Bill Text: MO HCR18 | 2013 | Regular Session | Introduced
Bill Title: Requests the United States Congress to transfer authority for the remediation of the West Lake Landfill radioactive wastes from the EPA to the Corps of Engineers' Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program
Spectrum: Bipartisan Bill
Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2013-03-28 - Referred: General Laws(H) [HCR18 Detail]
Download: Missouri-2013-HCR18-Introduced.html
FIRST REGULAR SESSION
House Concurrent Resolution No. 18
97TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
INTRODUCED BY REPRESENTATIVES ENGLISH (Sponsor), LAFAVER, WEBB, WALTON GRAY, PACE, HIGDON, BURNS, MILLER, BAHR, MCNEIL, HICKS, ENGLER AND HUBBARD (Co-sponsors).
WHEREAS, the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works (MCW), near downtown St. Louis, was contracted by the Manhattan District of the United States Army Corps of Engineers in April 1942 to determine how to purify tons of uranium and achieved success in only 50 days; and
WHEREAS, MCW then processed all the uranium used for the world’s first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in Chicago on December 2, 1942 that marks the birth of the Atomic Age; and
WHEREAS, MCW continued processing uranium for nuclear weapons for 15 years at the downtown St. Louis site, and another 10 years at Weldon Springs in St. Charles County, and generated tons of highly dangerous, long-lived radioactive waste; and
WHEREAS, the resulting radioactive wastes have been stockpiled, transported, spilled and have blown and eroded onto dozens of St. Louis locations over the subsequent 70 years; and
WHEREAS, the United States Department of Energy remediated the Weldon Springs site’s 1.48 million cubic yards of radioactive waste at a cost of one billion federal tax dollars and also remediated many St. Louis sites; and
WHEREAS, in 1998 the Corps of Engineers took over the remediation of the St. Louis sites as part of the Formerly Utilized (Manhattan Project/Atomic Energy Commission) Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP); and
WHEREAS, under Corps leadership more than one million cubic yards of the MCW radioactive wastes have been excavated and transported to licensed radioactive waste disposal sites in Utah and Idaho at a cost of more than one billion federal tax dollars and the Corps expects to continue the St. Louis City and County remediation projects for an estimated four additional years; and
WHEREAS, only one St. Louis site contaminated with MCW radioactive wastes is under the jurisdiction of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), namely the West Lake Landfill, an EPA-designated Superfund site in Bridgeton, Missouri; and
WHEREAS, the West Lake Landfill is not a location designed to store radioactive wastes; and
WHEREAS, the West Lake Landfill site, located in the Missouri River flood plain and along the New Madrid earthquake fault, contains an estimated 143,000 cubic yards of MCW radioactive wastes that were illegally dumped there in 1973; and
WHEREAS, the West Lake Landfill radioactive wastes have already contaminated the soil and are already in contact with the groundwater that flows into the Missouri River about eight miles upstream from the Missouri American Water Company’s North Plant in Florissant, the drinking water resource for all of North St. Louis County above Interstate 70; and
WHEREAS, the West Lake groundwater also flows into the Missouri River upstream from the Missouri-Mississippi River confluence, just above the Chain of Rocks drinking water intake facility for the City of St. Louis; and
WHEREAS, the radioactive wastes will continue releasing radioactive liquids, particles and gases for hundreds of thousands of years and beyond; and
WHEREAS, exposure to radioactive liquids, particles and gases increase the risk of cancer, other life-threatening diseases, genetic mutations and birth defects; and
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the members of the House of Representatives of the Ninety-seventh General Assembly, First Regular Session, the Senate concurring therein, hereby request the United States Congress to transfer the authority for the remediation of the West Lake Landfill radioactive wastes from the EPA to the Corps of Engineers’ FUSRAP project with the urgent, related request that the wastes be excavated from the Missouri River flood plain and be transported to a licensed radioactive waste facility, away from water and away from people.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Chief Clerk of the Missouri House of Representatives be instructed to prepare a properly inscribed copy of this resolution for the Majority and Minority Leaders of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, and each member of the Missouri Congressional delegation.
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