamia Banks, the second plaintiff and resident of St. Ann, is seeking damages on behalf of property owners in the Coldwater Creek flood plain between St. Charles Rock and Old Halls Ferry roads. The report says Banks bought her home in 2005 and learned that her property was contaminated with radioactive material this year.
Bridgeton Landfill LLC, a Republic subsidiary that runs the lawsuit, released a statement that said, “Federal and state regulatory agencies … have all concluded, through years of study and true science, that the landfill poses no risk to people outside of the landfill’s property.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Washington, named the West Lake Landfill a Superfund site and placed it among highly polluted areas that are a national priority for cleanup, the report says.
The West Lake Landfill sit was originally used for agriculture and became a limestone quarry in 1939. The report says portions of the area were used to dispose of municipal refuse, industrial waste and construction debris in the 1950s. In 1973, 8,700 tons of leached radioactive barium sulfate from a World War II-era atomic bomb development program were mixed with 38,000 tons of soil and used to cover waste dumped at the site. In 1990, the landfill and adjacent waste disposal facilities occupying 200 acres were designated as a single Superfund site by the EPA.