On Earth Day EPA Region 7 Administrator Meg McCollister Tours West Lake Landfill Superfund Site In Bridgeton, Missouri, With Federal, State, Local Leaders

On Earth Day, EPA Region 7 Administrator Meg McCollister tours the West Lake Landfill Superfund Site in Bridgeton, Missouri, with federal, state and local leaders.

The visit to the Superfund site followed a meeting at Bridgeton City Hall, where McCollister and the Region 7 site team shared the latest update on the status of work at the site and the release of a new interactive online map that shows sampling results. The sampling results map is featured on a new dashboard webpage that EPA published today at: https://www.epa.gov/mo/westlake-dashboard.

“EPA has overseen a tremendous amount of work and progress at the West Lake Landfill during the Remedial Design phase,” McCollister said. “We are doing what we committed to do when we started this work: find the radioactive material so it can be safely and efficiently addressed in the cleanup stage.”

EPA is overseeing the Remedial Design Investigation of the site by the Potentially Responsible Parties (PRPs). Following EPA’s requirements and under its oversight, the PRPs have been working to further identify the locations, depths and boundaries of the radiologically impacted material to design the remedy.

McCollister’s meeting with local stakeholders included representatives from congressional offices, state legislators, city of Bridgeton, Pattonville School District, Pattonville Fire District, St. Louis County Department of Public Health, SSM Health DePaul Hospital - St. Louis, and local community advocacy groups Just Moms STL and the West Lake Landfill Community Advisory Group.

“Being here on Earth Day to connect with the people who live in and around Bridgeton is a priority for me, so I can better understand what they have been going through and their concerns,” McCollister continued. “We are listening and committed to the health and safety of the Bridgeton community. That’s what fuels our oversight of the cleanup at the West Lake Landfill Superfund Site.”

While meeting with local stakeholders, McCollister announced that EPA Region 7 will hire two additional experts to join the West Lake Landfill site team. These staff include a senior remedial project manager, who will report to the Region 7 administrator, and a senior community involvement coordinator who will work with the Bridgeton community.

In addition to increased staffing, McCollister also announced a suite of new information tools for the public to track site progress throughout the Remedial Design phase. These tools include an interactive online map of the West Lake Landfill that shows sampling locations and their results. The locations containing radiological material will be safely addressed in the cleanup.

Also among the new tools is an interactive online dashboard that provides status updates for 49 major components of the Remedial Design phase, as well as progress on the overall Remedial Design phase and five major Remedial Design work categories. EPA will continue to develop and improve this site over time, based on user feedback surveys conducted from the web.

The interactive map and dashboard are available online at https://www.epa.gov/mo/westlake-dashboard.

The West Lake Landfill is a Superfund site on the National Priorities List. Beginning in 1973, an estimated 8,700 tons of radiologically impacted material, or RIM, was mixed with 39,000 tons of soil and transported to the landfill. This mixture was then used as cover material in landfill operations.

For more information about Superfund, visit: www.epa.gov/superfund.

For more information about the West Lake Landfill, visit EPA’s Site Profile Page.