Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
5/15/2015
A new round of sampling at the West Lake Landfill began this week as the Environmental Protection Agency Region Seven attempts to understand exactly where all the radiologically-impacted material at the site is located. According to the EPA, this effort is a continuation of the investigation performed in late 2013 and early 2014 to determine whether RIM is present in the area between Area 1 of the West Lake Landfill and the Bridgeton Landfill. Concerns had emerged at the time that additional RIM was located closer to the smoldering fire at the Bridgeton Landfill than previously thought. “Ultimately, we expect the evaluation of this additional data and other information derived from the new round of work will help inform EPA’s final remedy selection process for the site,” said EPA Region 7 Acting Administrator Mark Hague.
Contractors are expected to complete the field portion of the tests within four weeks, but a final report is not expected until the beginning of next year, the EPA said. The site’s potentially responsible parties, including Republic Services and the Department of Energy among others, agreed to hire and pay the contractors completing the work. The potentially responsible parties have also agreed recently to additional tests within Operable Unit 1 Areas 1 and 2, which lies between the West Lake Landfill portion of the site and the Bridgeton Landfill portion. The estimates of RIM volume from each sampling will be used by EPA to more thoroughly explore and evaluate alternative remedies for the West Lake Landfill, including full and partial excavation and the construction of an isolation barrier, the EPA said.
Agreement Comes after Dispute Over How Close Material Is to Fire
The agreement from the potentially responsible parties comes after months of disagreement over how much closer the smoldering fire in the Bridgeton Landfill was spreading to the RIM. Back in September, Todd Thalhamer, a consultant for the state of Missouri, suggested that temperature spikes in monitoring probes and gas interceptor wells spread throughout the South Quarry, the location of the smoldering fire, indicated it may be spreading to the ‘neck’ area that connects to the West Lake portion of the site. In response, the site operator brought in a consultant service, Civil & Environmental Consultants, Inc. (CEC), to provide analysis on the spreading fire. CEC concluded that the fire is spreading away from the ‘neck’ area, not toward it. Republic, however, agreed to honor the state’s request to install 12 more Temperature Monitoring Probes just above the ‘neck’ area, but the company maintained the fire was under control.
The West Lake Landfill cleanup project has taken on an added sense of urgency given the possibility of RIM close to the fire. Currently, the West Lake Landfill is under the supervision of the EPA’s Superfund program, which took over responsibility for the site in 1990. The EPA is conducting an engineering survey and groundwater analysis of the site to determine the best location to construct an isolation barrier to prevent the spread of the fire located near the radioactive part of the landfill. The EPA has also brought in the Army Corps of Engineers to assist on the project by providing technical review and oversight of the site owner’s cleanup plans and activities at the site after public outcry called for a more experienced approach to the cleanup. In an analysis of the project last fall, the Corps estimated that the construction of an isolation barrier to separate the fire from the contamination would not start for at least a year.
