Bridgeton Landfill: Radioactive Waste, Cleanup, and Compensation

The Bridgeton Landfill is a closed municipal waste site in Bridgeton, Missouri, about 20 miles from downtown St. Louis, where a slow underground chemical reaction has been smoldering since December 2010 next to roughly 43,000 tons of Manhattan Project-era radioactive waste illegally dumped at the adjoining West Lake Landfill in 1973. Together the two sites form a 200-acre complex now under an EPA-led Superfund cleanup estimated near $400 million, with excavation of the radioactive material targeted to begin in late 2027.¹²

What the Site Is

The land began as farmland, became a limestone quarry in 1939, and from the early 1950s was used to dispose of municipal, industrial, and construction waste.³ The Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill received a state operating permit on November 18, 1985, and stopped accepting municipal solid waste on December 31, 2004, closing under an agreement with the City of St. Louis to reduce bird strikes near Lambert International Airport’s new runway.⁴

The waste mass covers about 52 acres and reaches roughly 240 feet below the surface, with a total thickness around 320 feet. It sits in two areas known as the North Quarry and the South Quarry, connected by a narrow passage called the “neck.”⁴ Republic Services, the country’s second-largest waste hauler, took ownership through its subsidiary Bridgeton Landfill LLC when it acquired Allied Waste in 2008.⁵

The Underground Fire

On December 23, 2010, Republic Services reported that monitoring wells were showing elevated temperatures, spikes in hydrogen and carbon monoxide, and falling methane levels. That signature points to a subsurface smoldering event, a slow chemical reaction that consumes waste without the oxygen needed for open flame.⁶ The reaction was concentrated 60 to 150 feet below the surface in the South Quarry.⁵

By spring 2012, residents up to two miles away were reporting foul odors, shortness of breath, wheezing, headaches, and nausea. State monitoring between 2013 and 2018 recorded concentrations of reduced sulfur compounds as high as 3,700 parts per billion.⁷

Containment

Between January 2012 and July 2013, about 11 acres of flexible membrane liner and soil were added to the landfill cap. In 2013, a synthetic cap of ethylene vinyl alcohol copolymer (EVOH) was installed over the South Quarry to control odors, and Republic Services put in 40 additional gas extraction wells in the South Quarry and began drilling 30 more in the North Quarry.⁶

A central worry was whether the reaction could travel north through the neck toward the radioactive waste at West Lake. Gas interceptor wells were installed to create a vacuum “wall” between the quarries, and temperature probes were placed in the neck to track any movement.⁶ In April 2016, the EPA ordered additional North Quarry measures under an Administrative Settlement Agreement, including a heat extraction system, an inert gas injection system, and an EVOH cover for the North Quarry.⁸ The heat extraction barrier came online in October 2016, and the North Quarry EVOH cover began going on in November 2016.⁹

As of 2026, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources describes the site as being in a “managed state,” with monitoring data indicating the magnitude of the smoldering event is slowly decreasing. Republic Services reports no evidence of off-site impacts.⁴

The Radioactive Waste Next Door

Directly north of the Bridgeton Landfill’s North Quarry sits the West Lake Landfill, which contains an estimated 43,000 tons of radioactive uranium processing waste and contaminated soil left over from the Manhattan Project.¹⁰

The waste came from Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in downtown St. Louis, which from 1942 processed uranium ore (much of it from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo) for the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Shinkolobwe ore supplied roughly 70 percent of the uranium used in the first atomic bombs.¹⁰ After the war, the residues were stored near the St. Louis airport in deteriorating drums and open mounds, contaminating nearby Coldwater Creek as early as 1949.¹¹

In 1966, the Continental Mining and Milling Company bought the residues from the Atomic Energy Commission and moved them to a property on Latty Avenue in Hazelwood. The Cotter Corporation later acquired the material, extracted valuable metals, and shipped those to Canon City, Colorado. About 8,700 tons of leached barium sulfate and 39,000 tons of contaminated topsoil remained. Starting July 16, 1973, dump trucks hauled this material to the West Lake Landfill. The landfill superintendent, assuming the loads were clean fill, waved them in without charge, and by October thousands of shipments had been dumped in violation of federal disposal standards.¹⁰ The AEC discovered the dumping in April 1974 and internally acknowledged Cotter was “clearly in violation” of federal law, but released the company from its permit without sanctions and left the waste in place.¹¹

