Community engagement is required to keep things moving now that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that two Missouri superfund waste sites are among 49 nationwide receiving $1 billion to initiate cleanup, according to a Missouri-based environmental advocacy group.
“One thing that we found in general with these cleanup programs is that the more public pressure on the site being placed on the agency charged with the cleanup, the usually the quicker and more expedient the cleanup is,” said Jared Opsal, executive director of Missouri Coalition for the Environment (MCE)
The two Missouri sites that are targeted for cleanup are the Valley Park TCE Site in Valley Park and the Vienna Wells Site in Vienna.
“There's a reason why they are called superfund sites,” Opsal told the St. Louis Record. “That's about the worst designation you can have for pollution. Both of these sites have major public health implications. That's why the sooner this cleanup can take place for these and all the others around the entire country and the state of Missouri, the healthier that our communities are going to be because this isn't just an issue that impacts a worker that was at the site many years ago. This is still impacting communities and people that live nearby.”
Funds will be used for soil remedy so that TCE contamination will no longer occur at the groundwater aquifer at Valley Park and so that PCE contamination will no longer impact the drinking water supply at Vienna, according to an EPA statement online.
“We encourage community organizations, elected officials and just interested individual citizens to make sure that they're reaching out and keeping that public pressure on them because that's important to make sure that they're not just kicking this can down the road especially now that there are the funds available for so many of these cleanups,” Opsal said. “It's not a budget issue like it might have been in the past.”
MCE is involved with the West Lake Landfill superfund site in St. Louis County as well as other Superfund cleanups statewide.
“We found with the West Lake Landfill and the related section, Cold Water Creek, in North St. Louis County that it's really only been public pressure that keeps things moving along so we keep communities engaged, inform them how to contact not just their elected officials but also these complex organizations and government who are the decision makers and where the levers of power are that they can pull as a community,” Opsal said.
About 60% of the sites receiving funding for new cleanup projects are in historically black and brown communities, according to EPA data.
“We also know that young children and newborns are much more highly impacted by these sorts of issues because they're still developing and they are more likely to be harmed by these chemicals, which is not something that anyone really should be exposed to,” Opsal added. “If it's a carcinogen, it can cause all sorts of issues with people's health. This is a continual source of contamination for people in these areas so that's why it's extremely important to get these things cleaned up as quickly as possible.