Weldon Spring Site Information

RADIOACTIVE SITE IS OPENED TO TOURISTS
This story was published in A-section on Tuesday, August 6, 2002.

By Sara Shipley
Of The Post-Dispatch

The federal government says radiation levels are low enough for people to visit the mountain of nuclear weapons waste it has built and covered in St. Charles County. A building with explanatory exhibits was opened Monday.

Imagine you're cycling along Missouri's scenic Katy Trail, watching the corn grow and the birds swoop above.

Nearby looms a new attraction. But it's not an eagle's nest or a graceful oak tree.

It's a seven-story high tomb of radioactive waste. The mountainous site covers 45 acres and stores 1.5 million cubic yards of material. And it's there for you to explore.

As the U.S. Department of Energy ties the ribbon on its cleanup of radioactive waste at Weldon Spring, federal officials are going to new lengths to welcome people to a site where Cold War bomb materials were born.

Visitors swarmed a new museumlike interpretive center at its grand opening Monday. Future tours of the cell and the interpretive center will be available by appointment.

Dignitaries climbed on top of the gigantic covered mound of radioactive waste. A new 6-mile-long hiking and biking trail, connected to the Katy Trail, is set to open this fall.

The Department of Energy is opening its arms wider to the public at Weldon Spring than at any of its other hazardous waste cleanup sites across the country, officials said. If the experiment works, the government may grant greater access in the future to other defunct Energy Department properties, like the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons complex in Colorado.

"You don't tell people they're safe by putting a fence around something. Fences communicate a very negative barrier," said Pam Thompson, the Department of Energy's project manager at Weldon Spring.

"The quickest way to make sure people doubt you or question you or fear you is to lock people out."

Many people who checked out the new facilities Monday said they couldn't wait to use them.

"I think it's great, the bike trail especially. People will love that," said Will Kennon, a surveyor who has worked at the site for 10 years.

But some think it's plumb crazy to invite people to play near a cache of radioactive waste.

The Rev. Gerald J. Kleba, a Catholic priest who is an outspoken critic of the cleanup, called it ludicrous. At best, it's turning a known health hazard into a recreational site, he said.

Others fear that opening the site to recreation could have the effect of glossing over serious contamination left behind by decades of explosives manufacturing and uranium processing.

Some St. Charles County residents and environmental activists believe the waste could be responsible for a recent cluster of infant deaths and illnesses. A study by the Missouri Health Department did not find a connection.

The mother of one of the children who died, Ann Bachmann, said she did not like the notion of welcoming the public to the site, which she considers unsafe.

"I think it's fluff to make people feel safer than they are," Bachmann said of the Department of Energy's public access plans.

Bachmann said the public didn't have a chance to say whether it wanted the bike trail, the interpretive center and public access to the enclosed mound of waste.

More than 200 people signed a petition she circulated this spring criticizing the plan as unnecessary and dangerous.

Department of Energy officials insist the site is safe. Contaminated soil and materials are capped beneath eight feet of clay, sand and rock. The clay liner contains radon, a radioactive gas that forms as a breakdown product of radium. Uranium runoff within the waste cell is captured in a sump and disposed at a St. Louis sewer plant, officials said.

Because radon gas occurs naturally in Missouri, residents breathe it in their homes. People also are exposed to radiation in the form of sunlight and other naturally occurring sources, Thompson said.

"I have just as much chance of increasing my risk of cancer from working here (at Weldon Spring) 40 hours a week as I do from taking a shower at home," she said.

Tom Pauling, the Energy Department's environmental engineer for the Weldon Spring site, offered soil testing results to show how clean the site is now. For uranium 238, for example, the naturally occurring background level of radiation is 1.2 picocuries per gram. The government's goal was to clean the site to an acceptable level - determined to be 30 picocuries per gram in this case. More than 99 percent of 9,193 soil samples met the goal; the average radiation level in the samples was 2.91 picocuries per gram in the soil at the site.

