Where Do the Children Play?

April 13, 2021 / stellamarisproductions / Leave a comment

How Bridgeton ended up spending $350,000 to build a new playground at the city’s radioactively-contaminated ball fields.

Bridgeton Mayor Terry Briggs and Missouri State Sen. Brian Williams share in the ribbon-cutting on January 22, 2021 for the new $350,000 playground located at the radioactively-contaminated Bridgeton Municipal Athletic Complex.

Bundled against the cold and appropriately masked, representatives of the St. Louis Community Foundation and Bridgeton Parks Department joined Bridgeton Mayor Terry Briggs and Missouri Sen. Brian Williams January 22 for the opening of the new $350,000 playground at the Bridgeton Municipal Athletic Complex.

In his remarks at the dedication ceremony, Williams praised the city’s generous expenditure. “This playground opens up even more opportunities for families to enjoy community and get fresh air,” Williams said. “This is a community with its eye on the future, where families can live and play safely because this city invests in its people.”

Unfortunately, the senator omitted inconvenient details such as the radioactively contaminated soil at the site.

The city of Bridgeton paid for the playground with a grant from the Bridgeton Landfill Community Project Fund, which was set up in 2018 to dole out the multi-million-dollar settlement agreed to by the state of Missouri and Republic Services for the trash company’s environmental violations at the nearby West Lake Superfund site, which is also contaminated with nuclear waste dating back to the Manhattan Project.

As a part of that unprecedented deal, the office of then-Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley — acting on behalf of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources — handed over $12.5 million to the St. Louis Community Foundation, a private charity. Under the terms of the agreement, the private foundation has sole responsibility for distributing public funds to eligible, non-profit community organizations within four miles of the landfill.

The state senator’s decision to focus his remarks on the future is understandable. But his optimistic vision turned a blind eye on BMAC’s dark past, omitting any reference to hazardous materials at the site.

The complicated history related to the city’s ownership of the property dates back more than a half century, when Bridgeton purchased the land from an investment group headed by the owner of B&K Construction, the same company that illegally dumped tons of radioactively-contaminated soil at West Lake Landfill.

A decade ago community activists began raising concerns over the potential risks posed by children playing ball at BMAC, citing its toxic link to the nearby landfill. This created tensions between some residents and Bridgeton city officials, who claimed there was no cause for alarm.

Ultimately, the EPA acted as the arbiter of the dispute and sided with city officials, reassuring the public that there was no cause for alarm.

In 2014, EPA Region VII administrator Karl Brooks held a press conference at Bridgeton City Hall with then-Mayor Conrad Bowers to advise the public that their fears were unwarranted. Brooks based his conclusion on test results that had yet to be released. He blamed the press for causing a panic, and said that the agency’s calculations were based on science.

But EPA documents later released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal Brooks’ comments were deceptive. The internal agency emails indicate test results cited by Brooks to bolster public confidence were themselves questioned by an EPA official days before Brooks’ pronounced the ball fields safe.

Cecilia Tapia, director of Environmental Sciences and Technology for EPA Region 7, cited differing action levels for radioactive isotopes and advised her colleagues that they should consider swapping one standard over another. Internal EPA emails released under the Freedom of Information Act show that

In her email message, Tapia cited the EPA’s supplemental feasibility study’s “action levels,” but added this caveat: “It may be more appropriate to use the SLAPS numbers.”

Using one set of numbers instead of the other could have effected the EPA’s decision on BMAC.

SLAPS is the acronym for the 21.7 acre St. Louis Airport Site, a radioactively-contaminated property originally under the control of the U.S. Department of Energy. In 1997, that clean up was handed over to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has authority over it and other sites in the St. Louis area through the DOE’s Formerly Utilized Site Remediation Program (FUSRAP).

DOE’s permissible levels are generally stricter than the EPA’s corresponding standards.

EPA official Cecilia Tapia

Tapia’s comment is subject to interpretation, but any way it’s sliced the numbers cited in the related email chain among EPA contractors and agency officials show one undeniable fact: The EPA had verified through its own testing that there were radiation levels of concern at BMAC, but then acted to downplay the significance of its own findings.

News Blackout

August 22, 2019August 28, 2019 / stellamarisproductions / Leave a comment

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch overlooked EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s visit here last month, helping coverup the Trump regime’s scheme to downgrade the West Lake Landfill Superfund Site’s status in favor of jump starting a money-making cobalt mine in Southeast Missouri.

Ed Smith, Harvey Ferdman, Karen Nickel, Andrew Wheeler, Dawn Chapman and Bridgeton Mayor Terry Briggs at Bridgeton City Hall on July 31.

It should come as no surprise that the Flat River Daily Journal scooped the St. Louis Post-Dispatch earlier this month, but it is, nonetheless, disturbing given the ramifications of what is at stake.

On August 1, the Journal, a small-town newspaper in Southeast Missouri, reported on EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s tour of a shuttered lead mine near Fredericktown in Madison County, Mo. that is being resurrected to extract cobalt.

The Post-Dispatch did not report the story.

Earlier the same day, Wheeler had also met with community leaders at Bridgeton City Hall to discuss the troubled West Lake Landfill.

The Post-Dispatch missed that story, too.

Both the landfill and the mine are EPA Superfund sites. Together they illustrate the Trump administration’s environmental priorities or lack thereof. But readers of the Post-Dispatch remain largely unaware of this strange symbiotic relationship and its potential environmental consequences because the newspaper didn’t report on Wheeler’s visit.

The gaffe occurred despite the EPA announcing the Fredericktown stop in an online press release.

Opposition to Trump administration’s environmental policies by the newspaper’s editorial page may have played a role in the snafu, but whatever the reason, readers of St. Louis’ only daily newspaper were left in the dark.

Wheeler met the morning of July 31 at Bridgeton City Hall with concerned St. Louis County residents to discuss issues related to the radioactively-contaminated West Lake Landfill site. Those present included Ed Smith, policy director of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment; Harvey Ferdman, chairman of the West Lake Community Advisory Group; Bridgeton Mayor Terry Briggs; and Karen Nickel and Dawn Chapman of Just Moms STL, the group that has spearheaded the campaign to expedite a clean up of the long neglected site.

After the meeting in Bridgeton, Wheeler headed south to tour the cobalt mining site in Madison County, Mo., which is polluted with tailings from past lead mining operations. Wheeler and Republican U.S. Rep. Jason Smith rendezvoused at the mine to promote the 20th anniversary of the EPA’s Superfund Redevelopment Initiative, a program that spurs the reuse of contaminated land by private enterprise.

EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler and U.S. Rep. Jason Smith touring Missouri Cobalt near Fredericktown, Mo. on July 31. [photo credit: The Flat River Daily Journal, Victoria Kemper.]

Both West Lake Landfill and the mine near Fredericktown are Superfund sites, but under the Trump administration they are categorized differently, and West Lake appears to now be getting the short end of the stick.

That’s because the president’s first EPA administrator Scott Pruitt created a Superfund Task Force that prioritizes Superfund sites nationwide. Wheeler has continued the program. The Westlake Landfill was originally on the national priorities list. But shortly after Wheeler announced the West Lake final record of decision in September 2018, he removed the site from the priorities list, inserting the mine near Fredericktown in its place.

” I actually addressed my concern with Wheeler that EPA might decrease its intensity on West Lake since it was removed from the administration’s personal priority list following the record of decision,” says Smith, the development director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment. Smith adds that he hasn’t observed any noticeable decline by the EPA in carrying out its decision, and that Wheeler assured him of the agency’s commitment.

“As much as I don’t like many things the EPA is doing under this administration, I think we can agree the record of decision at West Lake is a major step in the right direction,” Smith says. “MCE is continuing to engage EPA for further removal under its groundwater investigation with the goal of 100% removal.”

Despite that optimistic view, the situation on the ground appears less rosy.

Remedial action remains stalled at West Lake and is not expected to begin for years. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has fast tracked the clean up of the mine in Madison County, which is co-owned by St. Louis businessman Stacy Hastie, the founder of Environmental Operations Inc., a company that specializes in cleaning up polluted sites through the use of public funding and state tax credits.

Down the hatch: Mining tycoon and environmental cleaner upper Stacy Hastie.