The buried material is largely thorium-230 and radium-226, the concentrated decay products left after uranium was extracted. These residues are far more radioactive than the original ore, which experts have described as “in a class as hazardous as plutonium.” Thorium-230 has a half-life of 77,500 years and decays into radium-226, so the waste actually becomes more radioactive over time. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health identified the West Lake material as the “worst” of the Mallinckrodt wastes.¹⁰

The Cleanup Plan and Timeline

The EPA placed West Lake on the Superfund National Priorities List in 1990.¹² The site is divided into three operable units. OU-1 holds the radioactive material. OU-2 covers the municipal landfill areas including Bridgeton, which Missouri DNR oversees under state authority. OU-3 addresses potential off-site groundwater contamination and is still in the investigation phase, with sampling having detected metals, radionuclides, and volatile organic compounds in nearby aquifers.¹³

After years of debate, the EPA issued an amended Record of Decision in 2018 setting the core OU-1 remedy: excavate the most concentrated radioactive material (above 52.9 picocuries per gram) and ship it off-site to a licensed radioactive waste facility, then build an engineered cover over all remaining contamination above 7.9 picocuries per gram.¹ Three potentially responsible parties have been identified: Bridgeton Landfill LLC as owner, Cotter Corporation, and the U.S. Department of Energy.¹³

In January 2025, the EPA issued an Explanation of Significant Differences that expanded the cleanup. Further investigation showed radioactive contamination was more widespread than initially estimated, requiring work on an additional 40 acres and excavation of another 20,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris. Contamination was also identified in a drainage ditch at the northern end of the site. Total estimated cleanup costs rose to nearly $400 million.² The core remedy of partial excavation plus engineered cover remained “fundamentally unchanged.”¹⁴

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin visited the site on March 17, 2025, with Senator Josh Hawley, called the situation one that “requires an unprecedented effort,” and announced an accelerated schedule.¹⁵ Site preparation and mobilization moved up from May 2029 to September 2027, and the hiring of a remedial action contractor moved from July 2027 to February 2027. The EPA expects full remediation to be completed by 2038.¹⁶

Pre-excavation confirmation sampling (more than 1,100 soil samples, including about 500 in newly expanded areas) was completed by March 2026. The data is being used by the responsible parties to finalize excavation plans, regrading designs, final cover designs, and stormwater features. The EPA expects the remaining design components by September 2026, with the full 100% Remedial Design package due 150 days after data validation.¹⁷¹ Before construction can start, the EPA is also negotiating a consent decree with the responsible parties; as of April 2025 the parties had not agreed to its terms, and the agency retains authority to order the work if no deal is reached. On-site staging areas for radioactive waste and backfill soil must also be built first.¹⁸

Is There Radioactive Waste Inside Bridgeton Itself?

The expanded cleanup set off a dispute between state and federal regulators. On January 15, 2025, Missouri DNR Deputy Director Jake Buxton wrote to the EPA stating there was a “high likelihood” that radioactive waste existed within the Bridgeton Landfill itself, not just at the adjacent West Lake site, and that it could be “far closer to the subsurface smolder than previously known.” The letter asked the EPA to assume oversight of Bridgeton, arguing regulators had long relied on 1970s-era helicopter flyover data that failed to account for all contaminated areas.¹⁹

The EPA pushed back, saying it had “no new evidence or information” to support that claim, though it acknowledged that recent soil sampling had detected radioactive contamination in the far northern section of the Bridgeton site. The agency said that contamination was not near the underground fire.²⁰ Republic Services said “there is no evidence whatsoever” of radioactive material in the Bridgeton Landfill.²¹ The EPA did not transfer oversight, and as of mid-2026, regulatory responsibility for Bridgeton remains with Missouri DNR.

Lawsuits and Settlements

The smoldering event has generated years of litigation. In July 2012, Missouri’s Solid Waste Management Program issued a notice of violation to Republic Services for creating a public nuisance, and in March 2013 Attorney General Chris Koster sued to force completion of corrective actions. A May 2013 agreed order required the landfill to provide temporary accommodations for affected residents and reimburse state agencies for monitoring costs.⁶

In August 2014, a federal judge approved a $6.8 million class-action settlement for 947 residents who alleged health problems and environmental harm from the underground fire. Residents who accepted the settlement gave up the right to bring future nuisance claims against Republic Services.²²

