I'm always a little nostalgic when the decades-old story about radioactive waste in the West Lake Landfill pops back into the news - nostalgic and nervous.

I can't say whether the Environmental Protection Agency has made the right decision in leaving low-level radioactive waste buried in the West Lake landfill not far from the Missouri River. But for personal reasons, the announcement a few days ago made me wonder again about the wisdom of expecting people to keep track of something dangerous over a long period of time.

Just look at the history of this very problem. The waste originated with Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, which was enriching uranium in the St. Louis area for nuclear weapons during the dawn of the atomic age. In the 1970s, efforts were made to clean up contamination from this work. Part of the plan was to ship contaminated dirt by train to Colorado to be cleansed.

But that didn't happen. Instead, some of it ended up in a much closer and cheaper spot - the West Lake Landfill in St. Louis County. How do we know?  Because a young reporter at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch set out to do an explanatory story on what had happened to all the contaminated sites in the area. And when she called the company in Colorado that was supposed to have received the waste, she discovered most of it had never arrived.

Eventually, she found a landfill employee who remembered seeing the trucks of soil arrive at West Lake. Federal investigators took it from there and verified that the landfill contained hot spots. What to do about it has been under discussion ever since

Over the years, environmentalists and federal regulators have weighed the difficulties of removing the material, the level of hazard, the chance of a flood, and so forth. A few days ago, EPA regional administrator John Askew announced that the material would stay put, with a new cover and other safety monitoring to secure it. "We never walk away from anything," he said. "We will be there watching this site as long as the EPA and this country are viable."

That may be a responsible choice. Yet equally responsible promises were made for the original clean-up. Like the O-ring that failed in the space shuttle, like the Boston tunnel whose ceiling collapsed when the rivets failed, things just didn't work out quite as planned.

Fortunately, someone noticed. Maybe we should feel secure in the belief that even if government regulation falters, others will notice. But whenever the 35-year-old West Lake story surfaces, I feel something else. First comes a twinge of nostalgia because I was the reporter who broke the story - in my 20s at the time. Second comes humble recognition that if I was the means for keeping the system honest, then we need a much better system.

I hope that system is in place - in West Lake and elsewhere  - and that it will remain functional for the centuries it takes for hazards to dissipate. But the history of West Lake makes me wonder.

Average user rating