As the Post-Dispatch and other news outlets have reported, Hastie’s company dominates the St. Louis environmental clean up industry by making hefty contributions to politicians, sometimes receiving de facto, no-bid contracts in return that have cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

Hastie bought the defunct Madison County, Mo. lead mine in 2018 with partner J. Randall Waterfield, an Indiana financier. Their company — Missouri Cobalt — says on its website that it will soon begin extracting cobalt, a valuable mineral now in high demand because of its use in the manufacture of smart phones, electric car batteries, and guided missiles.

As a part of the arrangement, Hastie formed a separate company — Environmental Risk Transfer — to handle the environmental clean up of the EPA’s Madison County Mines Superfund site, where the mine is located. The added side deal allows him to profit from both the mandated EPA Superfund clean up and the future mining operations.

This is seen as a win-win for Hastie and the Trump bund, which favors business interests over environmental and human health concerns. In this case, Wheeler, a climate-change denier and former coal industry lobbyist, is the president’s chosen pitchman to promote merging government and private interests. Reopening the mine also fits the administration’s trade policies, which favor domestic production and turns a blind eye to future pollution problems.

Hastie’s cobalt mine has received priority status from the EPA at the apparent expense of the West Lake Landfill clean up. But with the Trump administration in control of the agency that might not be an altogether bad turn of events for those who would prefer the full removal of radioactive waste from the landfill.

The latest twists in the saga mirrors the site’s long, sordid history. The EPA has dragged its feet in cleaning up the radioactive contamination at West Lake since 1990, when it took control of the site, where Manhattan Project waste was dumped illegally in 1973. More recently, it took a decade to finalize the latest, flawed decision after community opposition forced the agency to reconsider its initial plan to bury all the waste on site. The terms of that 2018 decision now calls for leaving almost a third of the radioactive contamination in the landfill, where it will continue to leak into the Missouri River aquifer, while further studies of groundwater contamination continue. The cost of partial removal of the waste is pegged at more than $200 million.

In June, a Post-Dispatch editorial lambasted Wheeler and the EPA for a plan to impose draconian measures that will further restrict public access to agency documents through the Freedom of Information Act. The editorial decried the new rule because it would allow Wheeler and his minions to censor responses to FOIA requests with the stroke of the pen. Now the Post-Dispatch appears to be inextricably tangled in a game of tit for tat with Trump’s EPA. By not reporting on Wheeler’s visit the newspaper withheld vital news from its readers, leaving citizens of the St. Louis region caught in the crossfire — victims of collateral damage.

Last

Smoke Screen

July 22, 2019July 22, 2019 / stellamarisproductions / Leave a comment

Parsons Corporation, the lead design consultant on the EPA’s West Lake Superfund cleanup, previously conducted secret tests for the Army in St. Louis.

Parsons Corporation operated a secret aerosol testing program for the Army in 1953 at 5500 Pershing Ave. in St. Louis.

Parsons Corporation, the company tapped by the EPA to design the first phase of the long delayed West Lake Landfill Superfund cleanup, conducted secret aerosol testing in St. Louis for the U.S. Army in the 1950s, according to research conducted by sociologist Lisa Martino-Taylor.

Parsons ran the covert military operation out of an office in the 5500 block of Pershing Ave. in 1953, according to former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter William Allen, who also investigated the case. The tests involved the spraying of poor, inner-city neighborhoods without residents knowledge. Workers who participated in the study were also kept in the dark.

Martino-Taylor first released her findings concerning the secret Army testing in December 2011 in a dissertation, while a doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri. Her study received international media attention. She followed up her research in 2018 by publishing a book on the subject, Behind the Fog: How the U.S. Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans.

Speaking on Canadian national radio in 2012, Martino-Taylor revealed how the classified work was concealed from the public. “There were layers of secrecy to this project,” said Martino-Taylor. They had studies embedded within other studies. Much of this is still classified today.”

Smoke Screen: June 23, 1953 St. Louis Post-Dispatch press account created a false cover story for the secret tests conducted by Parsons for the Army.

The studies were originally initiated as a part of the work of the Manhattan Engineering District, the secret program to build the atomic bomb. Coincidentally, the radioactive waste at the West Lake Landfill was a byproduct of uranium processing carried out for the Manhattan Project by Mallinckrodt Chemical Works of St. Louis.

Referring to the 1953 aerosol testing here, Martino-Taylor, explained in the Canadian radio interview how her research uncovered a pattern of interconnected secret experiments. “Out of context it looked like an isolated incident,” she told CBC talk show host Carol Oss. “But when I started looking at the larger context about larger military contracts at the time, there was a lot of evidence that it was part of a national program that in fact included: injection, ingestion and inhalation studies on radiological materials done by a highly coordinated group of scientists-turned-military-officers that were working on the Manhattan Atomic Bomb Project. They were doing these studies around the country and they were looking for an area to target for an inhalation study. St. Louis was their closest match for Stalingrad and Moscow.”

Parsons and the Army falsely described the experiments in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as feasibility studies related to testing “a kind of smoke screen” to protect the St. Louis urban population from potential aerial attacks by foreign enemies.

Parsons also purchased help wanted ads in the Post-Dispatch seeking workers to conduct the testing. Decades later, the same newspaper revealed that three of the unsuspecting workers had later contracted bladder cancer and were seeking answers as to whether their illnesses were related to the secret program in which they unknowingly participated.

Post-Dispatch science reporter William Allen reported in July 1994, that the former Parsons employees in St. Louis were questioning whether their exposure to zinc cadmium sulfate during the testing was the cause of their cancer.

Don’t ask, don’t tell: Help wanted on a need-to-know basis.

A second round of classified testing in 1963 was conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service.

The EPA quietly announced Parsons as the preferred contractor for the West Lake cleanup at a recent meeting of the technical committee of the Community Advisory Group (CAG). A public meeting to discuss the clean up plans will be hosted by the community group Just Moms STL and EPA Region 7 on Thursday July 25 at 6:30 p.m at the John Calvin Presbyterian Church, 12567 Natural Bridge Road in Bridgeton.

Parsons, which was founded in Pasadena, Calif. in 1944 by Ralph M. Parsons, was also involved in design studies related to future expansion plans of Lambert International Airport in St. Louis in the 1970s.

The selection of Parsons by the parties responsible for paying for the cost of the West Lake cleanup follows the EPA’s final record of decision, which was announced in the fall of 2018. The EPA’s plan falls short of widespread public support for the full removal of the radioactive materials at the site.

The Department of Energy, Republic Services and Cotter Corporation are jointly liable for the clean up of the site under the Superfund Law. The EPA assumed authority over the site in 1990. Radioactive waste dating back to the Manhattan Project and Cold War was illegally dumped at the location in 1973. The federal government has known about the illegal dumping since 1975.

The choice of Parsons, which continues to do extensive classified defense work for U.S. military and intelligence agencies, does little to dispel the prevailing lack of public confidence in the federal government’s long-stalled efforts to clean up the West Lake site.

Directive No. 10

December 7, 2018December 7, 2018 / stellamarisproductions / Leave a comment

Private intelligence contractors have been gathering scientific data and monitoring the environment in the St. Louis area for years — and not telling anybody.

During President George W. Bush’s administration, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce announced an inquiry into the National Bio-surveillance Integration System, an intelligence gathering operation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security administered by the Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC).

The House committee was then apparently interested in whether the bidding process was rigged.

In 2013, SAIC spun off a large portion of its classified government work by forming another company, Leidos. Both SAIC and Leidos have received multi-million-dollar contracts to do clean up work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Formerly Utilized Site Remediation Program (FUSRAP) in St. Louis, including the continuing cleanup of Coldwater Creek in North St. Louis County.

In addition to its environmental engineering component, Leidos is the largest private cyber espionage outfit in the nation with estimated government contracts worth $60 billion. The company employs 80 percent of the private-sector work force engaged in contract work for U.S. spy and surveillance agencies, including Homeland Security, the CIA and NSA.

Leidos also has a contract with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources through its federal facilities management division.