The state’s case was resolved in June 2018 with a $16 million consent judgment approved by St. Louis County Circuit Judge Michael Jamison. Of that amount, $12.5 million went to a community restitution fund managed by the St. Louis Community Foundation, $2 million reimbursed Missouri DNR for staff time, $1 million was a state civil penalty, and $500,000 covered natural resource damages. The agreement also required Republic Services to obtain more than $26 million in bond funding, with a guarantee of up to $61.8 million in payments to the state if it failed to perform. Republic Services reported spending more than $242 million on site improvements and remediation by the time of the 2018 settlement, on top of $6.4 million in individual claims already paid.²³

What the Health Studies Have Found

A 2022 health consultation by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry concluded that before corrective actions completed in 2014, breathing sulfur-based compounds near the landfill could have aggravated respiratory and cardiovascular conditions, particularly in children, the elderly, and people with asthma. After those actions, detections of reduced sulfur compounds dropped by about 75 percent and sulfur dioxide detections fell by more than 92 percent. The agencies found current emissions are unlikely to harm public health, though odors may occasionally be bothersome.⁷

On cancer, the same report found estimated cancer risks from volatile organic compounds near the landfill were similar to risks in other urban and suburban U.S. environments, about 7.3 additional cases per million people for lifetime exposure.⁷ A 2016 respiratory health survey found no statistically significant difference in rates of diagnosed asthma or COPD between residents near the landfill and a comparison group elsewhere in St. Louis County, though landfill-area residents did report significantly higher rates of shortness of breath attacks and other respiratory symptoms.²⁴

Compensation for Affected Residents

Much of the pressure that pushed the EPA toward a more aggressive cleanup came from Just Moms STL, a nonprofit co-founded in 2013 by Dawn Chapman and Karen Nickel. The group spent more than a decade pressing the agency to conduct broader testing at the site, publicly challenging its earlier position that such testing was “not necessary.”²⁵

The group also lobbied for an expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. In July 2025, Congress reauthorized and expanded the law as part of a budget reconciliation bill signed by President Donald Trump, making St. Louis-area residents in 21 specified zip codes eligible for compensation if they lived in the area for at least two years after January 1, 1949, and developed one of 20 specified cancers. Eligible individuals can receive up to $100,000.²⁶ 27

1
EPA. EPA Announces Completion of Pre-Excavation Confirmation Sampling at West Lake Landfill
2
Missouri Independent. Cost to Clean Up Radioactive West Lake Landfill Nears $400M
3
EPA (January 2017 Snapshot). West Lake Landfill
4
Missouri DNR. Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill
5
Waste360. The Bridgeton Landfill Fire Explained
6
Missouri DNR. Subsurface Smoldering Event Background
7
Missouri DHSS. Health Consultation, Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill
8
EPA (January 2017 Snapshot). EPA Directs Bridgeton Landfill to Begin Work on North Quarry Actions
9
Missouri DNR. Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill Background
10
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. West Lake Story: An Underground Fire, Radioactive Waste, and Governmental Failure
11
Missouri Independent. St. Louis Radioactive Waste Records
12
Missouri DNR. West Lake Landfill
13
EPA. West Lake Landfill Cleanup Activities
14
EPA. EPA Issues Explanation of Significant Differences for West Lake Landfill
15
Hawley.Senate.gov. Hawley Applauds EPA’s Expedited Plan to Clean Up West Lake Landfill
16
Waste Dive. EPA West Lake Landfill Cleanup Timeline
17
First Alert 4. Pre-Excavation Confirmation Sampling Complete at West Lake Landfill
18
EPA. West Lake Landfill OU1 Remediation Timeline
19
Missouri Independent. High Likelihood of Radioactive Waste in Smoldering Landfill, Missouri Officials Say
20
First Alert 4. New Concerns Raised About Radioactive Material at Bridgeton Landfills
21
St. Louis Public Radio. High Likelihood Radioactive Waste Smoldering Landfill, Missouri Officials
22
Waste Dive. Federal Judge Approves $6.8M Bridgeton Landfill Settlement
23
Waste Dive. Republic Services Settlement Missouri Landfill
24
ScienceDirect. Respiratory Health Survey Near Bridgeton Landfill
25
St. Louis Public Radio. She Spent Years Fighting the EPA Over Atomic Waste
26
Missouri Independent. St. Louis Radioactive Waste Activists Find Hope in New Federal Law
27
Just Moms STL. Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA)