Two new lawsuits have been filed by groups of residents of St Louis living near radioactive waste sites there, according to recent reports.
The St Louis, Missouri, residents in question are reportedly seeking compensation in relation to negligence with regard to the handling of dangerous radioactive waste materials. Two separate class action lawsuits were filed at St Louis County court — in relation to sites including the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, and elsewhere.
Named as the defendants are: Exelon Corp, Republic Services, Cotter Corp, and 7 others as well.
That lawsuits state that the “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 law.”
Reuters provides some background:
“The history of nuclear waste in the St Louis area dates back to the US atomic bomb program from World War Two and spans an array of nuclear processing facilities, storage sites, material transfers and suspected leaks along the way. The US Environmental Protection Agency has deemed some of the St Louis-area places that were a part of that history ‘Superfund’ sites, placing them among highly polluted areas that are a national priority for clean-up.
“The West Lake site, originally used for agriculture, became a limestone quarry in 1939. But starting in the 1950s, portions of the area were used to dispose of municipal refuse, industrial wastes and construction debris, the EPA said. In 1973, some 8,700 tons of leached radioactive barium sulfate from the Manhattan Project, the World War Two-era atomic bomb-development program, were mixed with 38,000 tons of soil used to cover trash dumped at the site, according to the EPA.”
An effective means of “disposal” for the firms in question no doubt…
To all of the nuclear energy proponents out there: this sort of thing is exactly why many people are skeptical of the technology; the wastes will always be “disposed of” in only the cheapest ways (i.e. leave it for someone else; bury it in the poor people’s land; dump it in international waters; etc).
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