The earlier creation of the National Bio-surveillance Integration by Homeland Security through its contract with SAIC has received little subsequent attention. The program was authorized by President George W. Bush under Presidential Directive 10. Its stated mission was “to provide early detection and situational awareness of biological events of potential national consequence by acquiring, integrating, analyzing, and disseminating existing human, animal, plant, and environmental bio-surveillance system data into a common operating picture,” according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The Department of Homeland Security further describes the classified program as follows: “The National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC) integrates, analyzes, and distributes key information about health and disease events to help ensure the nation’s responses are well-informed, save lives, and minimize economic impact.”

Spurred by the outcries of concerned residents about potential health problems associated with chronic exposure to radioactive waste, the St. Louis County Health Department in conjunction with the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry have taken an active interest in the radioactive waste issue in the St. Louis region. Whether Homeland’s Bio-Surveillance operation is monitoring conditions in St. Louis independently or with the cooperation of these other government agencies remains unknown.

Other community activists have long advocated taking away the control of the West Lake Landfill Superfund site in Bridgeton, Mo. from the EPA and putting it under the control of the Corps of Engineers FUSRAP program, which has authority over the other St. Louis area radioactive sites. But despite bi-partisan support of the St. Louis area congressional delegation, a bill slotted to shift control died in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce last year.

The West Lake Landfill Superfund site is owned by Republic Services Inc., the second-largest waste disposal company in the U.S. The company’s chief spokesman is Russ Knocke, a former top spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

The presence of a top-secret operation inside an AT&T building near West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton adds another murky hue to an already cloudy picture. The facility is presumed to be controlled by the National Security Agency but may house some other unknown government covert operation.

Shaky Foundation

November 27, 2018November 28, 2018 / stellamarisproductions / 1 Comment

Details as to why outgoing Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley decided to give $12.5 million of the state’s settlement with Republic Services to the St. Louis Community Foundation remain a state secret — because nobody’s talking.

Bridgeton Mayor Terry Briggs (right) participates in a roundtable discussion at a forum held at the Bridgeton Recreation Center by the St. Louis Community Foundation on Tuesday November 27, 2018

St. Louis Community Foundation CEO Amelia Bond says she doesn’t know why outgoing Republican Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley handed over $12.5 million of the state’s settlement with the Republic Services to the charity she heads.

“I can’t speak to why. You’ll have to ask the attorney general’s office,” Bond says. The foundation CEO then shifted the conversation and began reciting a litany of laurels about the non-profit organization’s other charitable work.

Bond was on hand Tuesday morning at the Bridgeton Recreation Center for the first of a series of forums that will be held this week and next to discuss how best to use the money for community betterment in the vicinity of the radioactively-contaminated West Lake Superfund site in North St. Louis County, which is owned by Republic Services.

The Office of the Missouri Attorney General first informed the St. Louis Community Foundation of its decision to consider awarding the majority of the $16-million lawsuit settlement to the charity in May, says Maria G. Bradford, the foundation’s director of community engagement.

St. Louis Community Foundation Engagement Director Maria G. Bradford

Bradford also denied knowledge of why the state attorney general made the unusual decision to transfer the public funds to the non-governmental foundation. She too referred questions related to the terms of the settlement to Hawley’s office. The office of the attorney general has repeatedly declined to answer those questions in the past.

Under the terms of the brokered deal, the charity will oversee the specially created Bridgeton Landfill Community Project Fund, which will dole out grants to qualified non-profits to address environmental, public health and safety issues within a four-mile radius of the landfill site, where nuclear waste leftover from the Manhattan Project was dumped illegally in 1973.

Though not unprecedented, Bond says to her knowledge there are only a few other cases in which the Office of the Missouri Attorney General has designated the St. Louis Community Foundation to act as its fiduciary. In those rare instances, the amount of public money placed under the foundation’s control was much smaller than the $12.5 million that was part of the deal Hawley cut with Republic Services.

St. Louis Community Foundation CEO Amelia Bond

Bond is married to Arthur Bond III, the nephew of former U.S. Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond of Missouri. In 2016-2017, Kit Bond Strategies, the lobbying firm headed by the former senator, was paid $230, 000 to represent the interests of the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership, including congressional lobbying efforts to turn over the West Lake clean up to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That effort failed. The Partnership is a joint agency of the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County set up to promote economic growth by melding private and public interests. It is not directly connected to the activities of the St. Louis Community Foundation.

But there is an indirect connection between the two organizations. Kit Bond, the founder of Kit Bond Strategies, has served on the board of directors of the St. Louis Community Foundation. However, Amelia Bond, a well-qualified investment banker, says she was hired to lead the St. Louis Community Foundation prior to Kit Bond joining the board of directors of the charity, and that her relationship to the senator did not play a role in her being named CEO of the foundation.

Linda and Kit Bond of Kit Bond Strategies

About 40 people were present at the kick off event at the Bridgeton Recreation Center. Attendees included residents, community advocates and municipal officials, including Bridgeton Mayor Terry Briggs, Councilman Ferd Fetsch, and Police Chief Don Hood.

The agreement announced in June, closed the book on five years of litigation conducted mainly behind closed doors between the state of Missouri and the trash company, which owns both the smoldering Bridgeton Landfill and adjacent West Lake Lake Landfill that is contaminated with radioactive waste.

Then-Attorney General Kris Koster filed the suit against Bridgeton Landfill and Republic Services, its parent company, on behalf of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in 2013,

Missouri Attorney General and U.S. Senator-Elect Josh Hawley.

asserting violations of the law by Republic Services that caused harm to the environment and human health. The case continued after Hawley took office last year. Hawley, now U.S. Senator-elect, will leave his state post for Washington in January. Gov. Mike Parson, who was installed as Missouri’s chief executive after Gov. Eric Grietens resigned in June, has appointed Missouri Treasurer Eric Schmitt to take Hawley’s place. Schmitt is a partner in Lathrop & Gage, a law firm that represents Republic Services.

The agreement required Republic to reimburse MDNR for $2 million in staff time, pay a civil penalty of $1 million and $500,000 for damages to the state’s natural resources. The corporation is also required to monitor air and groundwater under state supervision contingent upon obtaining $26 million in bond funding.

But three-quarters of the settlement will be put into money market accounts exclusively handled by the St. Louis Community Foundation — which was not a party to the suit and does not have a depth of experience in environmental protection issues.

The final clean up plan by the U.S. EPA, which carries an estimated price tag of more than $200 million, was announced in late September. That compromise decision calls for the partial removal of the radioactively-contaminated materials from the site, leaving the remaining waste to continue leaking into the groundwater of the Missouri River. Making matters worse, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler last week officially downgraded the urgency of cleaning up the West Lake Superfund site, which will further delay remediation.

Current efforts by the St. Louis Community Foundation on behalf of the office of the state attorney general to address ancillary issues and allegedly bring healing to residents of the impacted area seem premature given that not a single shovelful of radioactively-contaminated dirt has yet to be removed from the long-neglected site.

During a break in the meeting, Dawn Chapman, who has led community efforts to address the landfill problem for years, expressed frustration in the latest turn of events. “It seems like they’re putting the cart before the horse,” she says.

Bradford also denied knowledge how and and why Missouri Attorney General Hawley made the unusual decision to transfer

Unholy Bond

November 2, 2018January 17, 2019 / stellamarisproductions / Leave a comment

When U.S. Reps. Ann Wagner and Lacy Clay testified before Congress to have the West Lake Landfill clean up turned over to the Army Corps of Engineers in 2016, the public had no clue that a scandal-tainted St. Louis County government agency had paid big bucks to former U.S. Sen.Kit Bond’s lobbying firm to do its bidding on Capitol Hill.

Academy Award Performance:
GOP Rep. Ann Wagner pounding home her message in testimony before the congressional subcommittee, July 13, 2016.

July 13, 2016 was just another day on the sound stage that is Capitol Hill. But veteran congressman Lacy Clay couldn’t help noting that his usual role had changed. As the audience filed into the gallery behind him, the Democrat from St. Louis took his seat at the witness table next to Republican Rep. Ann Wagner of St. Louis County. In the moments preceding their testimony, a C-Span microphone captured Clay’s candid remark:

“It’s kind of different being on this side,” Clay said.

Clay’s awkward small talk with his conservative counterpart ended when the chairman of the Environment Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee gaveled the hearing into session at 10:03 a.m. By all accounts, what happened next in Room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building was a rare display of bipartisanship.

