Radioactive contamination that still haunts St. Louis today.
By The Grand Canyon Trust
Mallinckrodt produced over 200 million pounds of purified natural uranium and left dozens of contaminated sites scattered across the St. Louis metro area.
The Missouri Department of Health found high incidences of colon, prostate, kidney, bladder, female breast, childhood brain, and childhood nervous system cancers around the sites.
Up to 1,950,000 cubic yards of radioactive waste from St. Louis were approved for processing and final disposal at the White Mesa Mill, but ultimately were not sent there according to the available records.
Age 69 and still tough as a boot, Ken Sleight — considered by many to be the basis for the character of Seldom Seen in Edward Abbey’s “The Monkey Wrench Gang” — drew a line in the sand when it came to importing radioactive waste to his beloved canyon country. The proposal to bring radioactive waste to the White Mesa uranium mill from three sites contaminated by atomic weapons production in St. Louis, Missouri was no exception.
The White Mesa Mill had been designed in the late 1970s as a conventional uranium mill to process locally mined uranium ore over a limited project life of only 15-20 years.
But it had gotten into the business of processing radioactive waste — often for a fee — extracting a small amount of uranium from it, and dumping the leftovers into massive waste pits that sit atop precious desert groundwater.
In 1999, Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials were evaluating a proposal to allow the mill to accept radioactive waste from St. Louis. Ken Sleight, who had guided and outfitted wilderness trips in the region professionally since 1955, wrote to them, requesting to be allowed to participate in the decision-making process:
I have lived in southern Utah most of my life and have directly experienced downwind radioactive fallout from the nuclear bomb testing in Nevada…I and my passengers have occasionally camped near or on old uranium mines tailings during river travel on the Green, Colorado, and San Juan Rivers, unknowing of the dangers.
We have drunk from the rivers and wallowed about in the sands of the Green, Colorado, and San Juan Rivers for years unknowing to us that the rivers were heavily contaminated with radionuclides and other chemicals…While at my residence, office, and bookstore in Moab, I was for years exposed to the wind-swept clouds of dust radiating from the Atlas uranium mill tailings at Moab.
These cumulative amounts of radiation must be taken into account, for my own and others concerns, before adding yet another source of radiation in the form of radioactive material brought in from the St. Louis area. –Ken Sleight
Sleight’s concerns were grounded in hard truths about the toxicity of the St. Louis waste that was to be shipped to the White Mesa Mill.
In the 1940s, only a few years after the first uranium fission reaction and the start of World War II, the St. Louis-based Mallinckrodt Chemical Company became the first industrial-scale producer of purified uranium and uranium metal in the United States. After World War II ended, Mallinckrodt continued operations as the Cold War arms race spurred a uranium mining and production boom.
Connection to the Manhattan Project
From the Belgian Congo to captured Japanese waste to Colorado Plateau tribal communities, Mallinckrodt's toxic legacy stretches around the globe.
Much of the uranium that fed this boom was sourced on the Navajo Nation, at great cost to Navajo miners, the Navajo people, and the land itself.
Traditionally, culturally, uranium was something we knew we didn’t want to take out of the ground. When WWII happened the United States, to support their Manhattan Project, needed uranium which ultimately developed the first nuclear bomb. We have a lot of uranium ore here, so naturally, they came here. – Oliver Whaley, Executive Director, Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency
By the time its operations in St. Louis ended in 1957, Mallinckrodt had produced over 100,000 tons (200 million pounds) of purified natural uranium and left a legacy of radioactive contamination that still haunts St. Louis today. While there are dozens of contaminated sites scattered across the St. Louis metro area, the White Mesa Mill’s owner sought permission to dispose of waste from three sites in particular: the Latty Avenue Site, the St. Louis Airport Site, and the St. Louis Downtown Site.
The Latty Avenue Site and the St. Louis Airport Site, located in Hazelwood and Berkeley, Missouri, were used to store toxic and radioactive waste generated by Mallinckrodt. The St. Louis Downtown Site, in St. Louis proper, housed Mallinckrodt’s uranium-processing plants.
Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, Building No. 117
Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, Building No. 25
Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, Building No. 100
Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, Building No. 50
Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, Building K
Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, Building No. 705
Mallinckrodt Chemical Works - Library of Congress.
The Latty Avenue Site alone stored: 74,000 tons (148 million pounds) of liquid waste resulting from extraction of uranium from rich ore from the Belgian Congo that still contained approximately 113 tons of uranium; 32,500 tons (65 million pounds) of liquid waste resulting from extraction of uranium from Colorado ore that still contained roughly 48 tons of uranium; and 8,700 tons (17.4 million pounds) of leached barium sulfate containing about seven tons of uranium; and tons of contaminated scrap.
Airport Site - U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Stacked drums at the St. Louis Airport Site.
At the St. Louis Airport Site, the contaminated residues and materials were strewn on open ground, stacked in drums, and buried on the property, including next to Coldwater Creek, which runs adjacent to the St. Louis Airport Site, through North St. Louis County, and is a tributary to the Missouri River.
The storage of these wastes on-site for years contaminated the properties and surrounding neighborhoods with uranium, thorium, radium, and other contaminants that lingered in soil, water, and in debris from contaminated structures that had been demolished.
When the United States Department of Health and Human Services conducted a public health assessment of the Coldwater Creek area, it concluded,
Children and adults who regularly played in or around Coldwater Creek or lived in its floodplain for many years in the past (1960s to 1990s) may have been exposed to radiological contaminants…. this exposure could increase the risk of developing lung cancer, bone cancer, or leukemia.
In a review of the cancer incidence data from eight ZIP codes adjacent to Coldwater Creek, the Missouri Department of Health found that the incidence of several types of cancer, including colon, prostate, kidney, bladder, female breast, childhood brain, and childhood nervous system cancer was statistically significantly elevated compared to the Missouri state rates.
The cleanup of these toxic sites sent regulators and industry scrambling for suitable disposal sites. Whether the White Mesa Mill qualified was a subject of heated debate.
We need to know the rationale in opening a nuclear waste dump in such a spectacular region of our Nation. This canyon country, a very unique and special place, qualifies as a World Heritage Site based on its natural and cultural heritage. Many business firms, dependent on the naturalness and beauty of the region and the tourist trade, would be adversely affected…It would destroy the very thing the outfitters’ customers are coming to see and experience. This is our capital resource. For an effective and viable business, I am dependent on the preservation of a clean, beautiful, and untarnished environment. – Ken Sleight
Sleight wasn’t the only one calling foul. Envirocare of Utah (which later became EnergySolutions) also challenged the White Mesa Mill owner’s attempt to import the St. Louis waste. Located in Clive, Utah, Envirocare was the first private facility other than a uranium mill in the United States to be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to dispose of radioactive waste generated at sites that processed ore to extract uranium or thorium.
Envirocare’s issues arose from the fact that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was allowing the White Mesa Mill to process the same type of by-product material that Envirocare was licensed to dispose. Envirocare protested, arguing that the mill was operating as a de facto waste dump, creating an unfair economic and competitive advantage for IUSA, the company that owned the mill, and threatening the environment.
Despite the combined efforts of Sleight and Envirocare to participate in the decision-making regarding the St. Louis waste, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission refused to consider the substance of their arguments, keeping them out because the commission did not think they would be harmed by the St. Louis waste.
In particular, since the disposal of tailings is already authorized under an existing license, the question of possible injury to Mr. Sleight is whether he will be injured because the tailings from the milling authorized by this amendment will be more hazardous than tailings already authorized under the license.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the amendment to allow anywhere between 656,000 and 1,950,000 cubic yards of radioactive waste to be transported from St. Louis for processing and final disposal at the White Mesa Mill, but, from the public record, it appears the waste was never shipped to the mill.