Stephen McCracken, the Weldon Spring project manager from 1990-2000, also said the Weldon Spring Citizens Commission, a group of local residents, supported the concept of opening the site to the public.

Weldon's unique combination of a museum, bike trail and public access to the waste cell provide the highest degree of encouragement to visit of any Department of Energy site, said Art Kleinrath, manager of the Department of Energy's long-term surveillance program in Grand Junction, Colo. The new concept represents a turnaround from the department's tradition of secrecy.

"There will always be people who don't trust us. We just have to keep providing them with information to make them feel comfortable," said Jessie Roberson, the Energy Department's top-ranking official to attend the ceremony Monday. She is assistant secretary for environmental management.

Roberson and other federal, state and local officials on Monday recognized the cleanup work done so far and marked the grand opening of the interpretive center. The Energy Department will be around for at least two more years to finish cleaning up ground water.

More than 200 people explored the $1 million, 9,000-square-foot interpretive center, housed in a building once used to check workers for radioactivity. Exhibits explain the site's history, including how the towns of Toonerville, Howell and Hamburg were eradicated when the U.S. Army built the Weldon Spring Ordnance Works during World War II.

A few braved the heat to hike to the top of the mound, where commemorative plaques explain what's under foot. The $600,000 bike trail, built from old hauling roads where trucks carried radioactive waste, runs alongside the cell. Scheduled to open in a few months, it also will connect with Missouri Department of Conservation trails in the August A. Busch Memorial Conservation Area and the Weldon Spring Conservation Area.

Meredith Hunter, one of the original citizen activists who formed St. Charles Countians Against Hazardous Waste 20 years ago, visited the site Monday and pronounced it satisfactory.

"I'm real proud," she said.

State Sen. Ted House, D-St. Charles, praised Hunter and other citizens like her who insisted that the Energy Department make the site as clean and safe as possible.

They were the ones "who didn't just sit back and let the bureaucrats make the decisions," he said. Energy Department officials said the new public facilities will serve as a memorial to the nation's defense.

"It does give you a place, a striking place, to talk about the history of the Cold War," Kleinrath said.

====================

If you go ...

The public may tour the new Weldon Spring interpretive center or hike to the top of the covered mountain of radioactive waste by appointment only. To schedule a visit, call community relations manager Wendy Drnec at 636-926-7079.

The U.S. Department of Energy's latest draft of long-term stewardship plans for the Weldon Spring site may be released as soon as Friday. The document will be discussed at a public workshop Aug. 28 at 7 p.m. at the new interpretive center, 7295 Highway 94 South, St. Charles. The center will be open 30 minutes before the meeting. For a copy of the draft, call the number above or check the department's Long-Term Surveillance and Maintenance Program Web site at www.gjo.doe.gov.

====================

Weldon Spring history

1941-45: The Army produces explosives at the 17,000-acre Weldon Spring Ordnance Works. Some of the land is later transferred to the state of Missouri and becomes the August A. Busch Memorial Conservation Area.

1955: Atomic Energy Commission takes 200 acres to build the Weldon Spring Uranium Feed Materials Plant.

1958: Processing of uranium for nuclear weapons begins with toxic materials stored in open-air lagoons along with TNT and wastes.

1963: Atomic Energy Commission begins disposal of uranium and radioactive materials in a quarry.

1967: Army takes over now-closed uranium plant to begin producing dangerous herbicides in what is called the Weldon Spring Chemical Plant.

1968: Decontamination at site begins.

1985: U.S. Department of Energy takes control of site and identifies cleanup priorities.

June 2001: Energy Department buries last of 1.5 million cubic yards of waste in a covered mound that fills 45 acres and reaches 75 feet in the air.

August 2002: Public celebration to officially open interpretive center and declare most of site clean. Ground-water cleanup is expected to take two more years.

Reporter Sara Shipley:
E-mail: sshipley@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8215

Published in the A-section section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Tuesday, August 6, 2002.
Copyright (C)2002, St. Louis Post-Dispatch