This is an article from the 2026 Civitas Examiner (Volume 3, No. 2) and was written by one of our students, Neil. 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.
Just outside St. Louis City limits, underneath an inconspicuous landfill, sits a large amount of nuclear waste left during the Manhattan Project, and an active underground fire spreading to said nuclear waste. This issue has already affected thousands of St. Louis residents across 21 ZIP codes, and residents in nearby neighborhoods report unusually high cancer rates. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designated the site a Superfund in August 1990. The designation places the site on the federal Superfund’s National Priorities List, initiates investigations into the site’s origins and extent, and makes it eligible for a federally supervised cleanup.
The site’s history begins in 1942, during the Manhattan Project, with a company called Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, which operated in downtown St. Louis. Mallinckrodt was a uranium processing site for the U.S. government from 1942 to 1945. This made St. Louis a major part of the development of early nuclear weapons but also created a large amount of nuclear waste that had to be removed from the area. The waste was moved to temporary storage centers near the airport, but by 1973, officials had yet to find a permanent solution. The government’s solution was to sell it to a company called the Cotter Corporation. The Cotter Corporation then hired contractors to illegally dump the waste, mixed with dirt, into the Westlake Landfill. In a 2017 documentary called “Atomic Homefront,” director Rebecca Cammisa assembled several former truckers and laborers who talked about the lack of oversight in the dumping of their waste and how they had no idea what was happening until after headlines broke. They recounted how they had full access to dump the radioactive material wherever they pleased inside the landfill and how they mainly trucked in at night when fewer people were working. Estimates indicate around 8,700 tons of radioactive waste and about 39,000 tons of contaminated soil and debris were dumped into the landfill.
At the time this was happening, very little was understood about the long-term effects of radioactive exposure and the longevity of radioactive contamination. Scientists now understand that these radioactive contaminants can stick to soil, can travel along waterways, and can cause long-term health effects even in small amounts. The victims of Cold Water Creek are grim illustrations of this. For a short while between moving the waste from the temporary storage to Westlake, Cotter Corp. left uncovered piles of the waste mixed in with soil near an upper section of Cold Water Creek. When the rain hit, the piles remained uncovered, and parts were washed into the creek. The contamination spread downstream and heavily affected residents who lived nearby. In the same documentary, Cammisa visited some residents who recounted the annual flooding of the creek, which would often seep into their homes. They also recounted the many family and friends they lost to cancer. Cammisa also visited one of the people who got cancer in the neighborhood while she was fighting stage 4 cancer. The cancer patient, Michelle Seger, and her sister recounted playing by and in the creek often as kids with their friends and neighbors. They, like the others interviewed, remember family and friends lost to cancer. The EPA has been involved in many town halls in the city about the issue but refused to say that the cancer hotspot was caused by the contaminated creek and refused interviews with the documentary. They have been working to excavate and track the pollutants, but investigations led to finding more contaminants, both further downstream and further inland from the creek. These investigations have led to excavating parks and buying out homes deemed dangerous to live in. There is hope, however, as recent investigations have determined the cleanup efforts successful, as in a survey of buildings in the neighborhood, they found no traces of Manhattan Project-related contamination.
In 2010, another problem emerged at the landfill site, a growing subsurface smoldering event (SSE). An SSE is a flameless, high-heat chemical reaction that is slowly consuming the trash and debris in the area, producing a nauseating odor and toxic gas, both of which are affecting nearby residents. Nearby residents have also had complaints ranging from nosebleeds to lung and eye infections as well as higher chances of developing asthma and other chronic illnesses since the SSE began. To prevent the smoldering event from reaching the radioactive waste, crews installed heat extraction systems, monitoring probes, and an ethylene vinyl alcohol barrier. The EPA also recognized the urgency of the matter and pushed up its timeline for the excavation of the nuclear waste, with plans to start in late 2027. The clean-up is expected to take several years; however, due to the EPA’s previous inaction, it remains a focus for nearby residents.