Wagner and Clay — who represent polar ends of the American political spectrum — bonded together that summer morning to send a unified message. The odd couple appealed to their fellow representatives to send House Resolution 4100 to the floor for a vote. If passed, the bill would have mandated the transfer of control of the controversial West Lake Landfill Superfund site in Bridgeton, Mo. to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Corresponding legislation had already been successfully steered through the Senate under the bipartisan guidance of Republican Sen. Roy Blunt and Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

Under the lax management of the EPA, the cleanup of the radioactively contaminated site had languished for decades. Attempting to correct the agency’s negligence was the shared responsibility of both congressmen because the dividing line between their respective districts literally runs through the landfill. Angry residents in St. Louis County were demanding change and they made it clear that the Corps was their preferred choice to oversee the long-delayed remedy for addressing leftover nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project. The previous autumn, their protests had been amplified by local and national news coverage and the release of two documentaries on the subject.

Public pressure continued over the intervening months, stoked by monthly community meetings and non-stop social media posts. By summer, the heated issue had reached critical mass. Local activists traveled to Washington, D.C. to show support for their representatives at the congressional hearing. Besides C-Span coverage, Wagner and Clay’s joint testimony blanketed the local St. Louis news.

Unfortunately, despite the concerted effort the measure failed to clear the subcommittee. Similar legislation in the next session was also derailed. The back-to-back failures occurred even though the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership , a local governmental agency, had quietly bankrolled the well-financed federal lobbying campaign for two years.

The details on how the grassroots, community-based movement morphed into a high-powered, Washington, D.C. lobbying project remain fuzzy. Calls and emails made to various private and public officials asking for comment have went unreturned.

Since its inception, no one has been in a hurry to divulge the machinations surrounding the deal, which flew under the radar using public funds without the knowledge of the vast majority of St. Louis area citizens. Organizing the congressional lobbying drive involved considerable time, a bundle of cash and lots of inside wheeling and dealing. To handle a job of this scale, the Development Partnership hired Kit Bond Strategies (KBS), the lobbying firm of former U.S. Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond of Missouri.

In hindsight, the failure of KBS to accomplish its goal set the future course for the West Lake clean up, which is now in the hands of the Trump administration.

Enter stage right: The Superfund Czar

The move to turnover the West Lake clean up to the Corps is now history. Last month, the final EPA remedy for a partial clean up of the site — a decision that falls short of full removal — was announced by the agency. If carried out as planned, large quantities of radioactive waste will remain on site and continue to be a threat to human health and the environment.

The long-postponed announcement came after the nascent Trump administration fast tracked the West Lake clean up in early 2017 as part of a campaign by then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to “streamline” the Superfund program. The task force created by Pruitt to accomplish that objective is now the subject of an EPA inspector’s general probe announced last month, which intends to examine the group’s secretive agenda. Pruitt and his top lieutenant Albert “Kell” Kelly both resigned earlier this year under a cloud. The controversial EPA administrator and former Oklahoma attorney general appointed Kelly, a Tulsa banker, in early 2017 to the newly formed post of EPA Superfund Czar. Kelly’s appointment came shortly after the FDIC had imposed a fine of $125,000 and barred him from banking for life.

Lights, Camera, Action: Rep. Lacy Clay testifying before Congress, July 13, 2016.

With the latest rush of developments, the earlier pleas by Wagner and Clay to transfer the project to the Corps have now been largely forgotten, relegated to a footnote, a curious moment in time when congressional adversaries from opposite sides of the aisle put aside political differences for the common good. For a moment in the summer of 2016, it looked as if a spontaneous consensus had arrived on the scene in the nick of time. The St. Louis area congressmen gave heroic performances on camera — and the video went straight to YouTube, where Wagner can still be seen vehemently driving home her talking points by pounding on the table. Clay’s oratory was equally impassioned. Their words expressed sincere convictions and righteous outrage, echoing the pleas of their constituents.

St. Louis Economic Development Partnership CEO Sheila Sweeney.

It almost seemed too good to be true — and it was. In retrospect, Wagner and Clay now appear to have been reading from the same script of a made-for-TV movie.

Linda Bond and hubby.

What the public didn’t know back then was that the director of this staged congressional performance was KBS. Linda Bond, the former senator’s wife, is a senior partner in the lobbying firm. She signed the contract with St. Louis Economic Development Partnership CEO Sheila Sweeney in January 2016.

The Development Partnership is a joint government agency of the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County, which wields broad powers and operates largely in the shadows with the benefit of millions of dollars in annual payments from casino interests raked in by the St. Louis County Port Authority, an agency that shares the same staff as the Development Partnership. The County Port Authority’s purpose has nothing to do with ports. Instead, it acts as a conduit for the casino payments.

The 2016 contract between KBS and the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership.

In 2016 and 2017, the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership funneled $230,000 of public funds to Kit Bond Strategies, according to federal lobbying reports. Part of that total went to pay for the failed congressional effort to turn the West Lake Landfill Superfund Site over to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — an agency that expressed serious reservations about assuming the responsibility for taking control of the project in the first place. The exact amount spent specifically on the West Lake lobbying effort is uncertain. A request under the Missouri Sunshine Law for further details is pending. But this much is known: the development agency’s contract called for KBS to be paid $10,000 a month for its services. The lobbying records show that the public money was doled out to the lobbyist in quarterly payments. The St. Louis Economic Development Partnership paid the lobbying firm an additional $60,000 in 2018 , but by then the effort to persuade Congress to turn the West Lake clean up over to the Corps had been dropped.

In July, a St. Louis County Council ethics committee announced it was embarking on an investigation of a wide range of questionable activities by the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership involving alleged improprieties related to the agency’s contract procedures and real estate transactions in recent years. Its lobbying contract with KBS is not known to be a part of that investigation.

The announcement followed a series of revelations published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch focusing on the dodgy dealings of the Development Partnership and the County Port Authority under the Democratic administration of St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger [1, 2, 3]. Among the allegations are those involving unusual bidding practices by businessman John Rallo, a Stenger supporter and an heir to the Rallo Construction Co. fortune. Rallo has been the beneficiary of a lucrative real estate sale by the Development Partnership and he has also sought advise on two consulting deals from Development Partnership CEO Sweeney, a Stenger appointee, in advance of submitting his bids, according to the Post-Dispatch.

Sheila Sweeney, Kit Bond, Lacy Clay and Steve Stenger celebrating the opening of STL Partnership’s Wellston Business Center expansion in July.

At the same time, political opponents of Stenger’s on the St. Louis County Council, have alleged that Sweeney is under federal surveillance. Councilman Ernie Trakas, a Republican from South County, and Councilman Sam Page, a North County Democrat, raised the allegations on July 24. The allegations were reported by Post-Dispatch reporter Jeremy Kohler in the newspaper and on Twitter.

The protracted controversy has been roiling for more than a year. But until now, the ties between the Development Partnership and KBS have been unreported even though Sweeney’s signature is on the bottom line of the lobbying contract with that of KBS partner Linda Bond.

Trouble in River City

The St. Louis Economic Development Partnership is an autonomous county agency that distributes public money for various economic development schemes with the help of casino revenue that it receives from the St. Louis County Port Authority. The port authority gets its funding from an estimated $5 million in payments paid by the River City Casino in South St. Louis County. Pinnacle Entertainment opened the casino in 2010. It is now operated by Penn National Gaming. The casino property is owned by Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc., a real estate investment trust that was spun off by Penn National, which controls a virtual monopoly on the overall operations and ownership of the St. Louis area gambling industry.

KBS lobbyist Julie Murphy Finn

The South County gambling site, which is located in unincorporated Lemay, is no stranger to controversy. Development of a casino at the location met stiff resistance from local businesses, churches, and residents in the past. Despite the widespread opposition, the St. Louis County Economic Development Council began wooing prospective casino developers there more than 20 years ago. Those initial efforts under the late St. Louis County Executive Buzz Westfall in the 1990s failed. But they set the precedent for current practices.

Dec. 25, 1995 St. Louis Post-Dispatch story citing then-St. Louis County Port Authority Chairman Sheila Sweeney.

