Although Coldwater Creek was named an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site in 1989, its cleanup has been mired in red tape ever since, according to local environmental advocates.
“You have feasibility studies, you have proposed plans, you have design phases, you have all these different processes that you have to follow through CERCLA,” said Christen Commuso, community outreach specialist with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment (MCE).
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) was established by Congress in 1980, to provide for a tax on chemical and petroleum companies so that federal authorities would have funding to clean up Superfund hazardous waste sites.
But Commuso wants the federal government to invest in more than just a clean-up of Coldwater Creek and adjacent areas.
“I would like to see some sort of health program or a type of screening and treatment program instituted for St. Louis residents,” she said. “It's been confirmed through federal and state health agencies that people living around this area have been harmed. There are higher instances of cancer here in this region versus the rest of the state.”
Coldwater Creek was allegedly contaminated as a result of nuclear weapons that were manufactured there during the time of World War 2 and the Army Corps of Engineers is in charge of the cleanup
“St. Louis was the first secret city where a St. Louis-based company, via handshake, agreed with the federal government that they would start processing and enriching the uranium that they were bringing in from the Belgian Congo to create the bombs that were dropped on Japan,” Cummuso told the St. Louis Record. “The radioactive waste is uranium and uranium byproducts.”
As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, Jana Elementary School, which is adjacent to Coldwater Creek, was closed after a report by the Boston Chemical Data company found levels of harmful radioactive waste in classrooms and the playground of a Florissant elementary school.
“The Army Corps of Engineers has scheduled to clean up the Jana School property in Summer 2023, but the creek is 14 miles long, and they're not even done investigating the entire Creek at this point,” Cummuso added.
Hhe Army Corps of Engineers Formerly Utilized Sites Remediation Program (FUSRAP), however, said the contamination that requires remediation on Jana School property is subsurface and low-level.
"The contamination is 650 feet from the school, at the bottom of a 30-foot drop-off, and in an area with thick vegetation and piles of deadfalls," said John Paul Rebello, who works in public affairs with Army Corps of Engineers STL District. "While extremely unlikely that a child or animal would “dig it up”, bringing up the surface would not create any significant risk."