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| Today's briefing. Outside, they can smell the stench. |
Bill Gates' exploding nuclear landfill is right now stinking up a well-attended briefing in St. Louis ... about the exploding nuclear landfill.
Trash titan Bill Gates owns about one-fourth of Republic Services, which owns the landfill in Bridgeton, Mo. Today, experts are briefing public officials at Machinists' Hall about the health and safety risks posed by the landfill. Of special concern is the presence of untreated nuclear weapons wastes at the site.
The stench can be smelled right outside the Hall. It's one of the reasons the landfill has been in the news lately, along with its expanding underground fire, a recent explosion and the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) announcement this week that it has detected radiation.
According to a press statement from the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, the Teamsters and Jobs with Justice:
Radioactive wastes dumped at the West Lake Landfill in 1973 sit in the Missouri River floodplain with no protective barriers between the wastes and the groundwater. The site is located 8 river miles upstream from where drinking water is pulled for more than 300,000 North St. Louis County residents.Bob Criss, director of the Stable Isotope Laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis and a Missouri River expert, said it's inexcusable that so little is known about the radioactive waste after 30 years.
Few things are as absurd as dumping almost 9,000 tons of waste containing radionuclides, in an unlined landfill, in a floodplain, in a major metropolitan area.Peter Anderson, executive director of the Center for a Competitive Waste Industry, raised the possibility of a dirty-bomb-like explosion. He called Republic's track record "deplorable."
...there is a very real prospect that lethal material will be released into the atmosphere and groundwater.
Moreover, in view of recent methane explosions and the fact that pools of methane gas seem to lie in proximity to jet fuels and other accelerants, there is the non-trivial possibility of a dirty bomb scenario.Anderson said public officials should hire experts to test the landfill and take charge of fixing its problems. Republic should pay for those fixes, he said.
Marvin Kropp, president of Teamsters Joint Council 13, said Teamsters and their families work at and live around the Bridgeton landfill, and Teamsters around the country work for Republic.
Our experience is that Republic can’t be trusted – it is hurting working families and communities across the country. We want to see them protected.And how's this for an irony alert: Gates' foundation aims to eradicate polio around the world ... through improved sanitation.