As early as 1995, the St. Louis County Port Authority accepted payments from an earlier casino developer interested in developing the site. The chairman of the Port Authority at that time was Sweeney, who in 2018 is still pulling strings as head of the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership, the umbrella agency that controls the purse strings of the County Port Authority funds. In 1995, Sweeney was already advocating spending payouts from gambling interests to support the development of other sites in St. Louis County.

Dec. 25, 1995 St. Louis Post-Dispatch story reports then-County Port Authority Chairman Sheila’s Sweeney’s strident support of spending casino cash for development schemes throughout St. Louis County.

Others involved in past issues tied to South County politics and the Lemay casino site include former South County Councilman Jeff Wagener, a Democrat who is now policy chief for St. Louis County Executive Stenger; and Wagener’s former assistant Julie Murphy Finn, the Kit Bond Strategies’ lobbyist who oversaw the congressional lobbying effort on behalf of the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership in 2016. Wagener also sits on the board of directors of the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership.

Murphy Finn was aided in her congressional lobbying assignment by fellow KBS lobbyist Kenny Hulshof, a former Republican congressman and gubernatorial candidate from Northeast Missouri.

Cold War Redux

But Hulshof and Murphy Finn were not the bosses of the operation. That distinction goes to KBS senior partner Linda Bond, who signed the sweetheart deal with Sweeney, the head of the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership. Both women are savvy political operatives. Sweeney has been an inside player in St. Louis County politics for decades under multiple county administrations; whereas, Bond’s career in national politics stretches back to the Reagan era and is rooted deeply in Cold War politics.

Long before she married the senator, Bond worked for the Voice of America, the propaganda arm of the U.S. State Department. From 1985 to 1991 she served as the director in Germany of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a non-governmental agency with long-established ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. The late William Casey, the former OSS agent and CIA director during the first term of President Ronald Reagan’s administration, served a stint as the president of the IRC, which aided Eastern Bloc and Soviet defectors.

In this case, however, there appears to have been no need for cloak and dagger skullduggery. Instead, the deal between Kit Bond Strategies and the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership was as easy as walking next door and borrowing a cup of sugar. KBS and the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership are neighbors in the Pierre Laclede Center II, a high-rise office tower at 7733 Forsyth Blvd. in Clayton. The development agency calls Suite 2200 home, and KBS lists its address as Suite 2300.

In the end, the motive behind the 2016 lobbying deal seems to have been predicated not on bi-partisan cooperation and concern for the environment as much as it was realpolitik, and cold hard cash.

Caveat Emptor

June 20, 2018June 21, 2018 / stellamarisproductions / 1 Comment

Tee Time: St. Charles real estate baron Greg Whittaker and the University of Missouri have struck a deal that could result in a pricey, golf-course subdivision next door to Weldon Spring, the region’s nuclear waste capital — and nobody sees that as a problem

Mizzou wants to sell land it owns in St. Charles County to a subdivision developer. Foes of the plan fear it will blight the scenic beauty of the KATY Trail. But neither side is mentioning the neighboring radioactive waste dump at Weldon Spring — or the possibility that other unknown environmental dangers may lurk nearby.

“There’s a lot of people who don’t even know Hamburg Quarry exists,” says Kenneth Kerpash, who once hauled rock from the limestone pit to barges moored on the Missouri River, where it was used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to maintain the navigational channel.

Though the now-abandoned quarry in St. Charles County has largely escaped public attention since closing decades ago, Kerpash hasn’t forgotten the thousands of rusty barrels he says he observed there in 1972. At that time, he worked for the West Lake Quarry and Materials Co., which leased the quarry from the University of Missouri.

Mizzou sold the quarry and more than 7,000 acres of surrounding land to the Missouri Conservation Commission in 1978, and later built the Missouri Research Park on an adjacent tract. Facing budget problems, the school now wants to sell almost 200 acres of its remaining land at the location to a developer, who already leases a golf course on the property, and has plans to build hundreds of single-family homes and more than 70 multi-family units there.

NT Home Builders, owned by real estate mogul Greg Whittaker, is credited with building thousands of homes in St. Charles County. Its New Town development in particular has been lauded for its innovative design. A call requesting a comment from NT Home Builders was not returned by press time.

NT and the university have assured the public that the proposed development would adhere to the company’s high standards and won’t detract from the property’s scenic beauty or harm the environment. Opponents fear it will. Foes include existing residents and supporters of the popular KATY Trail State Park that borders the proposed high-end subdivision.

The contentious issue has spurred critics to send hundreds of emails to their elected officials in recent months, demanding the plan be scrapped. Adversaries have packed the gallery at St. Charles County Council meetings, and also posted informational notices along the KATY Trail.

Their hopes were buoyed in April, when the county’s Planning and Zoning Commission voted against permitting a zoning change that would allow the project to move forward. Nevertheless, on May 21, the council voted unanimously to delay its final decision to allow the developer more time to amend its already scaled back proposal.

The council’s deference to the developer dovetails with the university’s preferential treatment, which includes offering to sell the public land without a formal bidding process and failing to disclose the price tag. Lack of transparency has led to rumors of political corruption, and stirred recriminations and acrimony from all quarters.

None of the conflicting interests, however, seems to see the most obvious problem with the pending sale: If built, the proposed development would be within walking distance of the former Mallinckrodt uranium processing plant site in Weldon Spring — where the Department of Energy maintains a mountain of radioactive waste.

Retired Teamster Kenneth Kerpash says he saw thousands of rusty, leaking barrels stored at the Hamburg Quarry in 1972.

The idea of building new homes near a site known to have been contaminated with radioactivity in the past is unconscionable to 65-year-old Kerpash, a retired Teamster truck driver from Troy, Mo. In his opinion, the university and the developer are consorting for short-term gain at the expense of the health of future residents. Kerpash believes the parties to the deal are influenced by profit and the bottom line. “Money talks and bullshit walks,” he says.

Council Joe Cronin (1st Dist) urges caution.

St. Charles County Councilman Joe Cronin (1st Dist.) is less strident in his assessment. He says the federal government has told the council that the clean up of the Weldon Spring site has made the area safe. The feds also provide periodic updates, he says. But Cronin adds that serious health concerns are now being raised by some former students of the nearby Francis Howell High School. For this reason, the councilman urges caution.

“I will not vote on approving the proposed subdivision until we have all the facts, which we do not have as of yet,” says Cronin. “The university has owned the land of the proposed development for over 70 years. Waiting a bit more to determine the safety of the area would not be that much inconvenience to them.”

Under DOE guidelines, large swaths of the adjacent Weldon Spring Conservation Area have been deemed suitable for recreation, but unsuited for full-time human habitation because of the dangers posed by chronic exposure to radioactive contamination. Uranium and thorium present at the location are known human carcinogens and also have been linked to other chronic illnesses.

This DOE map shows the proximity of the radioactively contaminated Southeast Drainage system to the proposed residential subdivision. The University of Missouri is poised to sell the land for an unspecified amount.

In 2005, the DOE published its land use restrictions for the Southeast Drainage area — a 200-foot-wide, 37-acre tract that traverses the land between the proposed residential development and the abandoned Hamburg Quarry. At that time, DOE ruled that long-term institutional controls be imposed due to unsafe levels of radiation that still persist even after the completion of the clean up of that area. The affected tract is now owned by the Missouri Conservation Commission.

According to the DOE: “… [R]esidual soil and sediment contamination remains at some locations within the drainage at levels exceeding those that would support unlimited use and unrestricted exposure. Therefore, land use restrictions are needed in the drainage to prevent residential use or other uses inconsistent with recreational use.”

The advisory was published in a document entitled Explanation of Significant Differences, Weldon Spring Site in February 2005 by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management.

The message is clear: People are not supposed live within the designated boundaries of the 37-acre Southeast Drainage area. Under the DOE’s edict, this advisory applies in perpetuity. But apparently the University of Missouri feels that selling its nearby property does not violate its legal or ethical obligations to either the buyer or the public.

University of Missouri President Mun Y. Choi

“The purchaser has been given an opportunity to conduct any environmental studies they deem are necessary,” says a spokesperson for University President Mun Y. Choi. The spokesperson adds that the radioactive waste issue is common knowledge to the public.

“…Soil and sediment contamination remains at some locations within the drainage at levels exceeding those that would support unlimited use and unrestricted exposure.” — DOE

The property Mizzou wants to sell is part of the original tract of land that the federal government seized at the advent of World War II, and it shares the same sordid environmental history.

In their official records of decision, the DOE and EPA have advised that the primary means of enforcing its restrictions is through “institutional controls,” specifically local zoning ordinances. The St. Charles County Planning and Zoning Commission has already recommended not granting the developer a variance. Though the university’s property may fall outside the perimeter of the DOE’s restricted use area, honoring the spirit of the federal guideline would seem warranted to assure public health. But only one councilman clearly stated his opposition to the plan at the recent county council meeting.

At the May 21 council meeting, Councilman Mike Elam (Dist. 3) praised the developer and the merits of its plan but, nevertheless, rejected the proposal for one reason: its location.

Councilman Mike Elam: “I’m a no vote.”

“I really hate where they want to build this,” Elam told the audience. “The idea is really good. We wish that when people come to the county and they want to build something, they would be as accommodating as this developer has been,” Elam said. “I give them all praise for that. [But] I don’t care if you want to put in 450 homes or 250 homes or 50 homes — I still don’t like where the development is going in. I’m a no vote.” In his statement, Elam didn’t state why he was uncomfortable with the location.

The location also bothers Kerpash. From the retired trucker’s perspective, it’s inane to build new housing next to a site known to have been contaminated with radioactive waste. “It don’t take a real smart person to figure that out,” he says. “They just got done cleaning up the most hazardous place in Missouri,” he says, referring to the Weldon Spring site. “Now they want to build a subdivision there? It’s unbelievable.”

Kerpash admits he doesn’t know what was contained in the rusty barrels he observed at the Hamburg Quarry back in 1972. But when his recollection is added to other evidence, it is enough to give pause.

One red flag that he points out is that his former employer — the West Lake Quarry and Materials Co. — also operated and owned the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, Mo., where radioactive waste from the Manhattan Project was dumped illegally in 1973. In early March, the EPA belatedly announced its proposed clean up plans for the West Lake site, and the final remedy is pending.

Both sites are in the Missouri River watershed, which makes the lay of the land a factor to consider as well.

The DOE’s nuclear waste disposal cell on Route 94 — the site of the former uranium processing plant — sits on high ground, 1.5 miles uphill from Hamburg Quarry. On the official map of the Weldon Spring Conservation Area, the quarry is anonymously designated as a “restricted area,” directly next to the KATY Trail. In the 1990s, the DOE spent millions of dollars cleaning up radioactive contamination in the Southeast Drainage area in between the Hamburg Quarry and the proposed residential development. But unsafe pockets of radioactive contamination remain, according to the DOE.

Vestiges of the area’s dark history pop up at other nearby location, too. As part of its 16-year clean up, the DOE also remediated the nearby Weldon Spring Quarry, which is a short bicycle ride in the opposite direction via the KATY. There’s also a pipeline that carried treated radioactive waste water from the uranium processing plant clean-up site that skirts the Hamburg Quarry on its way to the Missouri River. The DOE has deemed all these locations suitable for recreation but not full-time human occupancy. Nobody is ever supposed to live here again.

No Man’s Land: Dwelling near this part of the KATY Trail is prohibited by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Surrounded by forested public lands and the river, the now-abandoned Hamburg Quarry appears isolated. Additional conservation land on both sides of the river add to the wilderness atmosphere. The location, however, is only a short walk from Mizzou’s Research Park, which links with the KATY by way of the Busch Greenway. On weekends, the path is crowded with groups of joggers, who run by the Missouri Bluffs Golf Club, the site of the proposed residential development.

Mallinckrodt operated its uranium plant between 1957 and 1966 under contract with the DOE’s predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission. During this period, the plant and its grounds became polluted with radioactive waste. The contaminated materials were stored on site and also dumped at the Weldon Spring Quarry, four miles south of the plant. Between 1988 and 2002, the DOE oversaw an extensive clean up of both sites that cost almost $1 billion.

Bluffs tower over the Missouri River and the KATY Trail.

The verdant hills and limestone bluffs that border the Missouri River create an illusion that this area is pristine. But long before the uranium waste despoiled the land, it was poisoned by other byproducts of war.

With World War II on the horizon, the town of Hamburg, Mo. and two other villages were razed by the U.S. Army in 1940 to make way for the Weldon Spring Ordinance Works. During the war, the Atlas Powder Co. produced explosives at the site for the Army. Toxic waste from the TNT and DNT production polluted the area.

Mizzou acquired the tainted property after World War II from the federal government for $1. A current Google satellite image of the area shows the unmarked Hamburg Quarry as a spot of blue surrounded by green.

Kerpash suspects that the barrels he saw there in 1972 may still be at the bottom of the quarry lake. If the barrels contained chemical or radioactive materials, the porous limestone topography would allow the toxins to migrate into the groundwater and flow into the Missouri River.

The abandoned Hamburg Quarry is within a stone’s throw of the KATY Trail.

Nowadays, cyclists on the KATY Trail whiz by the old Hamburg Quarry without noticing it. The University of Missouri never rebuilt the town that bore the same name after it acquired the property from the Army after the war. Given the toxic history of this place, that was a good call.

Based on what he knows, Kerpash doesn’t think people should move back anytime soon.

On the Missouri Conservation Commission’s map, the old Hamburg Quarry is identified only as a “restricted area.”

The Absentee Trash Lord

February 2, 2018February 16, 2018 / stellamarisproductions / 2 Comments

For the last 20 years, Republic Services CEO Don Slager’s name has been associated with the West Lake Superfund Site, the resting place of nuke waste from the Manhattan Project. He virutally owns the smoldering mess in Bridgeton, but nobody has seen him out on the Rock Road lately. So where’s Don hiding out these days?

Republic Services CEO Donald Slager oversees a waste empire that includes the smoldering Bridgeton Landfill and its evil twin, the radioactively-contaminated West Lake Landfill.

In 2014, Republic Services CEO Donald Slager and his wife Kimberlee sold their mansion in Paradise Valley, Ariz. to a shadowy investment company for $5.4 million. Their whereabouts nowadays is uncertain. If the couple purchased another tony residence in the Phoenix metro area, they didn’t put their new digs in their name. Maricopa County property records indicate the only real estate the Slagers own are two pricey storage lockers. A third storage unit is in the name of the 2000 Slager Revocable Trust. All three are part of a Phoenix storage facility known as the Toy Barn and advertised as “garage condominiums.”

1209 North Orange Street

July 5, 2017December 20, 2017 / stellamarisproductions / Leave a comment

Republic Services hides its dirty business by incorporating in Delaware, a state notorious for shielding corporations from public scrutiny.

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285,000 corporations — including the Bridgeton Landfill — call the above address home.

Republic Services, the nation’s second largest waste disposal company, is headquartered in Phoenix, but its troublesome subsidiary — Bridgeton Landfill LLC — is incorporated more than 2,300 miles away in Delaware, a state known for its favorable corporate climate.

Bridgeton Landfill is a member of the club that calls 1209 North Orange Street home. It’s a place where corporations behave like secret societies; companies flock to evade accountability; and the cloaking of free enterprise is accepted as standard business practice.

The same address in Wilmington, Delaware, the state capital, is home to more than 285,000 corporations, including some of the largest in the U.S. and the world. The beige brick building with the red awning at 1209 North Orange Street is the business address for American Airlines, Bank of America, Apple, Google, J.P. Morgan Chase, Wal-Mart, Berkshire Hathaway, Coca-Cola and Ford, among others.

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The nondescript office on North Orange is also the mailing address for less scrupulous corporations allegedly engaged in illegal activities such as money laundering, drug trafficking and embezzlement. Investigative reporters for the Panama Papers organization and the Organized Crime and Corruption and Reporting Project have followed trails that dead-end at 1209 North Orange. Delaware secrecy laws make it nearly impossible to get a clear picture of companies that register in the state. Delaware’s lax corporate regulatory environment are comparable to off-shore tax havens such as Bermuda, the Bahamas and Cayman Islands, where Republic also has connections.

Because of the favorable business environment, Delaware currently has more corporations than people. Most of the companies operate legitimately and use the state to legally skirt taxes and avoid bothersome regulations.

In recent years, the U.S. Justice Department and World Bank have both expressed concerns over the situation and criticized the state for its laissez faire policies.

Bridgeton Landfill is most noted for its so-called “subsurface smoldering event,” an underground fire that has been burning since 2010 toward radioactive waste dumped at the site illegally more than 40 years ago. Republic Services, the owner of the site, has been fighting efforts for years by community members to remove the waste, which is located in a floodplain in North St. Louis County, approximately one mile from the Missouri River.

Last year, the EPA belatedly acknowledged that the radioactive contamination is seeping into the groundwater. Many residents believe the contamination is the cause of long-term health problems and deaths due to chronic exposure. Republic and its supporters reject these assertions and are backing a plan to bury the toxic waste at its present location. The EPA delayed making its final decision late last year, leaving the long-standing problem unresolved.

Avoiding legal liability is another advantage to setting up shop in Delaware. Republic can breath easier there, while nearby residents in North St. Louis County continue to gasp for air because of the stench waifing from Republic’s toxic dump.

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Taking Care of Business

June 8, 2017June 8, 2017 / stellamarisproductions / Leave a comment

When the DNR declared an emergency at the smoldering Bridgeton Landfill in 2013, the state agency skirted its formal bidding process, an out-of-state firm scored a sweet deal and the public was left none the wiser.

first published at STLReporter, Feb. 3, 2015

On March 18, 2013, environmental specialist Dan Norris and his boss Brenda Ardrey of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources quietly submitted a memorandum to Procurement of Services File RFP 3445-001. The memo shows that the department did not receive any bids that complied with the agency’s standards for air sampling services at the Bridgeton Landfill, where an underground fire has been burning near radioactive waste since 2010.

Nevertheless, a six-figure contract was awarded to SWAPE, an environmental firm from Santa Monica, Calif. The acronym stands for Soil Water Air Protection Enterprise. SWAPE, acting as a middle man, then hired a St. Louis-based subcontractor. The paper trail indicates no complete bids were received even after the DNR extended the deadlines by more than two weeks. The DNR guidelines normally require a minimum of three competitive bids. Two companies ultimately proposed deficient offers. By its own admission, the DNR awarded the plum to one of those companies based on an incomplete proposal. The DNR was able to skirt its normal protocols by invoking an emergency clause in its procurement process.

“Essentially, there was a response to the bid, it just wasn’t complete,” says Norris, who recently left his job with the state regulatory agency. “It was missing a couple things as far as the response to the actual form. DNR had not dealt with an event quite like this before. It’s not like there was just a playbook to go off of for sampling air around a smoldering landfill, at least not a playbook that Missouri had. “We were told to waste no time whatsoever on getting a contractor and getting boots on the ground out there to begin the air sampling. It was not the kind of thing that we wanted to hold up for administrative purposes. That’s why in early 2013 it was contracted out.”

Finding an environmental company then willing to challenge the interests of waste industry behemoth Republic Services, the landfill owner, appears to have been a difficult task for the DNR, according to public records obtained by StLReporter. So the agency turned to a trusted consultant to act as its de facto headhunter. The consultant contacted industry sources and ultimately recommended SWAPE. After getting the nod, SWAPE quickly lined up a subcontractor in St. Louis to do part of the work. Nobody involved in the deal will talk about it openly, citing contractual obligations.

When asked how the DNR first became aware of an environmental firm on the West Coast, Norris says: “I can’t comment on how we came to know SWAPE.” The two-year-old memo he co-signed indicates the firm was recommended by another contractor. Speaking from an undisclosed location by phone he also refused to talk about the price tag of the emergency air-monitoring contract. “I can’t comment on payment or billing or anything like that.”

Following an-age-old American custom, Norris has moved out West. He now lives in the Rocky Mountain Time Zone. He prefers not to divulge exactly where. Norris has exited Jeff City. But questions swirling around his leave-taking still plague his former agency like a bad case of the winter flu.

A Letter from Dan

Dan Norris – MDNR State ID card

Early last month, Norris wrote a broadside, condemning the agency for its cozy relationship with Republic Services, the company responsible for the site in North St. Louis County that is the location of a pair defunct landfills: one that’s smoldering and the other that contains radioactive waste dating back to the Manhattan Project. The two adjacent dumps are both part of a long-delayed Environmental Protection Agency Superfund clean-up site. In his parting shot, the former DNR staffer alleged that politics unduly influences regulatory decisions within the state agency, and that DNR employees are under the gun not to talk about it. The revelations have caused a stir inside and outside of the DNR.

Activists and community members familiar with the situation tend to agree with the whistleblower’s assessment, seeing Republic–the second largest waste hauler in the United States — as their foe. They point to Bill Gates’ stake in the company as evidence of the power that it wields. They allude to the company’s checkered environmental record elsewhere, including another smoldering landfill fire in Ohio. They also agree with Norris’ contention that Republic’s generous campaign contributions have swayed state lawmakers.

In that sense, it is not what Norris revealed that is relevant so much as the act itself. He broke the code of silence inside a department that in recent years has operated more like the CIA than a state environmental regulatory agency. Unfortunately, Norris’ criticisms of the DNR are vague, and his complaints raise more questions than answers. His account of agency wrongdoing is sketchy. He lays blame but buttons up when asked for details.

Under prevailing rules, DNR has been assigned the responsibility of containing an underground fire and reducing the noxious odors at the Bridgeton Landfill. The state maintains that Republic is liable for the expense of the emergency air sampling costs, but it’s unclear whether the company has ponied up. Reached at his office in Washington, D.C., Republic spokesman Russ Knocke was unaware of the contract and said he would have to do some homework to determine whether the state has been reimbursed.

The radioactively-contaminated West Lake Landfill next door is the bailiwick of the federal EPA. As the two bureaucracies advance their separate agendas at a glacial pace, the fire is heading in the direction of the nuclear materials.

In Norris’ absence, the status of the clean up has become more uncertain than ever. The building of a state mandated barrier to stop the fire from advancing has been indefinitely delayed. In the interim, doubts mount, finger pointing increases, and nobody seems in control. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster recently expedited the state’s case against Republic for violations filed two years ago, but there is no sign of a settlement. If anything, the company shows indications of being even more resistant to DNR’s appeals. Meanwhile, the activists are stepping up their calls for Gov. Jay Nixon to take action.

From outside DNR’s closed doors, the scenario seems bleak. There would appear to be no winners. However, department documents and correspondence show how one group consistently benefits from the intractable predicament — outside contractors.

A Quiet State of Emergency

Norris says he met DNR contractor Todd Thalhamer in 2008 at a training seminar. For the last several years, Thalhamer has given talks on landfill fires sponsored by Stark Consultants Inc., which is owned by Tim Stark, another DNR contractor. Thalhamer moonlights as a consultant, too, and owns Hammer Consulting Service in El Dorado, Calif. He works full-time as an environmental engineer for the state of California and is a firefighter in the El Dorado Volunteer Fire Department. Thalhamer received a bachelor’s degree in environmental resources engineering from Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif. in 1992. His five-page resume indicates he worked on his first landfill fire in Sacramento County the same year he graduated from college. He has been under contract as a landfill fire expert for the DNR for the last four years.

Reached by phone in California, Thalhamer says the reason the DNR retains his services is because he has a unique skill set. “The only other individual that I’m aware of that has my expertise is a colleague of mine in British Columbia, and he’s outside the United States,” says Thalhamer. “I have a very unique background. I’m a fireman [and] a registered civil engineer. I do environmental emergency response in California and with EPA,” he says. “I’m one of the guys who trains the landfill owners and operators throughout the United States. My name is known in the industry.”

“Once DNR got Todd Thalhamer on contract,” says Norris, “Todd was able to inform us about certain things that we needed to be watching as far as the gas extraction well field, [and] additional data that we should be tracking.” Besides Norris, the team included two other DNR staffers, consultants Thalhamer and Stark and, a graduate student. “We tracked the landfill gas data from that well field from month to month. We started plotting it on maps to see what the overall condition was. At some point, we started to see signs that the event was spreading and intensifying.”

Then the odors at the landfill increased.

“By 2012, I was making a push that we really needed to collect some air-monitoring data to get a better handle on what the potential risks were from the landfill smoldering event, as well as just what risk that might be as far as exposing the community,” Norris says.

