St. Louis Oversight Committee Hosts Nuclear Contamination Update Meeting Thursday

If you are looking to be updated on what is going on with remediation efforts at areas of North County contaminated with nuclear and radioactive wastes, you'll want to be at the James J. Eagan Community Center Thursday night.

The St. Louis Oversight Committee will host its semi-annual meeting which allows residents in the area to speak face-to-face with people involved with the cleanup process at areas including in Hazelwood, with Coldwater Creek, as well as at and around Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.

Who: St. Louis Oversight Committee
When: Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 7 p.m.
Where: James J. Eagan Community Center, located at 1 James J. Eagan Drive in Florissant (lower level)

What are these meetings?

According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers website, the St. Louis Oversight Committee hosts public meetings twice a year.

The most recent meeting was November 8, 2012. At that meeting, USACE gave a presentation on FUSRAP, summarizing the remediation work that is taking place at all of the St. Louis area sites.

Government entities present included the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, EPA, Mo Department of Natural Health and the US Army Corps of Engineers.

What is the St. Louis Oversight Committee?

The St. Louis Oversight Committee is an independent group of community leaders consult on the cleanup of the St. Louis FUSRAP Sites. As a consultant, the committee provides comments, recommendations, and constructive criticism for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as it remediates contaminated areas.

What is the contamination?

The Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) began in 1974 to identify, investigate and clean up or control sites through the United States that had became contaminated from the nation’s early atomic weapons and energy programs during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Activities were performed by the Manhattan Engineer District (The Manhattan Project), or under the Atomic Energy Commission, prior to the Department of Energy being formed.

As a part of these projects, the U.S. government contracted the Mallinckrodt Chemical Company to use its downtown facility to extract uranium from ore so it could be sent to other facilities. The extracted uranium was then sent to other facilities for enrichment. This occurred from 1942-1957. The program covers multiple sites in the St. Louis area both in St. Louis County and in St. Louis City.

The St. Louis Downtown Site, (SLDS) is the source of the radioactive material. This location is where Mallinckrodt processed uranium for the U.S. government nuclear weapons complex. It was a 45-acre active chemical manufacturing facility located just 300 feet west of the Mississippi River.

The nuclear weapons' waste materials were stockpiled at several sites in North St. Louis County including at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. This site became known as the St. Louis Airport Site (SLAPS).

In the 1960s and 1970s, some of the waste material was sold to a private company, which transported the material to another location north of the SLAPS, and on Latty Avenue in the City of Hazelwood. This site became known as the Hazelwood Interim Storage Site (HISS).

Together, the North County FUSRAP site consists of the SLAPS, HISS and 78 vicinity properties known as SLAPS VPs. The U.S. Department of Energy was responsible for the remediation of the FUSRAP sites from the late 1970s until 1998. At that time the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) became the lead on the project.

Parts of Coldwater Creek are also a SLAPS Vicinity property. The creek has been affected by runoff from the FUSRAP sites. Coldwater Creek passes through several north St. Louis County communities including Florissant, Hazelwood, Black Jack and Spanish Lake. It was contaminated with uranium, thorium and radium.