BRIDGETON, Mo. (AP) - Radiation testing at a baseball complex near a suburban St. Louis Superfund site will be completed by late this month and results should be available in 30-60 days after that, the Environmental Protection Agency's regional chief said Friday.
Earlier this week, the EPA announced plans to undertake testing at the Bridgeton Municipal Athletic Complex. EPA Region 7 Administrator Karl Brooks was in Bridgeton Friday to outline how the testing would work.
Samples will be collected the week of May 19 and sent to a lab for evaluation. The examination follows private testing performed earlier this spring on behalf of concerned residents, tests that indicated elevated levels of radiation in drainage areas near the complex. Publicity from that test led a youth baseball tournament with nearly 100 teams to relocate earlier this month.
Brooks said that because there is no way to verify the accuracy of the private testing, EPA agreed to do its own evaluation even though the Missouri Department of Natural Resources tested the area just a year ago and found no cause for alarm.
"It's unfortunate that questionable information in the place of scientific data has created public worry," Brooks said.
Cold War-era nuclear waste is buried at West Lake Landfill, which is adjacent to the Bridgeton Landfill, where underground smoldering has created an odor problem. Many residents worry about what could happen if the smoldering reaches the nuclear waste, though landfill operators say safeguards will prevent that from happening. Operators are spending millions of dollars to build blockades to keep the smoldering from the nuclear waste, and to address the smell.
The landfill complex is just a mile or so from the sprawling baseball complex that includes 11 baseball fields, a soccer field, playground and tennis courts.
Dawn Chapman, a Bridgeton resident who has been active in pushing for cleanup of the landfill, said EPA testing of the baseball complex is long overdue.
"I don't think it's unreasonable that a decade ago the ball fields should have been checked," said Chapman, one of about two dozen residents who attended Brooks' news conference at Bridgeton City Hall.
Bridgeton Mayor Conrad Bowers said he is so confident the baseball complex is clean of radiation that he takes his granddaughter there. He said the fields will remain open throughout the testing.
"There is no credible evidence to shut anything down," Bowers said, but he lauded the EPA investigation "to reassure this community, reassure the citizens, that there is not a health hazard at BMAC."
Uranium byproducts were dumped at the landfill in the 1970s. The EPA is in the process of determining whether the waste should be dug up and removed or permanently covered.