The increased odors coming off the Bridgeton Landfill in 2012 gave DNR cause for concern as public complaints mounted over the stench. This set the stage for the events that would lead to the emergency procurement contract in early 2013 in which Thalhamer would play a pivotal role.

By this point, the California consultant had the DNR’s ear, and his suggestions extended beyond the technical aspects of fighting landfill fires. When odor complaints jumped in early 2013, Thalhamer told the DNR to openly request EPA air testing as a way of calming residents fears. “We need to ensure the public that the odor is just that — an odor and not a health risk,” advised Thalhamer. “The quickest way to reduce the environmental worry in the community is to request the US EPA perform community and facility air sampling. Contractor data should be as valid as US EPA but we need to show the community we are concerned enough to make this request.”

A few months earlier in December 2012, the DNR had held a one-day training session presented by Thalhamer at Republic Service’s headquarters on St. Charles Rock Road. Those in attendance included, DNR staffers, representatives of the Pattonville and Robertson Fire Protection Districts, and officials from the St. Louis County Health Department. Brenda Ardrey of the DNR arranged the meeting and Republic, picked up the lunch tab for the sandwiches from a nearby Jimmy John’s restaurant.

Thalhamer charged $150 an hour for his services. Including various conferences calls, planning and travel expenses, the bill totaled $6,695.49.

His performance impressed Ardrey so much that she arranged for Thalhamer to speak the next summer at the Missouri Waste Control Coalition’s annual conference at the posh Tan-Tar-A resort on the Lake of the Ozarks. The 400-member coalition is comprised of private waste companies, government regulators and consultants.

The conference setting had the trappings of a country club, including a golf course, where the MWCC held its annual tournament over the same weekend. The clubby atmosphere between business and government regulators goes beyond the 18th hole, however. Ardrey’s boss Chris Nagel, director of DNR’s Solid Waste Management Program, sits on the advisory board of the waste coalition, and Larry Lehman, DNR’s chief enforcement officer, is on its board of directors. Besides Lehman, other board members include Randy Tourville of Republic Services and Lisa Messinger of EPA Region VII.

After DNR decided to fund air sampling at Bridgeton Landfill in early 2013, Thalhamer put SWAPE on DNR’s radar. Thalhamer and one of the owners of SWAPE had both worked on a case related to another Republic landfill fire in Ohio years earlier. Within a week, SWAPE had secured the DNR’s air-sampling contract without going through the regular bidding process.

That’s because a month earlier, DNR had quietly invoked an emergency clause in the state statutes and allocated more than a half a million dollars for the job. Internal DNR emails show officials carefully researched the matter to make sure the agency followed the letter of the law in declaring the emergency.

Few outside the DNR knew about the emergency. No sirens went off. The governor didn’t issue an evacuation order. Residents were not kept fully in the loop. Instead, agency insiders kept the situation hushed. The only other company that expressed interest in the contract submitted a proposal that was less acceptable than SWAPE’s.

Unlike others wary of consequences, SWAPE showed no fear of rousing the ire of Republic because it had already had a falling out with the waste giant in the past. On March 21, within 48 hours of receiving the contract, Paul Rosenfeld of SWAPE flew to St. Louis for a one-day meeting with DNR officials.

A subcontractor identified in an invoice only as JB also attended the talks. John Blank is the the owner of American Environmental Laboratories, a St. Louis-based firm that SWAPE hired as a subcontractor. Blank says the terms of his company’s involvement remain confidential, but he does reveal that SWAPE issued the requirements for conducting the air sampling — “the what and the how” — and the St. Louis lab reported the results back to SWAPE and the DNR.

The meeting between SWAPE and the DNR lasted 11 hours, according to public records. Rosenfeld charged $195 an hour. The subcontractor charged $120. SWAPE billed DNR a total of $5,821.86 for the day.

The terms of the emergency air-monitoring contract approved by DNR on Feb. 15, 2013 stipulated a 60-to-90 day deal valued at $600,000. SWAPE’s incomplete proposal submitted on March 29 totaled $594,060. After the contract was signed, invoices and purchase orders were issued in quick succession.

On March 29, 2013, SWAPE submitted an itemized invoice of $15,198.32 for services rendered.
On April 2, 2013 the state paid the company another $6,000 for expert testimony.
A state purchase order for SWAPE’s products and services dated April 3, 2013, shows a bottom of line of $349,000.

Whereas, SWAPE submitted detailed, line-item accounting of services rendered, the state purchase order only lists itemized expenses as “environmental, ecological and agricultural services: miscel [miscellaneous].” SWAPE continued its emergency air sampling under the initial arrangement through August 2013.

Ardrey referred all questions about the Bridgeton Landfill to the DNR information officer Gena Terlizzi. Voice and email messages left for Terlizzi went unreturned. When contacted, Beth Glickman, office manager for SWAPE, said: “We typically don’t talk to the press. We are still under contract with them (the DNR) and won’t be able to answer any questions.”

When asked about his role in the process, Thalhamer says: “As you probably know, I’m under contract with DNR so I can’t speak to issues surrounding that. … I understand your plight. I work for a government agency and I fight the same thing that you’re asking me for. But I also know contract law and know I’d be in jeopardy of breeching the contract.” Toward the end of the conversation, Thalhamer suggests digging deeper, and offers journalistic advise, including filing a state Freedom of Information request. Speaking about the SWAPE contract, he says: “There’s some interesting information there if you can get that Rubik’s Cube figured out.”

Less enigmatically, Norris concedes that there may be an appearance of something amiss in the state’s handling of the emergency air-monitoring contract, but he has no doubt that the public’s interest was best served by the decision.

“SWAPE had the expertise, the history of sampling around landfill fires elsewhere” says Norris. “I think that they were probably in the best position at that point and time to do the air sampling whether it was done by them or a subcontractor that was progressing in a fashion that was protective of public health,” Norris says.

“There was additional concerns from the community living around the site in large part due to the increase in odors, Norris says. Benzene and certain others [chemicals] were elevated in the landfill gas. There were certain chemical compounds that appeared to be elevated downwind versus upwind of the landfill at least slightly.”

Air sampling at the site measured dioxins, furans, benzene, aldehydes, reduced sulfur compounds and volatile organic compounds, all of which can cause serious health effects through long-term exposure. But test results at the Bridgeton Landfill analyzed by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services found chemicals of concern to be below the threshold of concern for human health over the time frame of the emergency air sampling contract.

Norris doesn’t argue with those findings, but he does assert that politics is influencing science. “Politics seems to be invading the technical work to a greater extent than when I first started that’s for sure, [but] we were able to accomplish quite a bit even within the political confines during this event, especially in 2013,” he says.

Norris makes clear that his resignation and subsequent letter are unrelated to the SWAPE memo or the hiring of outside contractors in general. “It was really kind of broader issues at the department,” he says. He mentions bureaucratic inefficiencies, the role of politics and lax enforcement as reasons for his discontent and departure, but stops short of placing the onus on anything specific, leaving the listener to turn Rubik’s Cube for himself.

Unit A at 205 Riverview Drive is vacant. A stack of native limestone blocks stands by the entrance, the only vestige remaining of the apartment’s last tenant. A for-rent sign is posted in the front yard and a sodden edition of the Jefferson City News-Tribune lies in the gutter. The brick duplex is located on a residential street in the sleepy Missouri capital, where on a mild January day a woman washes her shiny SUV in a nearby driveway. With a dog barking in the backyard and dinner on the stove in the kitchen, the occupant of Unit B leans against his front door jamb, warily answering questions about Dan Norris’ whereabouts. He is tight-lipped when it comes to the details, but says his neighbor of eight years moved out about three weeks ago and didn’t leave a forwarding address. — C.D. Stelzer

	Myla R on Damn Lies
	MFT on Shaky Foundation
	Hugo on Rocky Top
	West Lake Landfill \| on Watch It Now
	@jzikah on Watch It Now

The first secret city

bridgeton

Where Do the Children Play?

News Blackout

Smoke Screen

Directive No. 10

Private intelligence contractors have been gathering scientific data and monitoring the environment in the St. Louis area for years — and not telling anybody.

Shaky Foundation

Unholy Bond

Caveat Emptor

The Absentee Trash Lord

1209 North Orange Street

Taking Care of Business

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