Radioactive waste found near and under Florissant homes close to Coldwater Creek
By Russell Kinsaul
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NORTH ST. LOUIS COUNTY (KMOV) — Drilling that’s been taking place for several weeks along Cades Cove in Florissant found Manhattan Project radioactive waste in the soil of several yards. The houses back up to Coldwater Creek.
A total of six houses were slated for testing.
Crews are also drilling through basement floors to take soil samples from underneath homes. One homeowner confirmed to First Alert 4 that radioactive contamination was found under her house, where she’s lived for decades.
Carrie Havens lives near Cades Cove.
“I saw them drilling over here. But I didn’t know they were going underneath the homes,” she said.
Decades ago, Manhattan Project waste that was improperly stored near Lambert St. Louis Airport leaked into Coldwater Creek.
The Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP), a program within the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, is in charge of cleaning up sites contaminated with radioactive waste. Over many years, it’s believed that flooding from the creek caused a nearby swale to be contaminated. In the 1990′s, the swale was covered by fill dirt that the homes were eventually built on top of.
Karen Nickel, with the advocacy group called Just Moms STL, said her group has been advocating testing and cleanup of all radioactive contamination.
“We’ve been asking for years are you going to test inside homes? They’ve always told us they there’s no reason to test inside homes,” she said.
Phil Moser is Chief of FUSRAP and the U.S. Corp of Engineers’ local environmental branch.
“This is part of the overall investigation process, targeting where contamination would have been deposited back in the day during historic flooding events. So, this is just a continuation of that investigation process,” said Moser.
None of the people living in the six homes would agree to be interviewed on camera because they said they had too many unanswered questions. The chief one is what kind of risk the radioactive waste poses.
“We’ve done a significant amount of evaluations and we have a lot of data over the years for our environmental monitoring program. That shows there’s no risk to the homeowners right now, and that is because the contamination is so deep,” said Moser.
Moser said all of the contamination that’s found will be remediated. But he would not speculate whether that would include home buyouts.
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