This is an article from the June 2025 Civitas Examiner (Volume 2, No. 3) and was written by one of our students, Alice C. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue. To read more Civitas Examiner stories or to submit your own, click here.
Not necessarily hidden in North St. Louis County, a community lives in trouble. Waste left over from the Manhattan project has spread into their river, Coldwater Creek, and infects the land surrounding the residents. This disease of waste has infected the lives and bodies of both residents who have been living there for generations, and those who have lived there for as short as a decade. The most alarming part of this situation is the lack of action from the US government. Despite the government’s role in the irresponsible neglect of this material, they did not make any effort to aid this community for several decades, stating that the waste posed minimal threat, according to the Missouri Independent. Luckily, thanks to advocacy of a local organization, Just Moms STL, the community is finally receiving the attention they deserve from the EPA, and with the help of Senator Josh Hawley, they hope to increase state and federal attention to this issue by expanding RECA on the Big Beautiful Bill, but this process is slow and takes years of advocacy for minor changes to go into effect.
Unfortunately, the nuclear waste is not the only issue plaguing the community. The site next to this nuclear waste was WestLake Landfill, until it was closed in 1989 after being acknowledged as a superfund site by the US government. Shortly after the closure of West Lake Landfill, an accident occurred which resulted in the formation of an underground fire fueled in the cavern below. This accident was caused by a worker attempting to fix an issue of leaking methane, but they unfortunately ended up allowing oxygen into the flammable cavern, which started the fire. In 2008, the EPA started to execute plans to help minimize the effects of this landfill on the occupants of nearby communities. These efforts included installing a landfill cover, groundwater and gas monitoring, along with the safe removal of radioactive material from the area. This fire is expected to not run out of fuel for at least 10 years, and if it comes into contact with the nuclear waste, the situation is likely to worsen. This is because when nuclear waste or smoke from these two disasters evaporates into the air, it could travel miles and harm the greater area more than it already has, and because currently, it is impossible to remove the waste from the fire without potentially fueling it even more.
One way that Just Moms STL has been advocating is awareness, bringing awareness to both their communities and their officials is their main goal of the organization. Lack of awareness during the 70s and the 80s is what caused the majority of the community to be affected with terrible diseases and cancers decades later. Kids played in nearby creeks without any warnings regarding runoff of nuclear waste, parents bought property with land soaked in it from the regular flooding, and the government allowed this waste to harm the people of St. Louis County and other cities, without checking for radiation in any of these sites until much later. This nuclear waste, which was left unchecked during the Manhattan project, was placed near the airport, and next to this landfill so that it would be ignored by the Germans in World War II; however, our negligence to deal with this substance properly, after the war, when the government knew that this waste was near residential areas is unacceptable. Something that you can do is ask your neighbors if they are aware of the nuclear waste in their city, and you can ask yourself what you would do if this were your community being harmed by this waste as well.
